A Polite rejection A candidate who received an offer today tried to get his offer raised by disclosing his offered salary package from another offer as a bargaining point.
The client promptly stalled the negotiation process saying the already offered package was the best he can expect. Take it or leave it.
How would you handle such a situation. the Job market is abuzz. And pretty soon you might end up with a offer from one company with a few more interviews in the final stages.How do you handle the situation where in the employer of your choice hands you an offer which is much less than your highest offer.
My advice would be to stay away from this playoff – just send a polite rejection letter – expressing inability to take up the offer.
Offcourse you can choose not take up this advice, but , the chances are that in your eagerness to playoff – even if you manage a better offer – you might have ruffled quite a few feathers. Which is an avoidable situation to be in while starting on a new job.
Yesterday I was watching a video of a talk given by Harsha Bhogle in IIMA a few years ago. Wonderful talk, longish, but worth the time. Here is the complete video Part1 , Part2 .
He mentioned that Indians are big on glorifying Talent. And he was primarily talking about the Indian cricketers. Talented stars in India are feted till they get turned into arrogant Divas who make big dollars but no runs. ( He didnt say all this – it was my addition, its my blog yaar – come on)
Harsha went on to add that Talent or ability is useless. And he explains the reason , why it is useless. With Talent you to get an entry. So, you are talented and have got an entry into a club where everyone else is equally talented. What next ?
Can you survive on your talent / natural abilities alone.How far will your talent take you?
We see so many talented players and singers wallowing after one good outing with the bat or one good series or after one big performance. It gets into the head. Talent is useless if you cannot apply it to give value to your sport , your team or your audience.
And, it becomes difficult to apply your talent once arrogance makes its appearance. Its downhill from there.
So what will really help you in the long run? Whether in your career or life in achieving your goals realizing your dreams, or whatever , it has to be your attitude. Your work ethic.
If you have that in place – you have your life made. What ever life hands out to you , You will come out on top of it. You might not be booking your seat on Live television , but you would be clubbed under the heading of “achievers of excellence” by people in your field.
Look over the HorizonI was reading this great post which talks about the importance of taking a distance shot in the scheme of things. I would suggest that you too read that post.
It is so important for Managers and Leaders to be able to see over the horizon. I know that is technically not possible – but that is why you have those satellites and hot air balloons and Awacs to help you with it.
As the post says – from satellite 300 kms up the Leadership team should be able to communicate to its managers whether the course they are on will take them where they need to be.
The same works to your career also. Except that you are the CEO, manager and the office hand all rolled into one as far as your career is concerned.
Every once in a while you need to put on your CEO hat ( sounds familiar?) and take a view of your career path from a 300 kms up And picture how things are 1000 kms away because thats how far your Career Goals need to be. And you need to take an unbiased view as to the course you are on – is it taking you in the right direction.
Its so easy to get carried away in the activities of the day , being busy and content. If you are Not taking this effort to look over the horizon – the next 5 years , 10 years . You might not realize if your already there , or worst case, if you have been going in an entirely wrong direction.
Some cars are great at curvesSome of the best cars for racing have the lowest power but great handling – they turn the corners perfectly, but, they lack the power to pull ahead in the straights. Works well on some tracks but not so well on others.
Why am I telling you this?
Well, find a track that suits you.
So often we end up fine tuning our weaknesses. Trying to make that one more small improvement so that we can be considered good enough. Instead why not find your strengths and improve upon them, and find a way to compensate for your weakness.
Lets face it You can’t be good at everything. But if you knew reasonably well the things that you are good at then its about time you set about improving those areas. Become the best in that.
This does fly in the face of prevalent opinion about handling weaknesses.But, its worth a try.
To start with you could take up tasks which play up to your strengths. In the short term it might mean job change , career change but once you are on a track where your strengths are aligned to the requirements on the job – well you are on the way to becoming indispensable. And what is more you might enjoy every minute of the work that you do.
Key to the Interview The resume is the first and only thing a prospective employer or a recruiter notices about you. Aside from the fact that you are not that going to be there to explain your achievements , success and failures in your career. The resume is the key , maybe not the key but atleast the handle to the key. No proper handle and the key wont be of any use. Fine I am exaggerating a bit. But, suffice to say that the resume deserves some real attention.
