My take on this :

I personally believe that there is a lot of potential in women that needs to be harnessed. Some are right when they say there are only a handful of women who have made it big in the corporate world and that too by sacrificing much of personal life, and when we take an overall scenario we wont find many in the top management. But there is a reason behind it.

We would have to understand the evolution of the careers of women as we try to unravel this. When we hire freshers (both men and women) from college, they are at the same level. In fact, my experience tells me that some of the best performing employees have been women. Their families are happy and support them totally. Once the initial euphoria goes off, the family starts pestering most of the women for marriage. I have known hundreds of top-performing women leaving their jobs to go marry someone who is in a different city or a different country. In most of the cases, parents do not even bother about killing her career. In the sense, marrying her off into a family which may or may not support her career ambitions. Or maybe she would have to relocate to a place where a suitable employment is impossible for her based on her skills. What happens to her career then ? Its killed just when she is about to embark on the middle-tier of the corporate.

She either quits working altogether or takes up something which is below par to her ability. Considering that she survives till that stage to marry someone who supports her job/shift, after a year or two they would be facing the big question of starting a family. Once this happens, her priorities are totally changed as is wont with nature. First priority would be the baby. Best case scenario, she might lose 6-7 months of the peak-performing period of her career. Worst case scenario (am talking about complicated pregnancies), she might end up losing more than a year and half. When she rejoins back, would she be in the state of mind that she quit ? Absolutely NO. Because she has been out of touch not just with her work, but with the work culture too. Suddenly people also start treating her differently. Major responsibilities are many times not given to new-moms because people think they would need an easy job which is stress free. I am not saying it shouldn’t be done, in fact they deserve as much of a lee-way as the organization can afford at that stage. Consider a second baby and then imagine where her career would be ? In the meantime, where is her peer (male) who joined work with her as a fresher by now ? He is at least 2-3 notches above her in the hierarchy. Apart from all these also, there are many other socio-economic situations which play a part in defining the career of women. To say that inspite of all this, some women make it to the top of the organization hierarchy is an achievement, is an understatement. I personally salute their spirit and their multi-tasking abilities.

The only way we can ensure that women get their due share in the corporate world, is by having a definite percentage as target (of course based on merit) for hiring women to maintain a healthy female:male ratio on the floor. I have been fortunate to work with such companies which not only believed in this spirit, but did everything possible to achieve it too. I feel more such initiatives would ensure equal gender parity at work.

Some of the initiatives that might make a difference to retaining women employees would be :

1. Revamp the Maternity-leave policy:Most of the maternity leave policies we see in the Indian context offer 3-6 months of ML. Beyond which the employee would have to fend for herself. Culturally, we are a very different population. We are still not convinced about leaving our young ones in crèches for longer periods of time.Although we have seen a significant change in social behaviour regarding this with the advent of nuclear families where both spouses work. From an employers’ perspective, more needs to be done to give the cushion of a crèche at work. Having a crèche at work would add an immense value to the way the employer is perceived by the employee. It would also directly ensure that the organization does not lose a trained, experienced employee who can hit the ground running on her return.I am sure a mechanism of cost sharing between employer and employee can be evolved so that this would not become a burden on the employer alone during these cost-cutting days. For anyone who would argue on an austerity drive on this count, may be missing the point of a significant workforce whose engagement levels would be wholesome if such facilities are provided at the work-place.
2. Work-from-home/Flexi-timings Even as we debate about the productivity of women employees’ post their return from Maternity Leave, a Work-from-home/Flexi-timings as a wholesome policy would greatly motivate and help in retaining women employees. Just knowing that her organization has a policy where her needs are being addressed is a huge motivation. A loud and clear message goes to your work-force that your policies are people-centric.My experience with work-from-home/Flexi-timings when it was given to some women employees in not just teams that I managed but observed in other teams around me, has been amazing. When such an option is given to a woman employee, she ensures she does the task assigned to her in time, with the same commitment level that she displays while working in the office.
3. Clearly defined escalation mechanism to counter harassment at work A well defined escalation mechanism helps to minimize the occurrence of harassment at the workplace. The escalation process should be clearly spelt out, should provide for anonymous lodging of specific occurrence of harassment. Although there is a chance of this provision being mis-used, I am sure the percentage has been minimal in the few organizations where such mechanism exists.
   
