Evaluating the $35 Indian Computer

After reading a comment by Ajay Vaishnav, from the Times of India about the low cost tablet computer developed in India and just announced this week, I could not help myself in responding to it. For his take on it, please click on his name.


Sometimes we become victims in the desire to create a perfect world, where we fail to realize that while things may not always be perfect there is usually an opportunity to make an incremental or even marginal difference which over a period of time will gather enough momentum to create a self sustaining cycle.

How else due you think India has become the back office of the world without having the necessary infrastructure to support it, in terms of human and other resources? If it was only about a quality vs. cost the mega-corporations would have found another place by now...wouldn't they?


Yes, there are large tracts of poverty and under developed infrastructure in the country, but there are also extremely large tracts of developed and affluent areas in India that would shame any progressive western economy. That development did not happen overnight by being transplanted from somewhere else, it gradually evolved due to small efforts over time that coalesced to create the current vibrant economy. You can see the opposite of that happening in the US with the minor, but steady erosion of the education system, the numbing down of the work-force, and decay of built up infrastructure with no investments being made to maintain or create anything of new or lasting value. Just as every business has a life-cycle, every nation has its glory days till things start to wane and then the cycle of re-building and creating new systems and values begins anew!


I’d like to mention that companies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, etc. did not suddenly make a big splash on the world stage in the latter part of the '90s when personal computers and the internet started becoming ubiquitous first in the US then the world over. Yes, the general awareness of these organizations was greatly amplified, along-with the newly discovered capabilities of the Indian workforce. Those visionaries kept toiling away quietly without any hope of impending fame and fortune. Just imagine a group of engineers from India trying to convince C-level executives of large corporations in Europe and US to let them do their back office work and handle phone calls for them in India in the mid-'80's, when there was hardly a reliable telephone network or any other similar infrastructural network in the in the country to handle local calls let alone international calls and a regular uninterrupted supply of electricity, even in the so called developed metros. There was no way they could have met the agreed upon SLAs based on the available facts!



If they had looked at the reality of the situation they should have come to the conclusion that the situation was bleak and the hurdles insurmountable, so they should have given up on it...? Tenacity and the will to forge ahead in spite of formidable odds are what create larger than life inspirations and role models; while naysayers keep repeating the same old tales of doom and gloom, without thinking even once that they have the opportunity to do so because of the efforts of those that they are belittling! Had someone not have planted the tiny seeds of the technological revolution in India years ago I wonder how Ajay Vaishnav would have found a way to voice his reservations that can be heard the world over? I doubt he would have taken a megaphone in hand and marched the world over holding a placard in the other to let everyone know his thoughts... or maybe he would have.... When you're talking about the human spirit anything is possible!


The pilgrims that arrived on the shores of America over 300 years ago not only survived and prospered, they reinforced to individuals across the world the concept of what we now term the "American Dream". Like Alexander, the Vikings, or even the Britisher's before them (let's not get into the politics of it) they were pioneers. That same indomitable will and passion for innovation and continuous urge to better oneself and move on ahead is present in each and every one of us the world over.

Gatekeepers and Screeners at the door - That's what HR recruiters call themselves!

As mentioned in the prior post I got a bunch of responses to my questions on HR and Recruiting. Some of the responses were just amazing!!!

Listed below is the query I framed and a few selected responses -


"Quite often I hear - "... a resume has less than 30 seconds to make an impact to a recruiter - independent or corporate HR.." WHY?"

- "Let me first correct you: It takes 3-10 seconds to review a resume to verify if it meets qualifications for a majority of positions. If it was 30 seconds, I would never get any work done."

-  "Because time is money."

- "10-15 seconds tops... You have to market yourself if you are missing some requirements on the job description...otherwise 10 seconds is all you will get."

- "My goodness, I don't read resumes for a living, but do you know how many of these answers I could skim over in 30 seconds and get a pretty darn good idea of what they were talking about?"

- "For the same reason cyber security is in such great (sic) shape in this country and beyond. As far as I can tell that's 29 seconds past the maximum attention span of most recruiters."

- "The way we see the problem is often greater than the problem we're trying to solve.

To most people;

1. Busy = important, 30 seconds "I must be busy, I'm important"
2. Decision Making = Important, "5's" (performance level relative to the 1,000's in their industry) aren't asked their thoughts on "move the needle" issues, thus, why not make it up in volume, 30 seconds at a time ... important again
3. Believe their intentions are good; say a prayer and move on

I coach the coachable HR people on how to do the process more effectively and efficiently. However, my systems reward / create consequences for HR performance as most don't.

Litmus Test on the Culture of an HR Dept:

What % of the HR Payroll will be paid, regardless of who is hired?
Example: $5M in salaries and $4.7 is paid regardless while $4.9 - $5.1 has a 95% chance of getting paid. Where's the motivation?

