Monthly Archive for July, 2003

Published
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Gagan Kaul
on July 3, 2003
in General
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Multiple Interviews for One Job: The present-day scenario.

csmonitor.com published an article on the 12-step job interview. There was a time when the recruiter took 20 minutes to size you up and skim your résumé before leaping to his feet and barking, ‘Kid, I like the cut of your jib. Welcome aboard!’. It makes an interesting reading.

But today, with employers comfortably ensconced in the labor-market driver’s seat, hiring decisions based on instinct are practically unheard of. Indeed, it’s not at all unusual these days for a candidate to be grilled by six, eight, or even a dozen interviewers on various rungs of the corporate ladder as part of the overall screening process, say human-resources executives, headhunters, and other experts in modern hiring practices

“Many companies have made bad hires; now it’s their market, and they’re determined to find the people they want,” explains Marie Raperto of the Cantor Concern, a New York City recruiting firm. “Even someone seeking a mid-level job has to be prepared to go through six or seven interviews,” she adds. “It’s endless.”

“You can’t even get nine people to agree on where to go for lunch,” he adds. “How can you expect them to agree on a person?” But in an age where companies routinely boast about their teamwork ethos, nonhierarchical cultures, and commitment to “cross-functional” collaboration, it’s easy to see why consensus now plays a major role in hiring. Many companies known for attracting top-flight talent say they believe that gathering a wide variety of perspectives is essential to ensuring that the right person gets the job.

Problems with group hiring arise when junior staffers or peers are given veto power in the final decision, says Bob Woodrum, a partner at executive-recruiting giant Korn/Ferry International. Recounting a recent incident in which a candidate was dismissed by a Fortune 100 client despite having favorably impressed 11 of 12 interviewers, he notes that “everyone has a different agenda,” and that such agendas - whether personal or political - can conflict with the organization’s best interests. “This was a case where 11 people had said, ‘This guy’s a hire.’ But one person said the candidate wasn’t enthusiastic enough, and that was it.”

Read the whole article Here.

Published
by
Gagan Kaul
on July 3, 2003
in General
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Google Prank

Google has played yet another neat prank. Not sure how long this will last though. So, do rush to Google home page, type “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

Read the error message text CAREFULLY !!

Published
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Gagan Kaul
on July 3, 2003
in General
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Origami Boulders

I came across this hilarious site selling Origami Boulders. Origami is a Japanese art of folding paper. What they are selling is wadded up paper or something like that. The amusing part is the sarcastic way. Interesting are the dealings with the post office and banks. The site promises free shipment (though God only knows who would like to order wadded up paper). Its a laughing riot all the way. Check it out. The site title bears the name Origami Boulder Company — Original Origami Gifts!. Check out this excerpt from the site:

“Site is real. You order and you really get origami boulder artwork with special card to display at your home or workplace. Make good unforgettable gift for friends!

You buy wadded paper boulder and keep it. Or send many to your friends as very nice gift that no one ever forget! I include special card with every order that explain work of art. You buy 20, I send you free extra one with special message from me!

Hurry up and order now!

I send you wadded paper with Priority Mail. It is fast with nice free box from Post Office. Post office worker tell me, ‘Don’t take so many free boxes! You must order them online from USPS! Other customers mad when you take them all!’ I laugh and yell, ‘It says free, bureaucrat!! What you expect, dumb dumb?’

Update!!!! Wall Street Journal article on 5/29/02 say that Priority Mail is ripoff and doesn’t arrive faster than First Class mail. This is outrage from post office lazy people. I complain today at post office and they laugh and pretend article isn’t true. Who you believe, slow postman or Wall Street Journal? Now maybe I buy special boxes and send First Class instead of wasting money on Priority Mail. I make most efficient decision for customer benefit.

My friend is graphic designer for big company. She design page for me because FrontPage too hard for wadded paper artist!

I change design and she send email that says, “you’ve ruined my beautiful site!!! :O( what in the hell is up with origami boulder?!?!?!?!”

I tell her, “You designer, not site owner! I change whatever I like. You get paid, didn’t you? Then go away now!!!” Her design have too many pages and Jakob Nielsen say Internet people too lazy to click so I make everything one page.

Published
by
Gagan Kaul
on July 3, 2003
in General
. 0 Comments

Seth Godin

Came across the blog site Seth’s Blog. Seth writes in an iconoclastic manner, complete with tangential thoughts and lateral humor; thus living up to his strature of the ultimate entrepreneur of the year and a marketing guru. I think this blog is going to be added in my everyday-visits site list. Check it out. Its amazing. Herez an article from his site, that he posted:

Naming a business

Greg Harrington writes, “I’ve been thinking quite a bit about a topic lately—how to best name a business—and in looking for some ideas, I’ve reviewed several of your books, but don’t find anything in the way of a thorough treatment of this topic.”

Here’s what I think:
First, the main point: a brand name is a peg that people use to hang all the attributes of your business. The LESS it has to do with your category, the better. If you call yourself International Postal Consultants, there’s a lot less room to hang other attributes. Some names I like? Starbucks. Nike. Apple.

Second, please pick a real english word, or a string of them. Axelon and Altus are bad. Jet Blue, Ambient and Amazon are good.