4. Defining transparent policies The organization hierarchy too an important factor here. You cannot be having a boss-is-always-right type of hierarchy and work culture and expect everyone to be fair to their sub-ordinates.
   
5. Un-biased, process-oriented and objective Performance Management System
   
6. Responsive Human Resources team who believe in these principles. They should be willing to drive these policies home with enthusiasm. Many a good policy lies wasted when you do not have motivated and enthusiastic torch bearers from the HR team.

I am sure if some of these measures are in place, we would witness more women employees being able to break the so-called Glass Ceiling. Even if we are able to retain one percentage of women employees, we would have taken many steps in the right direction.

PS: Some portions of this article have been taken from my own contributions to a topic from http://hrlink.in/topics/have-women-found-their-due-share-in-the-corporate-world#PgTop

To understand the concept of being job-ready, we need to analyse some of the factors that shape a person’s candidature. Broadly speaking they fall under the following categories:

1. Academic Credentials
2. Area(s) of specialization/Technical skills needed for the job
3. Soft Skills
4. Behavioural attributes
5. Past experience, if any, in the relevant field
6. Employment history

Let us try to understand each factor in brief.

1. Academic Credentials : This is an area you can hardly do something because am assuming that people reading this article would already have been done with their studies and looking for jobs. Either as a fresher or as an experienced professional.
2. Area(s) of specialization/Technical Skills needed for the job : This would form part of the most important part of your resume. It is imperative that we identify the skills that we possess and are comfortable in. In my experience I have interviewed a majority of candidates who are jack-of-many-trades but master of none. Though they are eager to learn and improvise once on-the-job, but they fail to realize that the recruitment process it to see the best-fit. Hence it is important to do a research on the company you are applying to and identify the skill area(s) that the company requires. It would make sense to highlight those skill area(s) in the resume to ensure that the focus of discussion during the recruitment process revolves around the core competencies required rather than leaving it to the individual judgement of the interview panel, which may not be objective. I use the word objective because none of the recruitment processes followed by companies is fool-proof.
3. Soft Skills : It is very important to understand that no job is stand-alone. You are a part of a matrix or a jig-saw puzzle and it is very pertinent that you would be expected to communicate, interact and get results. Soft skills have a very important place in the success of not just landing a job, but to ensure you are successful in it. Many organizations give ratings to the desired skills that they look for in a particular profile and essentially Soft Skills are an inherent part of any Job Description. When HR Managers or Line Managers hire employees, they do not hire you just for the present day, but for the scalability that your personality brings to the table, that reflects over a period of time.  This is true because every organization grows, matures and it helps having scalable and adaptable personnel in the team.  So it is time you work on your soft skills to ensure you complement your technical and academic background with the right soft skills. It is not a luxury but an imperative today that soft skills are needed to be successful in the professional life.
4. Behavioural Attributes : This maybe one of the most undermined attributes that we speak about in a recruitment process. It is of paramount importance because most of your interviewers have been groomed in interviewing techniques, many of which actually focus on Behavioural attributes. Just imagine if you have to play a football with a cricket ball, do you think you can do well ? Obviously not. Its as simple as that. Know the field you are playing in,, adapt and learn.
5. Past experience, if any, in the relevant field : It is very important to highlight your KRA’s (Key Responsibility Areas) in your previous assignments. It paves the way to a proper constructive discussion during the interview. Always remember to take time out to write your resume yourself. A lot of people follow the send-me-your-resume-I-have-to-make-mine principle. It is the biggest mistake that you can make. Remember, your resume is a document that sells your candidature, the more time you spend on making it, the more it would fetch you. Can you imagine any of the major companies surviving without proper projection of their core competencies (in other words, strength of the products or services they offer) ? The answer would be an emphatic NO. So why not spend time on your resume. After all its your career, your professional life. Dont you have adequate time for it ? Please remember, resumes should be like finger prints. Unique. Period.
6. Employment History: Never try to lie on your Employment History. It is very obvious that organizations do a thorough background check on your candidature before offering you that job. So stick to the basics. Do NOT bloat the period between employers if you have had a gap because of some reason. Own up. Same trick applies to designations and compensation details. Do not fall prey to temptation.