Life's too short to worry about it unless you're helping someone that is open to changing it." 

- "They're not, by and large, out there searching for talent. They're the gatekeepers, who screen applications sent in."

- "Because HR people are the equivalent of soccer goalies - their job is not to let anyone in but to keep just about everyone out. ...Getting your resume or a letter in front of the hiring manager is the only way you can get through the stonewall the square peg HR gatekeepers put in your path."


Now keep in mind the above are just a few excerpts from from about 25% of the responses received, the majority of them were basically of the opinion "How dare I ask this question and bring this issue up!".

Well here are a few of my rebuttals - enjoy!

- "...most of the responses seem to validate the "30 Second" rule / hypothesis.

So taking that for a baseline if one was a great recruiter and received and average of 100 resumes a day, that's about 50mins of your time in the day. I'll be generous and round it up to 60min, wait I'll be magnanimous and give you 1min per resume that's 2 hours of your day every single day of the month. Almost every recruiter out in the field would kill for those kind of potential leads, the fact is none have them, get them, or come even come close to generating them!

So, what do you do the rest of the day? Waste of company time and money if internal Dept. and do outrageously high billing if an external recruiter!

If I was a CEO/CFO/COO I would take a quick look at my HR recruiting Dept and partner recruiting companies and FIRE THEM! HR guys you just discredited your entire industry! You just proved that you provide very little value addition to the hiring process which can be completely substituted by an automated system, albeit one that may require a little more fine tuning"

- "The responses here themselves say a resume is a way to get your "toe" into the door! How can you make a judgement call for an individual by "seeing" their so called "toes" only? It's like the story of the 5 blind men who touched a different part of an elephant and came to a different set of conclusions as to what it was and what it could do, without seeing or even feeling the entire elephant."

- "...almost every other function that you said a "Generalist" may handle has been outsourced or is in the process of being outsourced and automated, or the employee is being "empowered" to handle on their own with the service provider.

So the one pure HR function that you can add value to internally is recruiting, however if that seems too much for most don't blame outsourcing and automation when it takes over completely. What you call "screening" can be done by anyone sitting half way around the world in a window less room, and then making an appointment for the hiring individual by an email or a phone call."

- "...In this day and age of almost 12% unemployment in the US, why employers are unable to fill positions with the "right" and properly "qualified" candidates is the mystery worth exploring..."

 

What does "Over-Qualified" mean for Today's Workers?

Yesterday, I asked a few HR and Recruiting related questions on the social networking site Linked In. I received a bunch of responses.

One a of the few that I found interesting was withdrawn for publishing by the respondent for some reason. However, since they responded to me I will publish the response in my blog for the benefit of everyone to review. I would love to give credit to the writer of this, however the person who actually penned the following statement does not want to have their views published or wishes to remain anonymous. Therefore, I am not identifying them, except to let everyone know that she is a Professional Career Coach with a Global HR Solutions provider.

Typically, "Over-Qualified" for a position in the US is used as a euphemisms for being "too-old" for the particular position or even company culture. Her take -

"I'll respond to being "overqualified." If you are 35 and spent the last 5 yrs in a managerial role and were not "hands-on" then apply for an individual contributor role with no management/supervisory responsibility, you are "overqualified." WHY? Most likely, no matter how much the applicant says they are "ok" not managing people, most likely they will not be a "fit" and will seek a better opportunity before the company sees it's ROI. The applicant isn't "old" but used to working in a different capacity than the job being offered.

Again, if an applicant has 10+ yrs of HR exp at the Dir and above level, they are OVERQUALIFIED to be the HR Assoc responsible for scheduling interviews, processing paperwork, and ordering lunches for the departmental meetings.

Are there cases when applicants may be discriminated against for age? Of course, but a good HR/Recruiter will look for fit and most often we know and have experienced the downside of hiring an overqualified person for a job. Only once in my career did it work and it was because the employee admittedly wanted a "place to hang out" until he retired in 2yrs."

Hope the above helps...

Irrational Exuberance or Stupidity? Part - I

For an individual that has been closely associated with the two business sectors in the US - IT Enabled Services and Retail, that have or are about to take off in the Southeast Asia region, especially India I sometimes find myself having a feeling of deja vu when reading excerpts of the astounding economic growth happening there. I have used the terms ITES in the US context because just as in India they were part of the IT growth boom in the US also.

This sense of deja vu is not of the same optimistic kind promoted and shared by a lot of other evangelists of developing world growth patterns.

