The smell of success!

An aspect of India liberalizing and going global is the availability of exotic perfumes at most shopping malls. What was once easily available only to the foreign returned is now very desi.So much so, you get to smell, a Davidoff or a Burberry more often and even more so as the disposal income of Indian's rises.
The perfume area is my favourite at shopping malls. I stalk the place and sample perfumes at random & end up smelling like a fruit punch.
Interestingly, I get to smell perfume more often at the campus too.Students seem to be quite comfortable dousing themselves with fragrance for a class!
Great, but what's the bad news. One is that, your perfume might have been at the cost of a musk rat or civet cat.More importantly, research has indicated that, male interviewers are not very enamoured of folk turning up for an interview smelling of Calvin Klein................while female interviewers are more accepting and like people smelling like roses.
what could be the reason? Apparently male interviewers think that the candidate is trying to manage an impression or indulging in impression management, while females are more accepting.
The next time, you are due for an interview, try to determine the gender of the interviewer or else leave the bottle of perfume alone, that is if you want the job badly and are prepared to play the game.Success does not necessarily result from smelling good!

Interviews & Romance!

Yesterday amidst my HR class, a lively discussion on interviews ensued. I was stressing on the importance of impressing the interviewer on one hand and the ills of impression management on the other.

One can impress an interviewer in many ways, paramount amongst them being ability to cozy up to the interviewer, for the duration of the interview. In this age of hyperbole, people who do not play the game, will lose out and while you do not have to overdo the act of being agreeable during an interview you may be always be pleasant.

I liken an interview to a romance before marriage. Prior to marriage most couples are at their very best, in terms of behavior, dress and are generally exceedingly accommodating. It is post marriage that you get to see the warts and all, but then it is a little late in the day to repent. Job interviews are similar. The candidate is all sugar & honey and very agreeable at the interview. An interviewer who is ill prepared, generally misses vital clues to a potential candidate’s personality or attitude and could rue the selection later. It is quite easy to teach a person a new skill, but to alter his/ her attitude can be a herculean task.

Always listen carefully to the candidate. You can often pick up a word or a phrase in an answer which you can play back to the interviewee. This is one of the ways by which you can get something much more interesting or honest than expected. Interviews are not scripted questions and answers, they are serious professional conversations and hence you need to concentrate.

Getting rid of an unwanted employee can be a traumatic experience to all concerned so it is a good idea to get the right people on board in the first place and retain them. It is always judicious to prepare and research in advance. Whatever questions you wish to ask the respective candidate you must have substantial knowledge on that subject. You don’t need to prepare a list of questions but you must be sure of all that you want to cover in the interview session.

It is also good to remember that smart folk take charge of an interview and have you as an interviewer eating out of their hand. Be polite & firm, regarding the direction that you want an interview to take and do not waffle.

Divorces at home or at work are messy and needless. Much of the misery can be avoided if you interview well and get yourself up to speed in judging people.

Challenge & bliss!

There is a frenetic routine to our lives everyday.

A rush to the office & back home in the evening, and I was surprised to hear my wife say that it's been a year since we have been watching 'Jyoti' on the tube. The serial, in Hindi, is about a lower middle class families, struggle to keep its nose just above water, lead of course by - Jyoti the heroine, as they stagger from one crisis to another.

Jyoti just about governs our evening schedule & I can say that we have been snared by the petite girl (Jyoti), hook, line and sinker.

Not disregarding the fact that the main protagonist is very pretty, should an inane soap, have taken charge of our evenings? It is a just cause for reflection and since taking to academics and supposedly turning cerebral, I do reflect. My now burgeoning knowledge of Organization Behavior also helps, in these reflections.

I have deduced that we watch the inane serial for the very reason- its innaneness! There is great deal of comfort in the the common, the ordinary and the routine. We cherish the comfort zone that commonality creates and its inability to challenge us.