There are a lot of other factors too which we can focus on, but I wanted to limit myself to these basic ones.

I hope readers find something meaningful out of this exercise.

Good luck !!

There are 36 traits that any organization can choose from to define based on their needs. Needless to say, no organization can implement all 36 traits. So when we are in the process of choosing our mode of interviewing for our organization, we have to first make a checklist of traits that we look for in the candidates based on our organizational goals and objectives. We had used 4 behavioural traits in my last firm which were very meaningful and ensured that we had a fit/non-fit at all times. BEI reduces the risk of personal judgements which can be very detrimental to the organization. Personal biases are almost completely eliminated because the interviewer is expected to note down the instances/events that the candidate has mentioned in the interview in the Interview Assessment Form.
Also it increases the chances of finding the right candidate as typical questions like “tell me about yourself” are not asked. At no point in time, a subjective question is asked and each question asked has to conform to a set parameter of the need for the candidate in the first place.

Incidentally, when we look at identification of an interviewing technique for the organization, we take into account the key attributes/traits that we feel are important and necessary for our organization, from the perspective of performance, retain-ability, enhancement, OD, Organization culture, etc. So the question of implementing BEI for an existing employee is something I fail to understand
Thanks for your time on this.

We would be right to say that no interview technique gives a clear picture. Having said that, I must add that the various interview techniques in practise is to arrive at a meaningful and objective selection criteria/process. You are again right when you say behaviour is a complex matter but it has been established beyond doubt that past behaviour is a definite and sure shot indicator or future performance, unless superseding events do not come into play. In that case, it would be an exception rather than a rule. We are talking about the rule here. When an interviewee gives hear-say examples, or cooked up examples, it is easy to crack him open by probing on specific instances. For example, a question like “Tell me of an instance when your opinion was not heeded to by your Team Lead” would make the candidate think. When he gives us an example, we probe further, how big was the team, what was your role in it, what was the situation, what type of client it was, what were the expectations from your role as well as the team’s, when did this event take place, can you give us a reference of your TL for reference check, etc, are some of the probing questions we would ask to ascertain if the candidate is giving a genuine example or an imaginary story.

If we study the psychology of candidates, we would know that they are under the impression that in an interview it is only your achievements and high points that are going to be discussed. BEI eliminates that completely and creates a platform to discuss purely events and not adjectives. For example, words like hard-working, diligent, are of no consequence in a BEI as, unless they are supported by solid examples which can be verified, they are of no use.

BEI is not a tool to take out somebody’s negative traits alone. It even covers the positive traits as well as the achievements of the candidates. Needless to say, even the positive traits have to be illustrated with examples from the candidates’ background. For example, if the candidate says, “I am a very hard working person”. We would say “Excellent, could you please give us examples from your prior stints where you exhibited your hard work ?” When the candidate gives a vague reference, we probe, indicating to him that we need more inputs, specific instances, people involved, so that we can check the story with references.

So labelling BEI merely as a tool to bring out people’s negative side may not be the right thing to do.

This article is an excerpt from my replies to a forum topic on www.hrlink.in

Here is the link to the original discussion : http://hrlink.in/topics/what-is-behavioral-interviewing#PgTop

I can go on and on with guidelines, but am sure these would tick.

