|
|
HIRING
As said before, the job market at the top-end has been growing and most companies tend to go through the networking process rather than depending solely on applications. For the wannabe BAE, the best advice is, if you don’t want to be crushed don’t be a shirking violet. And cram, through eLearning if there is no time to go back to school.
Stanchart like many other companies uses headhunters for its senior most echelons and archives and network to fill the mid-manager cadres. Juniors had better read the classifieds.
Corporates looking for quality execs tend in pressing times to rely on the headhunter’s recommendation. “In order to meet recruitment targets they companies benchmark candidates from a shortlist given by headhunters who seem to be key influencers,” feels Shetty. “Sometimes luck not leadership wins the day.” Says another expert, when the bottomline is under pressure many companies will look for quality people who offer not narrow skills but a combination of two or three jobs done by leaner teams.
“Employees are more proactive since they have so much access to data,” agrees Lal. “There are more informed and employers expect them to have a full business case with more propositions.”
In particular, the dearth of top-drawer professionals can also be explained by the increasing number of people opting for the freelance or entrepreneurial route. From the hand-me-down companies of family-owned businesses of the past, professionals are being vigorously wooed by VCs, a fact noted by the Venture Capital Funds Association, based in Ahmedabad, in its report. The Association has a roster of blue chip VCs such as Draper Jurvetsen (the very same that spotted Sabeer Bhatia) and ICICI as its members.
In the fairly recent past, youth was known to leave VCs unmoved, experience much safer. Not any longer. Age no longer carries the premium it once used to and the upstarts are to be found looking down on all they survey, not just as computer nerds or infotech geeks but as veeps of banks, corporate raiders and alpha research consultancies. “The average age of Senior Management is reducing, not only in InfoTech but everywhere. It has nothing to do with age but every thing to do with Skill Sets, Energy and Flexibility,” Tripathi contends. No wonder, then with early demi-god status feeding ambition and independence, there are now consequentially swarms of start-ups led by the young and the restless.
 JOB LOSS, EXITS & ENTREPRNEURS
Demographics aside, job loss is now becoming a threat that execs would rather avert by being proactive or going solo. In the last decade, one statistic revealed that between themselves the Fortune 500 companies had cut back on a quarter of all jobs, or 4.4 million. A trend that is already cutting through India. The good news is that risk having been thrust on the workforce, more people are voluntarily, and some may say, even greedily, becoming employers rather than employees. Shashi Nambiar was one who decided that the challenges of being senior manager in a big pharma company was beginning to wear thin and opened a franchisee of Baskin Robbins in Thane. “If I had to do something, why not work for myself,” he recalls thinking.
McKinsey around that time had identified agriculture and retailing as very lucrative businesses and Nambiar thought he was on the right track with a big brand. “My strengths were PR and marketing.” Three years and a bumpy ride later he concludes that corporates try to “make reality closer to statistics but in retailing it is the other way.” A car for instance does not signify purchasing power. Still, going back is not an option for Nambiar. Entrepreneurship is the only answer.
For freelancer report analyst Madhuri Kumar, outsourcing or `dejobbing’ by companies became her route to salvation when she was convinced that “commuting in Mumbai was a criminal waste of time and energy.” But ideally she would have loved to work in an organisational set-up. “I believe an office environment is very essential for improving work skills as well as interpersonal skills both of which are critical for professional and personal growth.” It’s a compromise that leaves her wistful.
“It took me some time to realize the consequences of staying off mainstream journalism - losing touch with happenings and people; not being able to network very easily. Also, I missed the recognition that an association with a good publication brings.” Still, income has gone up by 20 percent apart from savings on travel. For her, it is still a job that she is doing, a reasonably satisfying one. “I do not feel I am pursuing a career of my choice and I am missing out on some good opportunities. I would have preferred a research job (equity or economic) to merely editing research reports. But the work itself helps be stay in touch with what's happening in business and industry and that helps.”
If there was one person who took the all text-book Net path to entrepreneurship, it was Venkateshwara Das. Blue-chip graduate from IIM-A and blue-chip employee with foreign banks, he hit ground reality when the MNC employers closed shop a couple of years ago. It was a sobering, bitter experience. None of the golden credentials seemed to help. When the offer for a partnership in business website came, Das was more than ready. A successful launch later, he rolls up his sleeves and smiles when asked if he will return to a regular job. “Not really, No. Actually, not at all.” Now, the patient wait for the big fish to tie up with this Net success story.
Industry watchers explain the rise of the entrepreneurs. “The opportunity window has increased and time horizons have decreased, to such an extent that most jobs do not probably cater to all of it and satisfy a skilled risk taker. “However, excellent corporate career opportunities have also increased. It is now possible to phantom market cap, venture cap, services business, low set-up time etc. Hence the higher percentage of capable guys moving on to being on their own,” says Tripathi of Infrasoft.
“We are all inexorably heading towards a world which consists of "Corporations of One," Mirchandani says succinctly. If the US has 500 cable TV channels, 50 brands of cereal, and 5 career and/or lifestyle partnering options. “Therefore, one is able to craft out their unique personal existence space quite effectively, and essentially get islanded. This will take a longer time to impact us at a similar scale in India, but it will happen eventually.” A double-edged fantasy if anything, but a job-fuelling one it would seem.
All things considered, technology-compelled changes will propel entrepreneurship. “It will grow exponentially as the work units that constitute any given value chain get systematically disaggregated. As this happens, large corporations will dismantle costly organisational structures and seek to outsource the work to people who have the specific expertise and are prepared to do it for less,” predicts Mirchandani. Look what happened to the monolithic advertising agency. “In time, it will decompose into Relationship Management/PR (was: client servicing), CRM, Creative Hot Shops, Independent Media consultancies, all specialist players.”
Meanwhile, at Menlo Park, Cisco and PeopleSoft are thinking of swapping employees. Strategic cooperation or give what it takes? Which brings to mind the tale of a behemoth multinational company which zoomed to 3rd spot from 27th worldwide and had obviously got something right. Then the new CEO takes over and fires a senior manager for sticking to pre-Internet-age hierarchical company rules only to forfeit a multimillion-dollar contract. Think spatial. In times of flat-screen TV and flat organisations, the clear message is don’t be a stickler, be Delphic. For the born-again executive it may be time to reinvent the Wheel. Ask Danny
Hillis.
NANDITA MUKUL
|
The
magic begins! Read all about 
Peeping
Toms! Why do they do it?
FWD:
Jhelo this stuff! 