I rejoice at the phenomenal growth that has and is continuing to happen in India; however I keep waiting to see some measure of hardcore economic activity in the development of physical infrastructure take place. Even when any activity to shore up physical infrastructure has / does happen it is only in response to an ancillary investment in islands of economic boom in places where there is already an ITES infrastructure.

Let's not forget what the acronym ITES stands for - Information Technology Enabled Services, in the majority of cases this is nothing but once again a fancy term for low end backroom processing support work that has been offshored to India from the more developed nations.

Support activity can only happen if there is primary business activity to be supported, if we keep on creating and encouraging an environment where home grown physical industries are decimated and discouraged we will face the same consequences that the US is currently facing.

The home grown US economy is already frayed at the edges and is starting to tear apart due to the lack of regular investments in in the physical infrastructure for almost the last 30years. Let's not forget even the robust internet era of the 1990's in the US could not keep the economy going for long.

I understand all investments follow the money trail, but you cannot have isolated islands of economic prosperity and growth in a land of 1.2billion people, not have some kind of equitable balance being maintained without having nasty repercussions. We have seen the former USSR implode and explode over ten years ago, which had similar kind of isolated pockets of growth. Granted India does have a wider base of business, but we have already seen the erosion and extinction of numerous small scale businesses and industries all over India, especially in areas far from these Special Economic Zones - SEZs.

At the time when I was moving to the US in the early '90s, major trans-national consumer (hard and soft goods) corporations were making a beeline to India to capitalize on the spending power of the - emerging Indian middle class. Many of them lost their shirts in the ensuing years and some have barely managed to stay around profitably even after all these years. This despite all the years of boom activity.

There is risk in all activity, however when people lose sight of rationality in understanding and accepting risk, it is politely termed - Irrational Exuberance, or in layman terms - Stupidity!

The Indian stock market has been growing at a double digit rates for the past few years, the real-estate situation is even worse prices are going up in triple digits and the lay people are lapping it up in the name of growth, being led around by organized opportunists - like rats dancing to the tune of the Pied Piper!

My opinions may seem harsh to many, but I have my reasons and will elaborate on them going forward.

Sample of my musings on Linked In - 12

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Call Centre Groups


“ It depends where you are based there are several such associations. If you were to do a Google search and then localize it you may find what you are looking for. You may want to check the following site

http://www.customerservicemanager.com/call-center-associations.htm ”

Sample of my musings on Linked In - 11

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What are the top 3 things that are critical for the success of your projects?


“My top 3 critical requirements for the success of any project - large or small are -

* - Clarity of Vision - CONSTANT FOCUS - through Communication, internal & external.

* - Commitment of Vision - OF ADEQUATE RESOUCES - internal & external.

* - Implementation of Vision, adhering to time-lines otherwise - ORGANIZATIONAL APATHY - sets in.”

Sample of my musings on Linked In - 10

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Google is a leading company on Internet, in the ads market, in video distribution services, mail services, map services, in networks and datacenters. They're everywhere, before everybody, how long do you think the others will survive ?



“Disruptive new offerings that would take peer to peer social networking technology and apply them to the CRM and ecommerce fields, making the marketing and sales of various services on a peer to peer targeted basis. This would eventually lead to greater and more diverse outsourcing of various services / functions by large corporations, as their scale would prevent them from entering this realm. These customized offerings could be monetized or be offered gratis depending on the provider of such services. The above could be achieved by advances in technology - hardware and software, which would come from the creation of the much anticipated and hyped ‘neural net P2P computing grid’ where each peer node would be a server and client simultaneously, thus doing away with the massive data centers that companies like GOOGLE have. Secondly, a lot of information being part of the public domain would be the base on which individual services would be built. Once again making the individual the master of their domain. I’m sure someone will point out privacy and security concerns; however I’m sure supporting technology would be available to filter and scrub the relevant personal information and yet make the information meaningful enough to others for various purposes. That’s my vision of the future…”

Sample of my musings on Linked In - 8

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How would you differentiate between skill, knowledge and competency ?


“Competency = basic / learned capability required gain knowledge and skills.

Knowledge = basic / advanced information required to perform certain functions.

Skills = the dexterity to required to perform those functions.

Expertise = Competency + Knowledge + Skills ”

Sample of my musings on Linked In - 7

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I am looking for Professionals, Managers who are responsible for outsourcing contracts.



“Please provide details on your domains of expertise, a few references of projects currently ongoing or recently completed, billing rates, and average lead times along-with your location in India. Will certainly get back to you if this passes muster with my associates. ”

Sample of my musings on Linked In - 5

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Is everyone at Linked in Single? or am I missing my 'prospects' :-) ?


“Maybe I'm missing something, but the link to your site is password protected...even before you see a web page???? Could that possibly be the cause of your problem...???? I used IE & FF, access issues...preventing even a look see?”