It is said that in Confucian China, you could consider yourself rather unlucky if an elder blessed you with ' May you live in changing times'. Changing times was anathema to the Chinese who as a culture have deep roots in being oriented for the long term.

While being in a comfort zone and being somnolent could prevent hyper tension, it is not what corporates are looking for in an employee and most do check out levels of flexibility and openness to learning either during the interview or as a personality test.

A friend of mine who runs a tiny soft ware firm quizzed me the other day on an issue that he had. He needed an engineer with a good understanding of 'JAVA' and had two potential aspirants, one a steady type with deep understanding of JAVA, while the other having a good understanding, but came across as a flexible guy with wide interests. Whom should he take? I plumbed for the latter. The reason being that when JAVA turns obsolete, and a new language is to be learnt, whom would I fancy ? My friend thought me Quixotic but seems to have gone with my recommendation.

Being ready to take risks and keeping yourself open to learning is a factor that would determine both intrinsic & extrinsic success in a career and is a mark of high achievers.Ability to take up and learn new facets at work is fundamental to progress.The next time you find yourself refusing a challenge, rap yourself on the butt and change course pronto!

If you are a manager then look to create a 'Learning Organization' and challenge old ideas, where enquiry and feedback are inbuilt tenets of work life.If you wondered, why kids learn, at an exponential pace, then you have only to look at their curiosity and ability to challenge themselves at every turn.

As for me......................I'm waiting with bated breath to see how Jyoti puts her mother-in-law in place, come Monday.

Breasting the tape.....

Placement season is around the corner & with news trickling in that corporates may be looking to hire again, the interview is back in business.It is the culmination of their studies for many and in my view the part where a person breasts the tape at the close of a race. You want to do this part very well.

In an imperfect world the interview seems to be the best bet for a person to land a job, so it makes sense to give it your best shot.

The following may be some pointers......

1. Dress appropriately.A business suit is appropriate. If you're a man, wear a tie.For women it is not fashion day, unless of course you are looking for a job in the fashion industry.( being shabby is not being cool and most interviewers would show you the door for being poorly dressed)

2. Shut up. Did I tell you about the time someone came and told me his life story for 45 minutes and then allowed me 10 minutes to explain the job? I think you know how that story ends.

3. Listen. The most useful skill in sales is listening — and in an interview, you're selling yourself. If you say, "I think the best computers in the world are PCs and people who use Macs have more style than substance" after the interviewer mentions his iPhone, you could be left with your opinion and no paycheck.

4. Ask questions. You can avoid the problem above by responding to the question, "Do you think we should scrap all the PCs here and buy Macs?" by saying, "That depends on lots of factors. What would your requirements be?"

5. Show interest. This could also be called "sucking up." When an interviewee doesn't ask me anything about myself, she's not just saying "I've got pride in my accomplishments and don't need to pander to you." She's also showing me that she isn't good at showing interest in other people. Which means she's going to have a hard time politically in the company. And since that's going to reflect badly on me...no job for her.

6. Do your research about the company and the people who are going to interview you.

7. Answer the question you wish they'd asked.
How many times have you left an interview thinking, "I never got a chance to tell them about my achievements.So tell them............( however if your interviewer suffers from low confidence- God help you )

8. Be clear about what the interviewer want's. Do not assume anything.


One way of acing an interview is by correctly answering a very risky question that many interviewers ask and interviewees dance around: “If we hired you, what would you do to help us do ‘X”’. X can be anything from creating a new production process to slicing customer support time in half. This is your chance to show your experience, knowledge of the company, and its competitive challenges.

Most interviewers are not looking for a specific or right answer. They are looking to see how you would approach and solve the problem or the logical procedure you would adopt in getting there or there abouts.

Doesn't it make sense? As a manager you would spend the better part of the day problem solving rather than handing out SODEXHO booklets, unless that us what you are being hired to do.

What if I asked you, how many trees would there be in Bangalore's Lal Bagh ( a huge 600 acre park )?

Take a shot..............and tell me.