Why hiring is paradoxically harder in a downturn

From http://blog.summation.net/

Noise goes up but the quality stays the same

Hiring is always hard.  The hardest thing to do at a company is the recruiting and hiring.  It was really hard when the economy was doing well.  Paradoxically, for certain industries (especially those reliant on innovation such as those in the tech space), it's even harder when times are tough.

That's right ... hiring in tough economic times can actually be much harder than when times are good.   In a downturn, the amount of resumes from C-Players massively increases while the amount of resumes from A-Players probably remains the same. 

Never settle

First, let's assume you've already bought into the "When Good Isn’t Good Enough" philosophy of always trying to hire A-players because they are just so much more productive than B-players (an 'A-Player' by definition is incredibly productive and smart and  has that 'it', that rockstar-esque factor that makes everyone want to work with her).  That means you won’t settle for people who are good but instead hold out for people that are great.

Great people – the A-Players – are a very different breed from the good (B-Players) and mediocre (C-Players).  Great people are more likely to be employed with a company since a great person is often over 3 times as productive as a good person.  Joel Spolsky argues in Smart & Gets Things Done that an A-player is anywhere from 5-10 times as productive. Joel looked at coursework data from a Yale computer science class and found that the fastest students finished their workload as much as ten times faster than the slowest students (average was 3-4 times faster).

Getting serious about your meeting problem

by Seth Godin

Do you have one? Some folks are going to eight hours of meeting a day. At Ford, they used to have meetings to prepare for meetings, just to be sure everyone had their story straight.

If you're serious about solving your meeting problem, getting things done and saving time, try this for one week. If it doesn't work, I'll be happy to give you a full refund.

1. Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?
2. Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of realtime face time.
3. Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out.
4. Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious.
5. If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.
6. Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.
7. The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.
8. Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.
9. If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.

This is all marketing. It's a show, one that lets your team know you're treating meetings differently now.

Three kinds of meetings

by Seth Godin

Meetings are marketing in real time with real people. (A conference is not a meeting. A conference is a chance for a circle of people to interact).

There are only three kinds of classic meetings:

1. Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it's primarily designed to inform.
2. Discussion. This is a meeting where the leader actually wants feedback or direction or connections. You can use this meeting to come up with an action plan, or develop a new idea, for example.
3. Permission. This is a meeting where the other side is supposed to say yes but has the power to say no.

PLEASE don't confuse them. Confused meeting types are the number one source of meeting ennui. One source of confusion is that a meeting starts as one sort of meeting and then magically morphs into another kind. The reason this is frightening is that one side or the other might not realize that's actually occurring. If it does, stop and say, "Thanks for the discussion. Let me state what we've just agreed on and then we can go ahead and approve it, okay?"

While I'm at it, let me remind you that there are two kinds of questions.

1. Questions designed to honestly elicit more information.
2. Questions designed to demonstrate how much you know or your position on an issue and to put the answerer on the defensive.

There's room for both types of questions, particularly in a team preparing for a presentation or a pitch. Again, don't confuse them. I like to be sure that there's time for the first type, then, once everyone acknowledges that they know what's on the table, open it up for the second, more debate-oriented type of question.

When should a startup pull the plug?

from Trakin' the india business buzz by Sriram Vadlamani

Started in 1981 Infosys was on the verge of collapse after 8 years when a joint venture with Kurt Salmon Associates (KSA) has collapsed. The Infosys-KSA joint venture was Infosys’s attempt to break into American market. If Mr. Murthy has accepted that as a failure and moved on, there wouldn’t be any Infosys. Murthy along with his co-founders decided to stay on. The rest is history which everyone is part of.

The story of Infosys is an inspirational one. But, the times have changed since then. The gestation period for a startup has come down drastically. 8 years is not a long time then, but anything more than 3 years is a long time now.

A startup which is 3 years old and doesn’t have a profits or break-even will go down unless its Twitter.

Pulling the plug though looks and sounds fashionable, is really difficult to do. There is a lot of emotional attachment. But, sound logic should overcome that attachment and say these three words - This is it. If you fail, it is not the first time someone has failed. If your startup fails, again this is not the first time a startup has failed. Besides, there is no such thing as a failure until you stop learning from these things. There are always learning’s.

The startups mentioned here have done just that. They have pulled the plug on a specific idea but not on the entrepreneurial spirit.Tripmela.com an online travel deal aggregator went was sold on ebay fro 112,000.

