How to work with Recruiters?

Happy International Woman’s Day!

Tomorrow I am travelling to our NYC office for woman empowerment outreach activity.  As we celebrated the international woman’s day yesterday, we have invited few woman immigrants from a non-Profit organization who need help to find a better job.  Being part of the Panel, one main question that all have in their mind is  ‘How to work with Recruiters’

Prepared pointers for them and thought of sharing..... 

Recruiters - There are 3 sets of recruiters

1)      Corporate Recruiter -  If you work  for a bigger company, in your  HR department there will  be associates  your co-workers  hiring for  your  company  -  They  are called Recruiters / Talent  acquisition Group/ Team.

2)      Vendors / Head Hunters - If your company is small  or  in  case if your  recruiters are NOT able  to  meet hiring needs of your company , then  we work with  lateral  recruiters / vendors /Head Hunters.  The company is outsourcing the recruitment duties with these Vendors. These vendors have an agreement with the company, service our hiring needs /demands, and are being paid on a contingency basis.

3)      Retained Search / Executive Search: It is similar to Head Hunters - but they are involved in search of Niche Skills or executive level associates.  These Firms are paid an upfront fee for their service and also get paid based on the joiner confirmations.

The recruiter of your company and the vendor you work with have 1 major difference.  The recruiter is aware of the demands in your company ONLY. However, the vendors you work with have been helping in the hiring process for many different companies, hence have more opportunities for you.

Below are few pointers to  keep  in  mind when working  with  recruiters / head hunters/ Vendors , before you  land in  your  dream job.

1)      Connect Proactively.

Proactively reach out to the recruiters via LinkedIn, who recruit in the field you are looking to get in.

                                       i.            Do  NOT  be afraid to  get connected with  recruiters - They need to  know  that you  exist

                                     ii.            Get connected - through LinkedIn, email send message and share your resume with them and let them know you are interested in the role /position that they have shared/published.

                                   iii.            They are FREE to you.

2)      Know what you are looking for.

When get to work with recruiter/ headhunter, do NOT go open ended, that you are OK with any job.  If you come with a mindset of any job, you will definitely end up getting NO job. You need to be specific enough with all the particulars you are looking into like

         i.                    Job Experience
       ii.           Abilities
     iii.            Qualifications
     iv.            Job Title
       v.            Salary
     vi.            Location
    vii.            Industry

You need to articulate these clearly with the Recruiter, so they understand you  better and match  you  with  demands/role  accordingly.

3)      Perfect the ‘Tell me about yourself’

All recruiter want to know 

   Brief explanation of your  background

       ii.           Skills

     iii.           What you  are able  to  do

     iv.            What type of job fits you next

Most recruiters are NOT technically specialized that you come from, hence do NOT spend a lot of time getting into the details. Be concise and to the point.

4)      Resume / LinkedIn Profile should  be Top Notch

Your profile should be MORE attractive and compelling, so it is easily picked / shortlisted by the recruiter. As you know they hardly take 5 to 10 seconds to review your resume. Either it makes a cut and ends up with the hiring manager, else shelved.

5)      Be Flexible and Open.

When you work with recruiters, they will be calling you when you at your current job too. They want to talk to you about an opportunity or about an interview.  So keep them well informed about your availability so they can call you accordingly.

If the recruiter is NOT talking, do NOT take it personally.  Remember their priority is to work for their client’s demand. If you are the right candidate for their demand, you will receive the call. It is both luck and timing that plays big role here….  Do NOT put lot of pressure on 1 recruiter. You can work with a couple of more recruiters simultaneously

6)      Be HONEST 

 Let the recruiter know how serious you are looking for next job.  If you are just exploring to check the market - let the recruiter know…  You  are only  doing a disservice  to  yourself  and recruiter and wasting  the both  of your time  and the recruiter and yourself by  NOT telling  the truth.   Being dishonest will lose the credibility with anyone that includes recruiters too. Also NO harm oversharing details. If you are working with  more than  1 recruiter - simultaneously – but keep  them  well  informed with  the progress -  Client , status…. Also over communicate with the recruiter…. This helps to create a bond and you can take advantage of it.

7)      ‘Ask questions’ 

This is a critical item in my list.

a.       Why the position is open , how many similar positions are open

b.       How  long  the position is open

c.       What qualities of me, make me a good fit

d.       How many others are interviewing

e.       Talk about  Travel / Benefits / Telecommute

f.        What is the process - Internal evaluation / client evaluation - Proactive hiring / Skip level evaluation - Who is the decision maker? 

g.       How  long is the process -  some have background verification -  small  client close  it by 2 to 3 weeks, but clients like  Google take 2 months. 

h.       How often can I hear from you

i.         One important questions - whether recruiter has any vacation plan, will there be backup and will there be a connect email, connecting you with the backup recruiter.

j.         Last 2 critical  questions

                                                                     i.            I  have some technical  questions, can you  share the POC to  get in  touch  with

                                                                   ii.            Are there any other questions, the other candidates are asking, which I missed.