I am sure if some of these guidelines are followed, it would greatly benefit to avoid last-minute-surprises like I-was-expecting-to-be-promoted, oh-no-my-boss-is-bad, I-need-to-change-my-company, etc.

This article has been excerpted from my own contribution to this topic on www.hrlink.in :

http://hrlink.in/topics/get-the-most-out-of-your-performance-appraisal

A resume is a document which helps sell your candidature. At the most, you can take some tips from a lot of tips posted in various forums or you can google for thousands of tips to prepare your resume, about things to do, and things NOT to do while preparing your resume.

In a nutshell, I can tell you, it should be precise, to the point and should cover the following :

1. Personal Information : It should be to a point which is necessary and reflects your candidature. For example, a lot of people mention gardening as their hobby. I fail to understand how that helps the person reading the resume to understand your personality ? Or for that matter, singing, watching tv. I hope you can understand what I mean.
2. Professional Information : Please mention the company name, duration worked, title and the Key Responsible Areas. You might want to highlight your achievements in a nutshell. Try avoiding long sentences. Bullet points helps the resume reader to browse through your resume and still not miss anything.

3. Highlight those professional strengths of yours which would actually benefit the organization. For example, if you are applying for a team lead position, highlight your team mentoring and team management skills. This would give you an edge.
Finally, a resume can never be made from a template. Its your life, like your fingerprints. Please find time to make an original. Just ensure you take care of proper formatting and use consistent fonts, and not more than one color.

I wish you the best in your job quest.

Legally speaking, the organization would HAVE to take him on rolls irrespective of whether the other candidate joined or not. Consider this example, where there is an offered candidates and there is a back up candidate. If the organization makes an offer to both of them, and the first choice candidate joins, the organization would be forced to absorb the back up candidate too. Certainly not a good problem to have, as far as organization dynamics, resource utilization and financial aspects of the project(s) are concerned.

Organizations deal with this scenario in various ways. A good way is to study the hiring metrics and the hiring funnel very carefully and have adequate number of candidates at various stages, so that in the eventuality of an offer decline or a no-show, the recruitment team does not have to go back to the drawing rooms. This stage is called RTMO-Ready To Make Offer stage, where all levels of interviews are done with and candidates are kept ready at the Offer stage. As and when there is a decline, the back up candidate is given a formal offer stage called RTMO stage. This reduces the gestation time for on-boarding compared to the regular hiring time needed to get a resource on-board.

Having said that, it is not possible for organizations to do much in these scenario except to take steps like the above to minimize the impact of a no-show or an offer decline. This is because, irrespective of how robust an organization we are or how strongly process-oriented we are, there is a human element in the process which is beyond the scope of all these external factors.

According to me, an exit interview is more important than the preliminary rounds of interviews conducted at the time of recruitment. It is more important because you are talking to you own employee, who has been there, done that, seen all. The perspective that you get from an employee who is leaving, most of the times is unbiased.

Whatever the reason for the employee to leave the organization, the exit interview should be given the time and effort it deserves, because it is the most honest feedback you would get from an employee about your organization. At the time of leaving an organization, an employee is not unduly worried about voicing his opinion and hence he would speak the truth. Truth, which many organizations do NOT want to hear. Hence the value of an exit interviews is always undermined in such organizations.

There is a popular saying “Employees do not leave organizations, but leave their managers”. In spite of how much we detest this truth, it is very much prevalent and more and more people leave managers to find others, although there is no guarantee that your next manager in the next organization would be better, or less cynical, or less concerned about your career. An employee simply gets fed up and puts down his papers.
One other thing I feel should change in organizations it the timing of the Exit Interviews. Usually it is done on the employees’ last working day or a day before that. Hence it just becomes a ritual. I am sure if a professional counsellor talks to the employee as soon as he/she puts down his papers, am sure we should be able to make a difference in the statistics of holding them back to a significant extent.

