The Week That Was in HR recaps HR news and views around the world. You are receiving this because you have visited EmployWise.com and have expressed interests in receiving HR news. EmployWise™ is an award winning HR software delivered on the cloud or the SaaS model. It's easy, affordable, and quick to implement for organizations of any sizes.

February 28 to March 5, 2011

Leadership
Leadership Lessons from India
Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra V. Singh, and Michael Useem via Havard Business Review
Vineet Nayar, CEO of the Indian IT services giant HCL, likes to rock the boat. Asked what he wished his greatest legacy to be in five years, Nayar responded without missing a beat: “That I have destroyed the office of the CEO.” He led the charge that gave rise to the company’s bracing motto, “Employee first, customer second”—an idea that would give many managers hives. And he invited employees to evaluate their bosses and their bosses’ bosses; then he posted his own review on the firm’s intranet for all to see, and urged others to follow his lead.
What’s Nayar up to? Pressed to explain, he told us that he sought enough “transparency” and “empowerment” in the company that “decisions would be made at the points where the decisions should be made”—that is, by employees, where the company meets the client. Ideally, he said, “the organization would be inverted, where the top is accountable to the bottom, and therefore the CEO’s office will become irrelevant.” Read the full post on HRB.org

Life After CEO Joann S. Lublin via WSJ Careers
One evening last May, jobless executive Paul Terlizzi described his deep frustrations about his fruitless search to his wife Sandy as they sat in the spacious living room of their renovated carriage house. The former CEO of Capezio Ballet Makers Inc. had been forced out of the financially-ailing company in March 2009 at age 48. He had led the biggest U.S. maker of dance shoes since 1998. The family-owned concern, founded by his great great uncle, once counted Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire among its customers.
The heart-to-heart with his wife marked the low point in Mr. Terlizzi's long quest to reinvent himself. Read Paul Terlizzi’s story on WSJ Careers here.

How to Extend Your Influence
Dan Rockwell via Leadership Freak

The magnetism of isolation is control and safety. Additionally, isolation may indicate that tasks, problems, and challenges take precedence over people. During isolation coercion usually escalates. You lean more toward authority than relationship. Worse yet, when you focus on completing tasks, solving problems, and overcoming challenges you sink inward into your own circumstances. You cannot influence in isolation. Read the complete post on Leadership Freak. LINK

Recruitment

Cost Savings in Mind, India Inc Banks on Referrals, Internal Job Posting for Recruitment
Via ET Bureau
India Inc is actively practising a vital it lesson learned during the economic slowdown: they don't have to depend on outside agencies for finding the right person for the right job; it can just as well be done in-house or through referrals. The payoffs: A better match, more conversion rates from interview to job offers, better employee loyalty, office camaraderie and above all, cost savings.
Fourth largest IT employer Cognizant Technologies has increased hiring through referrals by 15% in the past three years. Today, referrals constitute a good 40% of Cognizant's lateral hiring. vis-a-vis a 10% of the same level from recruitment firms. Read the full story on Economic Times.

TeamLease -- The Skill Factory
N.S. Ramnath and Nilofer D'Souza via Forbes India
After cracking the temp staffing market, TeamLease’s Manish Sabharwal is focussing on training so he can convert more job seekers into employees. Even five years ago, it was as if the good times would never end. India’s economy was in full blast and its appetite for workers, insatiable. Manish Sabharwal, who spotted the opportunity early on and co-founded TeamLease, a temp staffing company, was right on top of the wave.
During those times, TeamLease was hiring in thousands and still could not keep up with the demand. In early 2007, it had over 67,000 people on its rolls; it was breathing on the neck of Tata Consultancy Services and was all set to overtake the software major to become the country’s largest private employer. Only, Sabharwal’s ambitions were even bigger — nothing short of one million employees.Read the full story on Forbes India.

You’re Asking Me? Did You Check LinkedIn?
Steve Boese via HR Technology Blog
Steve Boese was contacted from recruiters who are not researching candidates properly before they started calling. They’re using almost the same cold calling script, which can save everyone’s time by just checking LinkedIn or doing a little bit more research. Read about Steve’s experiences and what he has to say about it.