Hope these pointers help and lands you in the dream job you wanted to be in….

Good Luck!

5 C Success Model

Recently  we hired 15  juniors to our team and had the opportunity  to  meet them  the first day  at  their orientation  session at  Dallas.

Wanted to start my presentation with a ‘Gyan’ or with a good advice - like thought for the day. So shared Indira Nooyi ‘s 5C model for success.  This is applicable to all lifestyles.

5 Cs’

• ·         Competency
• ·         Courage /Confidence
• ·         Communication
• ·         Consistent
• ·         Compass

Competency:  ability to do something successfully and efficiently.

1)    You  should  be known for a particular skill 

2)    For this, one needs to be a lifelong student, equipping oneself with all the required knowledge and become a SME.(Subject Matter Expert) 

3)    Being a life-long student guarantees growth both  professionally & personally

4)    Master your chosen skill and never shy away from knowing more. 

5)    Become the ‘GO TO’ person - which will help you to stand out of the pack.

Courage /Confidence – the ability to do something that frightens one / firm trust.

1)    You can be competent in your role, but you need to build up the courage to speak up.

2)    This will  facilitate a strong decision  making skill

3)    Fellow team members know that  you  have opinion and you are NOT afraid to  voice it out

4)    When you speak out, it establish your knowledge base and confidence, as a leader.

Communication - Sending and receiving information

1)    this skillset is very important 

2)    If you want to be leader and you cannot communicate, forget it you cannot be one. L

3)    In this digital world, everyone thinks that texting and tweeting is effective, but that is NOT true. 

4)    Clear communication, gets across your passion and vision

5)    You  constantly need to  mobilize the team 

6)    Will also facilitate team building and will put you across as a strong leader 

7)    Need to improve all  5 ways of communication

i)              Written -  Email , letters, Social  media

ii)             Oral -  Video Conference , video  chat

iii)            Verbal  -  conversation or story  telling

iv)            Non Verbal -  reading between lines

v)             Physical - Body Languages.

Consistent - acting or done in the same way over time, especially so has to be fair or accurate.

As a leader, you should also be consistent in the way you operate. You can change your mind, but always do it in consistent framework.

If you are NOT consistent, then everyone will be making guesses on your next move, which is NOT right.

For eg… As I am in operation, I am consistent based on Company policy - I  can be flexible where needed , but within the Policy. 

Compass

            Integrity is critical. You can be competent , courageous , consistent , be good  in  communication , but if you lose integrity , if that compass does NOT show ‘ TRUE’ north ,  everything comes crashing down.

Without character, none of the other four steps will matter. Be true to yourself and do not compromise. Point True North! Always be ethical.

    All the Best !

High Performance Team

How many of you had your monthly review with your manager or supervisor?  You would have reviewed your February results and your March targets.📈

In every field, this review is taken care, to check the progress.

This is one of the feature of the high performance Team

There are 5 behaviors an high performing team consistently demonstrate

• ·         Shared Goals
• ·         Align Goals
• ·         Measure Fairly
• ·         Delegate authority
• ·         Recognize Results

Shared Goals. Leaders in the high performance team understand that the

•    individuals  learns
•    individuals  change
•    individuals  produce results 
•    individuals achieve share goals

Therefore, it starts with individual behavior and driving that behavior and including them in establishing shared goals

Moving to team goals and ultimately overall shared goal.              

Team having a shared goal is understanding the individual and then working with the individuals on the team and arriving at shared goals.

Align Goal

As mentioned earlier the team is comprised for individual performers.  Once you have a shared goal for the team, it is essential that we align the goals with the individuals based on each ones

·         Strength

·         Aspiration

These are the things that the individuals does or passionate about.

We need to review this periodically.  As we know our strength and aspiration changes. As we learn more or life style changes or if life situation changes one’s want /aspire changes.

So the leaders of high performance team are constantly reviewing and discussing how the individual apply  their strength and aspiration to  achieve the shared goal.

Measure Fairly

Need to focus on   how the individual can make an impact.  Also has the

·         responsibility 

·         authority 

to impact the measure.

Delegate Authority

They do NOT micromanage. They do not do the job. They don’t tell how to do the job , but do tell  what  to  do. 

Most often leaders or mentor lead through questions. 

The leader of high performance team do NOT give Orders, but they ask questions.

By  doing so they  delegate the authority , lead the individual through  the  discovery  process how they  can impact  the shared goals.

Recognize Results

The leader of the high performing team, do recognize results – team results and individual results.  In addition, how do they do this… both financially and non-financially.

First  of all  communication, frequent communication -  may  be weekly  either  writing email /  orally  in a meeting   recognizing the individual  and how  that had  contributed to  the group/team success.   We need to celebrate the individual.