Third, be sure it’s easy to spell AND pronounce. Prius is a bad name. I can’t tell anyone to buy a Prius because I’m embarrassed I’ll say it wrong.

Fourth, don’t obsess about getting a short web name. If you want to name your venture capital firm Nickel (a great name, imho) then you could have www.NickelVenture.com and that would be fine. The only way this turns into a problem is if the current owner of the URL is a competitor (which won’t happen if you pick a non-obvious name, as I write in #1 above).

If you follow these pieces of advice, you’ll discover that there are literally millions of names available to you (lemonpie, for example, is perfect for a scuba tour company. So are orangepie, melonpie and kiwipie). You will have far fewer trademark hassles. You will have no trouble coming up with a cool name that means nothing and makes it easy for you to hang a good brand upon. And you’ll have fun.

BUT, don’t forget to come up with a great tagline. “lemonpie, the easy way to learn scuba,” for example.

PS a couple more tricks:

1. Use a stock photo CD and find cool pictures that match your name BEFORE you pick the name. If you can find a bunch of $30 images that work with a name, grab the pictures, then the name.

2. Don’t listen to anyone else. All your friends will hate it. GOOD. They would have hated Starbucks too (you want to name your store after something from Moby Dick!??) If your friends like it, run.

Published
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Gagan Kaul
on July 3, 2003
in General
. 0 Comments

Schools of the Future

Ode Magazine’s latest issue sports an article written by the famous Ben Okri on the “Schools of future”. He writes that in the future, centres of learning will teach at least one thing we do not teach today: the art of self-discovery. There is nothing more fundamental in education. We turn out students from our universities who know how to give answers, but not how to ask questions.

A really well written article. I hope we would analyse the shortcomings mentioned there, and strive to improve the educational models we currently have, imbibing new ideas and new paradigms into our present systems.

Published
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Gagan Kaul
on July 3, 2003
in General
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IT Firms Slash Entry Level Salaries

Economic Times reports that though most companies are moving towards performance-linked compensation packages or a variable pay model, industry estimates suggest that entry level salaries have been cut by 20-25% across major companies. Even as this happens, companies are rewarding top performers by increasing their pay. “While companies in the US selectively reduce salaries to fund the bonus pool, companies in India are also following suit,” said a CFO at a leading Indian software company.

Though it is not known whether a 20-25% cut in entry level salaries would be enough to fund bonus reserves and other allowances, sources in top rung companies state that since the measure will be across the board, it would lead to substantial benefits.

The market is looking forward to the first quarter results, beginning with MphasiS. Infosys is slated to announce its results the next day. “All eyes will be on Infosys, which has taken strong measures to further cut costs. These measures, which include cuts in entry level compensation, onsite rationalization of salary-related allowances and a focus to shift work offshore, would reflect in the coming quarters. But the cost-push pressures from offshore salary hikes could be more immediate, when seen together with a weakening dollar and rate declines,” an analyst at Credit Lyonnais Securities said in his report.

Read the full report Here

Published
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Gagan Kaul
on July 2, 2003
in General
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Net Profiling Visitors : The New Marketing Strategy

William Gibson, the author of the award-winning book Neuromancer where ‘cyberspace’ and ‘cyberpunk’ debuted, has come up with a new book. Its called Pattern Recognition. Again the timing of this book could not have been better. Pattern Recognition is about profiling a particular pattern of events or behavioral patterns. How does a person react to a particular situation, or as the latest fad is, how to gain an advertising profile of a person from the material he checks out online. That way he can be shown ads which would interest him.

Various sites are using Net Profiling and Pattern Recognition techniques to know what their website visitors are reading and seeing. NYTimes published an interesting article on Net Profiling. Here is a brief excerpt:

Visitors to The Wall Street Journal Online today will become the latest lab rats of online advertising, as the Web site starts grouping them into classes like “car buffs” and “consumer techies,” all the better to serve them ads for Lexus or NetFlix wherever they may roam on the site

Sending ads based on interests usually requires users to register personal information with the individual Web sites. But the Journal Online is joining a growing group of online publishers in adopting technology that can classify users merely by monitoring where they click.

“It is not the way Web sites should be going because it’s undermining the very nature of the Web,” which offers instant gratification and usefulness, said Jakob Nielsen, a principal at the Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif., which researches user behavior online. With behavior-based ads, he said, “the challenge becomes, how good can we become at finding out what they want and need? If we do that, there’s going to be no need for that disruptive full-screen advertising which says, `We don’t care what you were doing, we’re going to slam you with this thing.’ ” Visitors to various parts of the Journal Online will be placed in one of eight categories — car buffs, consumer techies, engaged investors, health enthusiasts, leisure-minded, mutual-fund aficionados, opinion leaders and travel seekers — or into a custom category designed at a marketer’s request.

The Journal Online becomes the latest Web publisher to pursue behavior-based advertising. Tacoda Systems in New York provides its Audience Management System to clients like CondéNet, part of the Condé Nast division of Advance Publications; Tribune Interactive, a network of newspaper sites owned by the Tribune Company; and USAToday.com, the Web site for USA Today, owned by Gannett. AlmondNet in New York also offers similar services. And The New York Times on the Web, part of The New York Times Company, in March introduced its own version of behavior-based advertising, developed internally.