At the Work Place

How to Handle the Grapevine in Office
Omkar Sapre via ET Bureau
Grapevine or gossip is unavoidable in the corporate environment. As employees jostle to reach the priced top spot, jealousy, now coupled with social networking, sparks off gossip. Grapevine arises from social communications, so it can be as fickle, mischievous, dynamic and varied as people. Left to itself, a grapevine can inflict as much damage as a raging fire, says Omkar Sapre. Read the full story on ET.

Students Struggle for Words
Diana Middleton via WSJ Career Journal
Alex Stavros, a second-year student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, had been pitching an eco-tourism luxury resort idea to potential investors for months, but wasn't getting any bites. He noticed that investors lost interest after the first few minutes of his presentation, and were slow to reply to emails. So Mr. Stavros enlisted the help of one of Stanford's writing coaches for six weeks to help streamline his pitch. After the instruction, his pitch was whittled down to 64 words from 113, and he dropped three unnecessary bullet points.
"During my consulting career, each slide was a quantitative data dump with numbers and graphs, which I thought proved I had done the work," he says. "Now, my presentations are simpler, but more effective." Read the whole story on Wall St. Journal online.

Should You Hire An Overqualified Candidate?
Amy Gallo via Harvard Business Review
As politicians and economists puzzle over America's jobless recovery, managers who have started to hire again face another problem: how to handle all the overqualified candidates coming through their doors. The prevailing wisdom is to avoid such applicants. But the unprecedented availability of top talent created by this recession and new research on the success of these candidates may be changing that.
Recruiters have traditionally hesitated to place overqualified candidates because of several presumed risks, says Berrin Erdogan, a professor of management at Portland State University and the lead author of a recent study on the subject. "The assumption is that the person will be bored and not motivated, so they will underperform or leave." Read the full post on Harvard Business Review blog.

HR Trends

Employment in Asian Firms is Booming -- But for Locals, not Western Expats
via The Economist
BACK in the days when cushy jobs for foreigners were plentiful in Asia, Western expats used to get called FILTH—“failed in London, trying Hong Kong”. Now, though, they may end up as FISHTAILS—“failed in Shanghai, trying again in London”. This is because employers in Asia, despite strong demand for managers and professionals, increasingly choose to hire locals, not outsiders.
Overall, the jobs outlook is brighter the farther east you go: the latest survey by Manpower, an employment consultancy, found that companies in India, China and Taiwan expect to hire more than firms in other countries during the first half of 2011. Western companies in all sorts of industries are continuing to push into Asia’s high-growth economies. This week, for example, Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, announced a big expansion in China.Read the full story on The Economist

The Four Personas of the Next Generation CIO
R “Ray” Wang via Harvard Business Review
Five years ago, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) were on top of the world. These executives played mission-critical roles in driving multi-million dollar projects that delivered massive change. However, a global recession and the inability of CIOs to deliver on business value have tarnished their status. Today's CIOs are under pressure to deliver on requests for innovation, cost reduction, connectivity, and a growing demand for business intelligence.
Just as previous technology and business shifts have changed the role of the CIO, the new, more consumer-oriented business models of the social revolution will favor a new breed of business and technology leader. These leaders will have to navigate myriad converging and disruptive technologies, align new initiatives to both business value and technology feasibility, and identify strategies to leverage existing investments to fund innovation. Read the full post on Harvard Business Review blog.

Do Dress Codes Live Where You Live?
Susan M. Heathfield via About Human Resources
I recognize that some professions, and perhaps their clients, believe that formal dress projects professionalism and credibility. I am, however, a fan of more comfortable, casual dress codes for work. You can project the credibility and professionalism desired through your integrity, sincerity, attention, and knowledge. You don't need to wear a suit. And, even I, occasionally admit to mixed emotions about dress codes. On the one hand, I want to trust employees and believe that they will make good choices in the attire they choose for work. Read the full post on About.com