They say A person makes up his mind about the other individual in the first 5-10 seconds of the meeting. It might not be right but thats the way it is. So , imagine if you in person have 5-10 seconds to make a favorable impression – then how much time does a resume have . Not very much. People throw up statistics of 15 to 30 seconds , I would go with that. But let me be honest – I have spent lesser time on some resumes.
So you need to spend time on your resume. I still come across resumes – which appear like govt of India Job Application forms. It goes like – Name, fathers name , Sex , …
We have moved on from that.
This is not to say that your resume is like that. But, the idea is that a good room for improvement exists.
There are many professional resume writers who can do a decent job. But, more than that if you can spend some time thinking about your education and experience , fitting them into a timeline – give it to the recruiters the way they can scan thru it and come to a quick decision favourable to you. that must be your objective.
Resume is not your autobiography – please dont convert it into a mini booklet.
Just try to include details which are relevant and which might get the recruiter interested. You might make some mistakes – get your resume vetted by a friend or by a recruiter – and incorporate the feedback.
A note of caution – if you are getting your resume done by a professional writer – stick to the truth as far as your experience, accomplishments and academics is concerned.
Recently we had an instance wherein a candidate – during an interview with the client bluntly expressed his inability to answer a question about a key experience mentioned in his resume. His resume was very professionally done- but was jazzed up with untruths. We learnt a lesson.
Coming back to my earlier line – resume is the first thing that a recruiter sees about you. So design it in a way that it catches his attention, long enough for him to take up the telephone and give you a call. It just needs to be designed to serve this purpose.
There are many people with very solid experience who just dump all their experience in to the resume. Gives a sloppy appearance. Your prospective employer might form some notions about your non attention to detail. You will be building the odds against yourself by letting that happen.
Time for some BakvasI had a mail from a Professional networking site dumped into my inbox which featured an article about entrepreneurship in India. It went on to ask if entrepreneurship in India was nothing but a hype.
Well that got me thinking about this whole issue of “Entrepreneurs” and I wonder as to who these species are and what’s so special about them. Of late I feel this entire “entreprenership” thing is being bandied about as a fad.
How does it matter if a guy is an entrepreneur or not? Is is he starting a business , is he providing employment to people, is he creating value even if it is for himself? Why split hairs and try to define if such and such – is an entrepreneurial activity or some mundane business activity.
Some days back I was privy to a similar discussion – which voted that – any businessman who was not involved in a New technology activity was to be stripped of the -entrepreneur tag ( words are mine ).
As a Businessman his motive is to make profit and see to it that his organisation survives. If you deprive him of this tag will he be a lesser Businessman.
Is the economic growth that India is generating only the result of the so called entrepreneurs.
But I guess, this is one of those topics which everyone finds intriguing but no consensus has been reached. This article tries to tackle the topic, but accepts defeat.
Keep the people - Informed Of late we have been experiencing the after effects of the problem of Plenty. From time time the industry experiences a sudden boom which translates into more jobs . But, here is the catch, the number of candidates with the necessary skill sets stays the same. so we have a situation where the same candidates gets shunted about for different positions by different recruiters. And the candidate experiences his high of having 3-4 job offers and plenty to choose from. No doubt a wonderful position to be in.
So, for every job taken – 2-3 offers go waste – which means that many jilted clients and recruiters. And you can take it from me – recruiters do not forget easily-the experience of being jilted – so better be prepared – to deal with 3 jilted recruiters awaiting their pound of flesh.
I would not like to go into the pros.cons of this multiple offer phenomenon, but what I would surely like to say is that – don’t loose your head over these multiple offers and start behaving like a film star.
If you have an offer which you are not inclined to take up – keep the concerned parties informed. Don’t just give them hints. Nobody likes to be on the wrong side of unpredictable.
I know an instance wherein one pf my candidates after taking an offer with our Client decided after a couple of weeks to stay back and continue with his existing company.But, he took the trouble of personally meeting our client and informing them the reason why he decided to take such a move. His approach was even appreciated by my client.
Now this is something you don’t come across often. Perhaps, the candidate being in HR did make a difference because – typically I find that people in HR have a more evolved sense of dealing with people. I guess that is why they are in HR.
But guys come on wake up. This is not rocket science. This is basic , fundamental stuff.