Pay Performers: Leaders do recognize the star performers and reward or pay them through bonuses, spot award or raises….

Let summarize the 5 behaviors an high performing leaders

·         Shared Goals – team has shared goals  to  contribute towards to

·         Align Goals -  Align the shared goals to  individual based on  their strength and aspirations

·         Measure Fairly -  providing the required  responsibility  and authority

·         Delegate authority - not by micro managing. NOT telling how  but by  telling what  to  do

·         Recognize Results -   reward the high performance individuals by communication and compensation.

Positive atmosphere in high performance team – an overall team culture that is

·         Open

·         Transparent

·         Positive

·         Future-focused

·         Able to deliver success

Note:  Like to set of scale for a high performance team to heaven. When listening to   Suki  Sivam -  he describes  ‘Swargam’ heaven as  "like - minded people  get together and working towards a  common goal"

Had the fortunate opportunity  to  be a team member of the high  performance team led by Arun Varadarajan 2018-2019,  being the Ops person for his Data Practice in CDB-AIA.

Remote Working

How many of you work from home either daily or once a week?

Remote working - It is one of the recent revolution that is going on, all around us, in places that we work. It is also referred to as telecommuting or teleworking - it is nothing but a person doing his official work from home or any remote places.

Yes it is remote working and NOT working remotely😏

I have been telecommuting  for the past 14+ years and just thought of sharing more details  including pros and cons of it. Let me tell you, how I started my remote working….  I just started to do my remote working for medical reasons. When I  conceived my  second baby,  doctors advised less commute  and hassles , hence  worked with  my company  and  got the approval to  work from home.

I  felt  it was blessing in  disguise , in order to  pay it back -   I  worked  more than 100% and made my  boss /employer  happy. This culture continued and still I work from home.  

The ideas behind Remote working is - Talent is border-less and work is border-less.

Not everyone can telecommute. Rather designing our life around work, we are designing our work into our life. Most work from the service sector can be done from anywhere - if you have the right skill and technology.

Let us see who prefers Remote working

1)      We see young people like to Travel and do remote working.

2)      If you want to raise a family and spend more time with the loved ones or take care of any one ill in the family - remote working is the viable solution.  You can work and at the same time be next to the loved ones.

3)      If you are bound by immigration law - remote working is one such solution.  For eg , associate with  US Visa issue , get Canada work  permit and work  for US clients.

4)      If  you  feel  you  have exhausted all  the challenges in the local  market , you  can do  remote work for  challenges from  other countries.

There are 3 layers for remote working

1)      Individual   - how do you make individual workers more attractive as remote workers - so that they are hired.

2)      Company /Organization - how do you make company   great places to work and facilitate remote working.

3)      Government - how can government kick start initiatives and encourage remote working people.

Individual 

Below  6 qualities, makes us good individual remote workers.
1)      Organizational skills - how organized are you.  Are you  someone, who  needs to  chased to  do  a work, are you  a procrastinator -  need to  improve these qualities to be  good remote worker
2)      Communication - how good do you speak to people?  In fact are you bilingual / are you multi-lingual. How effective can you communicate to get the Job well done. Better you communicate, the better you are a remote worker
3)      When  you  telecommute ,you  are more autonomy  and you  set your  own schedule 
4)      You will be lonely - you will not be seeing people for a long time.   Like me - I hardly see coworkers 2 or 3 times a year in offsite / planning discussions.
5)      Visibility  and deliver-ability  - At office we are fine tuned  to be at our  desk  from  9  to  5.  May be we stay in desk after 5 to tell others, we are working hard 🙂.  But with  remote working you  are  totally  invisible -  you are accounted for  the what you  accomplish  that day or that week. Is the project moving fwd? Am I making the number to meet my set target.
6)      How you  navigate working -  getting used to  work  from  anywhere home, airport , hotel  rooms, library, cafe….  The more you are able to navigate around these uncertainty - the more you are a successful remote worker.

See how you can cultivate these qualities and PUSH these qualities, when you interview new work stream, so you push these traits to them.

Company
1)      Hire remote worker, with the qualities we spoke. If not start pilot project work with remote workers.  
2)      You cannot  discriminate anyone  -  that  he or she telecommutes
3)       With telecommuting increasing, what kind of software are being used talk to each other or communicate – WebEx.
4)      Have metrics to check  how  effective are the remote  workers

Government  
We need govt to protect us individual and our company to facilitate this new kind of remote working.
1)      Immigration - mobility is one big issue. If we do NOT allow people to move freely to get better jobs, we are going to  stagnate our economy
2)      What are we giving companies incentive / subsidy to  hire these remote worker
3)      What kind  of training programs available  for these  remote workers.

