Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Will you hire this person !!

A friend shared this application he received for a job. One can learn a lot about writing a CV from the same. Read it and learn.

If you think you will want to hire him, do tell me, I will get him to write to you. The letter has been reproduced with only a few changes to block the identity of the person. I am highlighting areas of real inspiration and learning for me. Hope you will find new learnings too.

Sanjay
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Dear sir

its rarely to recieve like this mail so be ready to iether delete it or reply imediately. and also its my first time to send it and iam redy for both the options.

iam one of the most intelegent men at the current time & iam the best in every thing i do, through the world.

i believe that iam not less than Isaac Newton but an apple havnt yet fall on my hed. instead of waiting for the apple i decide to search for it.

i feel that the best company to work for is yours, although i dont have the extensive knowledge but with one chapter i can make things that peoples who studied hundreds of books cant.

this simple english language and a medium knoledgge of
windows xp
solaris10
oracle10g

is all i have but iam sure that i can make the difference.

please dont miss this oportunity.

give me a specific problem and a short course on what i need to solve the problem and see what will i do.

i dont need any money, and if i fail i will refund every peny u spend for the course.
i know you have problems, and this is the chance to solve it, again dont miss it.
iam xx(age) years old, from abc (city) the time i live in yyy (country)s tuding oracle iam looking forward to hearing form you.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Recruiting

There are so many times I get a call where recruiters call to say they have an exciting job opportunity for me. My instant reaction all these years have been to say sorry I am not interested. The immediate reaction is 'WHY'. Most of the times it is impossible for people to understand that there could be people in this world who may not want to switch jobs.

The other thing that is amazing is the oversell. "I have this exciting opportunity for you in this MNC organisation, can you please give me your profile for my reference". When you do not know my profile how the hell do you know whether the job opportunity is exciting for me or not.

Also now at times, I feel the desperation of the recruiters from the way they have started approaching their job. "We have a job for you". "Not interested". " Okay can you give us a reference". This is exactly how the tele-callers selling you those credit cards or loans approach the interaction.

Executive Search, in my mind, is not about making those cold calls and hoping that one of the conversations will lead to a right reference. Its a game of relationships and reach, which will then help you narrow the search down to the right kind of person for the job one is searching for.

My simple thought for all you recruiters making the cold call to anyone is, first try and build a relationship and understand the person properly, if not this time, it will come in handy for future. Remember this game will be about relationships and reach.

Sanjay

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Abhi na jao chor ke (Please don't go) !

I have started to believe that an employee has maximum valuation from his/her employer on the day they announce they will quit. Suddenly the whole organisation gets down to trying to convince the person about how the organisation believes in the person and has great things lined up for their careers. Also in many cases offer to increase their salaries manyfold and promote, transfer, or do whatever will get the person to stay back.

The same employee may have been refused a more than 10% increase a few months back, in the garb or market pay competitiveness, budget, internal parity and so on and so forth. Also the company would have refused promotion / transfer on various other pretexts.

Recently someone narrated a story about how a very smart employee did outsmart his employer and beat them at their own game. The person put in his papers and the company offered him a 40% increase and asked him to stay back. The person agreed, took the increase letter, went and negotiated with the hiring company and got a significant increase over the increased amount. The new hiring company obviously thinking very highly of this person's credibility since the current organisation was willing to bend backwards to retain the employee.

Today I understand that in that organisation everyone thinks that if they can bring an offer back and negotiate with their current employer they would be able to get the increase they did not get during increment time. I don't blame them.

Employers need to start thinking more long term given the demand situation for talent and understand that offering significant increases to employees who put in their papers is a very risky tactic, which has far higher negatives than positives and will hurt the organisation in the long term and send wrong signals to all other employees.

My simple thought is that knee jerk reactions will always create more complications. Try and retain people through more long term measures, let a few people go, after all the others need a chance to grow in the organisation as well.