Reason is the aggregator is not cut for Indian markets as there weren’t many hotels offering deals.Rohit Agarwal’s Tech Tribe a networking startup which received VC funding shut shop after 3 years of operations. Reason again is the changing business conditions and bigger players with more capital at their disposal. Rohit moved onto to online education space.

Kesava Reddy’s MyDuniya offers  email-via-SMS service. The concentration on individual users instead of corporates did not work very well and instead found a new start-up called Numo Solutions. It offers customized SMS solutions for corporate’s.Bookeazy.com a movie ticketing service was doing good but the founders pulled the plug on it as it is taking too much of their time. They came up with Lipikaar a translation and transliteration product.

In all these startups there is a trend :

1. You pull the plug, Accept failure and go into oblivion or a day job.
2. You pull the plug on this idea, go on to a different idea and succeed. It is statistically proven that entrepreneurs get second time lucky.
3. You start something up, you start something else along with it, work on them in parallel and then you decide to pull the plug on one of the things which isn’t working.

The first option does not seem likely as I believe in this saying - Once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur.

I still have some questions left. What if a startup stays on the course to become the next Infosys? Should a startup have a  contingency plan or an exit strategy?  When do you think startups should pull the plug?

Microsoft shows a glimpse at the future of computing and the people who can afford it

Must watch stuff:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/02/microsoft-shows-a-glimpse-at-the-future-of-computing-and-the-peo/

Malaysia bucks the banking trend

Malaysia bucked the trend by showing a continuing demand for banking professionals. Robert Walters related Global Salary Survey 2009, now in its 10th year, also released today, said that banking is still hiring in Malaysia and there is more demand for professionals in shared services and outsourced operations, especially in IT and finance.

The report noted that: “Strong demand remains for sales and business development professionals with specific product, technical or industry knowledge in IT, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and the oil and gas sectors.”

Robert Walters related Global Salary Survey 2009, also released today, stated that: “Another notable trend that has emerged from the economic downturn is the increased demand for contractors, particularly within the banking and IT sectors, where many permanent roles are now offered on a contract basis as employers, unable to increase permanent headcount, look to flexible solutions to fulfill resourcing needs,” the report said.

“Demand for IT contractors increased as organisations utilised flexible headcount on projects whilst waiting for permanent headcount approval. Permanent hires are, however, still being made for business critical projects,” the Global Salary Survey stated.

In IT commerce, as outsourcing becomes more prevalent, employers are looking for mid to senior level IT candidates with experience in vendor, contract and relationship management. IT services and outsourcing providers are expanding, driven by an increasing volume of government contracts.

Source:

http://mis-asia.com/news/articles/jump-in-asia-pacific-demand-for-it-contractors

The Loaded Carriage Analogy

from Personal Growth Map by Haider

One of the main reasons why we don’t make the progress we can make in life is that we expect to acquire all the knowledge and skills possible in any endeavour before we make a move.

Rather than start a business, or a business venture, we want to learn everything there is to learn about the economy, finance, business, marketing, advertising, etc, etc.

etc.

Before we make any changes to what we eat, in order to improve our health, we feel the need to read up on nutrition, proper exercise, supplements, etc.

We want to know how to write the best articles possible before publishing anything that can be seen by a set of eyes other than our own. After all, we don’t want to expose our weaknesses or make any mistakes, and in order to be successful, we need to be known for being the best.

At least, that’s what we say to ourselves.

This approach is like going on a journey and trying to load everything we can possibly need or might find a use for onto our carriage before making a move. We go to great lengths to find the resources we need before we venture out, and continue to pile our belongings for fear that we might leave unprepared.

After finally deciding that we are ready enough to make a move we realize that the carriage is too heavy to pull!

We end up staying where we started, without making any progress and without making any use of the resources we amassed.

If you’ve been collecting books to read about business before getting your feet wet in a business, or trying to perfect a skill - such as writing - before putting it to practical use, then you need to bear this analogy in mind.

Having a loaded carriage isn’t a virtue. It’s what’s holding you back.

You might make much more progress with a backpack than with all the resources you will find on that burdened carriage.

Loading Up a Moving Carriage

Rather than collecting resources before making a move, you can load your carriage along the way.

This helps you determine exactly what you need (and not to burden yourself with heavy resources for hypothetical needs), you will be making progress as soon as possible (and with the little resources you might have now), it exposes you to opportunities you wouldn’t have been exposed to had you remained where you started and you would have developed momentum that allows you to make progress without much effort.

The sole need for the resources we collect is using them for the journey. Therefore, it’s important to focus on the journey and not the resources.

By loading a moving carriage, you will develop the appropriate focus and make the appropriate use of your resources!