All you are expected to do is to keep your would be employer informed. You dont have to go in person. Just pick up your phone and tell them. They might not take it well, that is something you have to face. But, they will respect the fact that you took the effort . And please don’t wait for nth minute to do this. Give them at least 10-15 before your joining day so that they can restart their search.
Hole in the Resume Recently we arranged a round of interviews for 3 candidates and it turned out that 2 out of the 3 guys fell short of client requirements due to gaps in their resume.
Some clients have a very clear and strict policy towards candidates who show gaps between their 12th and graduation degree.
This is one resume malady which troubles many candidates.
Especially so, if the gap is in your academics. Getting through the policy barrier becomes tough. Easier would be to forget that Company and move on to the next best. Very very rare would be the case where the candidate fell seriously ill and took gap in the 12th std. or during Graduation.
Mostly the reasons are more mundane – but difficult to reveal without raising eyebrows.
Now coming to the other more often occurring gaps of a few months to sometimes over a year. This is a very prevalent happening.
Some candidates opt to hide it in the resume and reveal it during interview, explaining the reason for the same. This is more or less acceptable because the interviewer will appreciate the effort to be
frank.
When the gaps in employment are only a few months it can be handled quite easily. Longer duration would need some proper packaging.
Infact best thing to do if you happen to fin yourself in a Gap is get enrolled in some course , job related preferably. At least you could say that you did your best to utilize the time and upgrade your skills. In-fact during the downturn – quite a few leading firms sent the people who were on bench to a sabbatical to do take up a post grad degree.
If they can do it , so can you. And your degree can be a good conversation starter.
So just in case you land yourself in a pretty longish Gap – a diploma or a degree can help you get back on track.
Whatever it is if you have a Gap/Hole in your resume – fairly acceptable ploy would be to
cover it with whatever skills available and discuss the details and the truth when meeting the recruiter or during the tele-call. Don’t let it stay there, hoping it wont be found out. Because , found out, it will be and then, you can see it all going down the drain.
The idea behind not revealing the hole in the resume is – well recruiters hate these holes in time lines.
I am not saying that this doesnt at all happen in modren day offices or that it stopped with Lincoln.But, what I am driving at is “employee engagement” is just a mere step or should we say a different term for treating the employee in a wholesome manner as an independent individual.
with their team members – “employee engagement” would be a given. Just like basic health and work atmosphere are a given in any modern organisation worth the name.
This does sound simple – infact too simple. No doubt about that.
It doesnt happen that way.
“Execution” is a different ball game all-together. We cant expect overnight ordinary souls to fluently execute the “lincolnisque traits”
But, that effectively would be true leadership.Being transparent in your dealing, upfront in your expectations, forgiving in the mistakes, giving enough leeway for the members to deliver.
Not an easy set of attributes for anyone to have. But, not something that cant be picked up by a serious bidder for Leadership.
Engaging the cutouts In our bid to define and precisely quantify using technical nomenclature the role and meaning of a designation we miss out on the complete picture. For instance here is the dictionary meaning for an employee
A person who works for another in return for financial or other compensation.
While we fix a meaning and see through the filters of this definition we miss out on the fact that the employee is also a father , a writer , a traveller , and so much else besides.
This need not come as a surprise , after all, he is a human being , he has to have all these other facets. But in our haste to define his role for organisational purposes we cut out a small part of his-self and fix him into the organisation chart. Then we try to engage this cutout and call it ” employee engagement”.
No wonder “employee engagement” levels in an average organisation of any size works out to 30%. That is, only 30% of the employees are fully engaged. What about the remaining 70%. Well they are happy. They are satisfied.Most of them might do what is expected of them – but nothing more.
Can we complain?
When any “employee” steps into the office he leaves his other facets at the door and takes on the Mask suited to his workplace.
This employee engagement factor has been playing on my mind ever since I read this book – Lincoln on Leadership
Lincoln lived during a time when most HR management concepts of today did’nt exist. People were first and foremost people though they carried tags like General or President. But when they went to office they took their complete persona with them.
Unlike today, where the organisational role has become such a big tag that all the other facets of an employee become secondary or tertiary. the employee moulds himself into his “cutout”.
Though Lincoln had a huge task at hand – he was the president of a nation going through an existential crisis – but to his trusted colleagues – he displayed the usual respect and affection that any two longterm pals might display towards each other. There was no employee engagement happening here – it was just being “natural” or human.
” Contd..
The EHS post 