Advantages 
1)      You  save time on your  commute
2)      Flexible Schedule
3)      Work from anywhere
4)      Quality Time with your  Family
5)      Save 💲 on your wardrobe / gas / after school charges for kids etc and company save on rental space /insurance and the funds saved can be diversified.

Disadvantages
1)      Unplugging from  work
2)      Loneliness
3)      Collaborating & Communicating
4)      Distraction from Home
5)      Stay motivated

To conclude - no other generation has had the freedom to carve out its own lifestyle. Please try  to  revolutionize this remote working culture
1)      Ask your current employer, if it is OK, to  telecommute….
2)      If you  are a recruiter -  check  if you  can hire  the workforce , who  is more interested in  Remote working

This will  help  Talent to  move around , this  will  make the world so much better place in terms of getting the required skills  and  in  terms of jobs that are getting available .

Campus Hiring

How many of your kids went to College this fall…  When we prepared the tracker for college shortlisting we had various metrics – Graduation Rate , Freshman retention , Safety aspect of campus ,  distance from Home , Employment % .  Apart from  considering value for money on the Tuition / boarding  fees for your kids, whether your kid is going to pursue further studies or not, we do capture Employment %. All of us educate our kids, so they can get a job, settle down, and be independent soon.

I am going to brief you on “Campus Hiring”. There are various perspective on this topic - College /University, Students, Parent and Employer.  Let us see how employer consider this.

Campus Recruitment is a commonly used mechanism for selecting junior level associates for organization.

Campus Recruitment - Companies or corporate visit some of the most important technical or professional institutes in an attempt to hire young intelligent and smart students at the source.  In this process, the employers come to the prospective candidates with a job offer.

As your demands has to be filled in quickly and easily - employers come with the short notice and expect high results.

For this Employers need to  create a long  lasting impression on the organization with  all  the colleges and university  you  attend  - This  is  called Branding. This cannot be created in one year.

Strategic Plan is very essential - this has 4 different steps.

1)    Demand Study

2)    Tactical selection of Schools

3)    On Campus Connection

4)    Effective implementation

Demand Study : Based on  demands in  the business unit you  handle, we need to  check  with  your clients where we can place fresher’s in  a billable role.    Gather the details and send it to Campus Recruitment team in your company…. Skillset, domain, location.

Tactical selection of Schools - This means how many schools, do you need to  target  to ?

Maybe for  your demands that  you  have , you  have 4 or 5 schools that  you  can realistically  get  to. We need to focus on them only.

When we try to recruit the undergrad students, we see most of them are pursuing master or PhD degree, hence reducing your target size.

For eg , if you  are approaching a college which  has 500  students -  we know  that 40%  of going for further studies , 50%  of the students are NOT applicable  for  the demands that you  have in  your  organization.  That leave you only 10% of the students.  When you have the career fair for that school, they would have seen 100+ employers….  So you are not the only 1 employer going behind those 10% of Students. 

As we focus on the target, we need to consider a couple of pointers

On Campus Connection:  There are several points of contacts to connect to the students and faculty on the campus.  We need to identify and tap those POCs.

Most of the schools have Career Services on campus. We need to establish a relationship, with them directly. They do NOT like to be left of the equation. As we do that, we also need to capitalize your relationship with the key faculty. The alumni from that school who had joined your organization can help you to establish that relationship with the key faculty. 

Career Fairs is one of the great connection points for on campus recruitment.   In the Career fairs distribute

1)    Clear concise handouts

2)    Man the booths with recent grads from  that school and someone in position

3)    Collect the Student’s resume

4)    Need to carry some giveaways - Brick USB power chargers, Lego Key-chain with Flashlight, smart USB Car charger, Ear Buds / head Phones.

In addition to career fairs, there is one more preferred method to connect to students on campus - we can conduct info sessions. For these info sessions, we need to pick the right club/ association or class to visit. We need to send the right person as the ambassador for your company.  Info sessions, if done correctly will last for 45 minutes to 1 hour followed by Question and Answers.  If the sessions were educational and enlightening to the students, then they would ask questions, to express interest in your company.

Faculty tour is also effective….Faculty tour is another way of connecting with the campus. You invite Faculty to your company and educate more about your organization.

Another way to connect with students is internship.

Effective implementation: Each employer have their own Procedure to absorb the Students into their work force. 

• Written Test, followed by Technical /behavioral Interview
• Written Test, followed by Group discussion and then an interview.

On campus interview are very important. The person conducting this interview, should not only know about the organization, but must be adequately prepared and passionate person.  The Hiring manager or the business unit owner should also be a part of the interview panel.

Few Tips

Start Early - Career Fair season is in hot gear in September, so you plan yours in Jul / August.

Brand Early - Brand your organizations early.

Continued Communication - Make sure the details shared on Campus is Correct and Current through the proper channel.

If you do this right, you become an employer choice at the colleges and university you visit.