How many organizations actually invest in either maintaining a professional counselor/outsource this need to an external agency ? NIL.
Having said that, there are HR professionals who take this ritual rather seriously and try to get an idea about the probable causes that led to this irreparable damage. I call it irreparable because it takes a huge organization cost to hire a new person, train him, to put him on the job and by the time he starts being productive, it would take months of effort.

Whereas, if we are able to retain the existing employee, it would translate to many months of productivity. Sounds simple ? Yes it might be simple, provided organizations started putting more emphasis on employees leaving their organizations than on hiring. The emphasis has always been on hiring, to bring in human bodies into the system. The very approach to the exit interviews have to change for organizations to cut on their humongous training costs and instead invest that money on retaining employees who are ready-made to give the productivity, that you are so afraid to lose.

The concept of professional counsellors is still in its nascent stages in India and it might take some more time. But am sure there is a need for a professional counsellor who would step up to this role, maybe as an employee, or as n outside consultant to fill this gap. I am sure even if we are talking about a 25% attrition rate for an X organization, and if this initiative does bring in about 1% change in the values, we are still talking about millions of dollars spent on training, recruitment, wait-time-for-productivity, etc.

If we follow the hierarchy followed in most of the organizations which have the lowest attrition rate, we would notice a very robust & well defined hierarchy. The important point is to map a well defined, unambiguous competency framework to a robust hierarchy which will give rise to a continuous growth path for people at ALL levels in the organization.

Before defining hierarchy of an organization, we need to take the following measures and ensure they are in place :

Defining hierarchy is one thing, implementing it in such a way that it is tied to all other facets of the organization as well as other HR functions is a must. Otherwise, hierarchy would remain just some titles which would be conferred on employees based on the whims and fancies of the HR professionals/hiring managers operating at THAT point in time in the organization. This is typical to growing organizations which do not have a well defined hierarchy. The entire process has to have objectivity and clarity which would make it process driven rather than a person-driven exercise. Any organization which believes in processes rather than people-driven policies, prospers in the long term because it discounts the people who run it, but is robust enough to run irrespective of who in the organization runs it. Debatable, but true.

Let us ask ourselves first “Why do we need a hierarchy ?” The simple answer to this complex answer is to show a career progression to each employee in the organization irrespective of his current level. In other words, from a fresher who joins the first organization of his career to a Sr. Vice President, should have something to look forward to in terms of achieving. It is necessary to create a succession plan through the hierarchy to make the system strong and resistant to individual bias. Before we get down to discussing and debating what hierarchy would suit our organization, it is very important to know the business we are in and the stake holders. Based on this only we would be able to come up with a tangible solution to the hierarchy. What works for an X firm may not work for us. So copy paste, though it looks so lucrative, doesn’t always help. Actually, hierarchy of any organization should be as individual as a fingerprint. This I say because the needs of each organization differ from each other.

Here we come to a very interesting concept called skill-based jobs. We all know that we are paid for the skills we bring to the table. Many times I find people are at a particular designation, for example, Asst. Manager in their current company and want to be titled the same or more in their next assignment. How far is it acceptable ? From Assistant  Manager to Manager may be the natural career progression in his/her current company, but the organization he applies to, would obviously have their own hierarchy. I am not talking about relatively fresh professionals, but there are quite a few experienced professionals who fail to recognize this difference in the hierarchy.

I would like to give an example to illustrate this. For example, there is this X company which has a very flat hierarchy and makes someone with 2 years relevant experience as an Assistant Manager. The next promotion for this person would be as an AVP, that too, all with 4-6 years of experience. Some other organizations, which follow a longer and more stable career progression, would probably title someone an Asst. Vice President only with relevant experience of 15-20 years of experience. My question is, are the two candidates in question the same? Do they bring the same level of skills to the table ? Obviously NO. In terms of HR careers, we see a lot of people with 2-3 years of experience being titled HR Managers. Whereas in much larger organizations, they would probably be mapped to maybe a Sr. Executive/Sr. Analyst title.

While defining the hierarchy of an organization, it is important to take the lessons of the past into account, the present scenario and the future too. A trend analysis chart of the attrition pattern helps. The important point is to avoid impulses and avoid people specific and department specific designations. It helps to have common designations across departments.

Once the hierarchy has been defined, it is only the first step. It is important to bring objectivity to the entire process by defining the skills that a particular person should possess, both soft skills and technical skills and the responsibilities he/she should be able to shoulder to be in that position. Responsibilities and skills should be defined in the format of a competency framework which is an integral part of the skill definition process in the first place.

Even when the competency framework and hierarchy are integrated, it becomes a futile exercise unless it is tied to the Learning and Development team. When an employee sets his goals for the year, the responsibilities of the next designation should be part of his goal setting process. The progress on the same should be evaluated at regular intervals, typically mid-year. This simple process avoids a typical scenario where an employee is aghast at the year-end when he/she doesn’t get promoted. Since he/she knows the progress throughout the year which is documented and shared with not just his/her seniors but also with the local HR Generalists, more or less he/she knows what’s in store for him/her at the year end. This avoids a lot of heart-burn and also ensures that superiors do not have bias against any particular employee.

This article has been taken from my own responses to a query on www.hrlink.in

Here is the link to the original article : http://hrlink.in/topics/how-do-we-plan-hierarchy

ALMOST always, recruitment teams are under-staffed. In case of a scheduled interview, the Help Desk would come into play where the candidate is made to wait, as the recruiter is being informed. During this period, the candidate can actually relax, read newspapers/magazines, use the washroom or simply grab a coffee. This facility doubles up as a parking place for a candidate if there are multiple interviews on a single day. The people who man the helpdesk are provided with food coupons which are supposed to give to the candidates to use in the cafeteria, in case its lunch/dinner time and if the candidate is in between interviews and has adequate time to grab a bite. This saves the candidate the trouble of stepping out for a meal and at the same time ensures that it conveys a positive image of the organization.

After all this, before the candidate leaves after his interviews are over, he is requested to go back to the helpdesk, where he is given a feedback sheet on his recruiting experience. Trust me, there are companies who go to such limits to ensure they are giving a positive and excellent recruitment experience to its candidates.

I do agree there are rude people out there to malign the image of their organizations and also HR as a fraternity, but at that same time there are people and organizations like the one I mentioned, which go that extra mile, not just a mile, but miles, to ensure that the candidate takes back a very good image of the organization irrespective of the outcome of his candidature.

The organization I am talking about, belongs to ITES industry and known for its best practices. I agree and understand that organizations across industries have varying processes and hence the disparity. That is precisely when someone would want to join an X company in the first place.

I would still maintain that a HR professional should have the qualities I mentioned. When we talk about HR professionals who are unapproachable, unprofessional, I know the ilk you are talking about. But PEOPLE are our tools. For a software engineer, his tools are his coding skills and the platform you works on. Similarly for all professionals. But for us, its people. Unless we are engaged with them, understand them, empathize with them and be there when they need us, I don’t think we become HR professionals in the true sense.

I agree, there are more aberrations to this theory than conformists, but also know a lot of HR professionals who are like my definition. In fact, I have based my definition on such people only. It’s not a theoretical definition. It’s the ground-reality-induced-definition.

According to me a true HR professional is somebody who has a huge affinity for people, one who has the burning desire to study people and acknowledge differences not just in the mindset, but also from a behavioural point of view. To be a successful HR professional, it is important to have an imbibed humaneness, ingenuity and the ability to handle multiple perspectives, all the time not losing sight of the short term & long term goals. Often, we find ourselves in conflicting situations where multiple perspectives offer a ripe ground for taking unpopular decisions. But the ability to take such decisions with conviction and stand by our own & the organization’s principles and ethics, takes a special character, which is imperative in somebody who wants to make it big in HR.

I hope to be of use to the HR community as a whole through my endeavors.