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September 5 to 11, 2011

Leadership
Stopping the Mid-Career Crisis
Athena Vongalis-Macrow via Harvard Business Review
Organizations need talent more than talent needs them. Mid-career professionals weigh this truism as they consider ways to align their desires with their future career aspirations. These professionals seek new opportunities through career change in order to meet personal goals and to increase the likelihood of advancement, and changing one's career is closely associated with renewed career commitment and job satisfaction. So why are these professionals also likely to experience mid-career transition as mid-career crisis? Leadership intervention — or lack thereof — is to blame. Read the full article here on Harvard Business Review.

Is Unethical Conduct for Business Reasons Generally Acceptable?
Ian Welsh via Tool Box for HR
My guess, from multiple observations and sources, is that unethical conduct for business advantage is not only used, but welcomed. The organizations may have massive policies on “ethics” but they are applied primarily to employees doing unethical things for personal gain. If the employee is caught, he/she may be fired. If the company, in following unethical practices, is not caught and gains something, the executives will feel happy with themselves. They (anyone) talk about “risk taking”, but I don’t think that ignoring ethics or legal requirements is what is meant. Read the full post here on Tool Box for HR.

Top CEOs Spell Out Traits They Look for in Young Leaders
via ET Bureau
What is that one thing CEOs worry about the most? No, we are not talking about business numbers. Creating the next generation of leaders is one of the top concerns for CEOs. "The economy is growing so well, there are so many opportunities. You expect to see more leaders now," says Adil Zainulbhai, managing director - India, McKinsey.
So, what do business leaders look for in the young leaders of tomorrow? Top CEOs of corporate India look for the obvious and not-so-obvious qualities in their young leaders, as an eclectic mix of young leaders from across the companies discovered at an interaction of top 22 ET Young Leaders for 2011 with business leaders in Mumbai on Tuesday. The business leaders included Adil Zainulbhai, Hindustan Unilever CEO Nitin Paranjpe, non-executive vicechairman and former president and CEO of Genpact Pramod Bhasin, Marico chairman and managing director Harsh Mariwala and JP Morgan Chase CEO Kalpana Morparia. Read the full story here on The Economic Times.

Recruitment
The 3 Ways Candidates Get Beheaded Expecting Counter Offers...
Kriss Dunn via HR Capitalist
My friend RJ Morris had a great post up at Fistful of Talent last week related to the deep psychology of the Counter Offer - the moment when you tell your employer you're leaving and they start scrambling to keep you. Here's a taste of RJ's post, you should go read the whole thing: "Wow, Sally…that really catches me by surprise. Look, you’re way too valuable to us to have you leave. You have to know that, right? I mean, we’ve been really busy, so maybe I have not given you the right recognition or been able to bring you up to speed on the conversations we had last month at the leadership retreat. You’re very important to us. We had even talked about expanding your role. You’re that important.
And me, I’m probably moving up in the next 6-12 months, and you’re the lady on the succession plan. Let me talk to the CEO and get you some time on her calendar next week, when she gets back from Asia. I know we can accelerate the raise we had already planned for you, plus another bump when you get promoted into my role. Just hang in there, Sally. Things are right around the corner. Big things. Don’t make any firm decisions yet." Read the full post here on HR Capitalist.

Are You Leaving Job Candidates with a Negative Impression?
Kathy Hagen via ERE.net
Over the past few years there seems to be a change in the candidate experience, and it isn’t a positive one. Let’s forget for a moment the hundreds of applicants who apply for a particular position, with a small percentage of them qualified. The candidate experience is not going to be positive for the unqualified applicants, and that’s okay. If they had taken seriously the minimum qualifications listed on the job posting, they would have realized they didn’t have a chance. Read the full post on ERE.net here.

TCS, Cognizant, Wipro, Thoughtworks, muSigma and others kick-start campus hiring, plan to recruit 2.5L
Rajesh Chandramouli via The Economic Times
Tech titans have kick-started their campus recruitment process. On plans are to recruit nearly 2.5 lakh engineering graduates from across the country's campuses this year. Last year, offers were made to nearly 2 lakh students. Campus recruitment, which usually happens in the last semester, has been advanced to the seventh semester this year. Consequently, tech companies have started visiting campuses in the past few days and have started issuing offer letters.
TCS has issued offer letters to 702 students of Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai, 515 students of Velammal Group of institutions, 500 of Sairam Group of Colleges and 645 of RMK Group of Instuitutions, all in Tamil Nadu. Cognizant has offered jobs to 807 students of Anna University's Guindy campus, Chennai, and 703 to students from PSG College in Coimbatore. Read the full article here on The Economic Times.

At the Work Place
Measuring Employee Turnover Rate: A Bogus Statistic...
Andy Porter via Fistful of Talent
There have been countless articles, posts, and other musings on HR metrics and how, without metrics, HR is doomed to forever be viewed as a second-class business citizen. And through a stroke of re-branding genius HR metrics have been transformed into HR analytics, with a whole technology industry built up to help us HR types sort our analytics out. Admittedly, I've been a little old school when it comes to HR metrics - think traditional baseball statistics (i.e., wins, homeruns, RBIs) to sabermetrics (on base percentage + slugging percentage). In fact, for years now, I've been proudly flaunting our low turnover rate as the only proof needed to prove how successful our people programs have been. Well, recently my thinking was challenged by a colleague, leaving me feeling like I've been peddling the HR statistical equivalent of Dave Kingman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kingman). As it turns out, focusing on turnover rate is like focusing only on homeruns - important, but misleading. Read the full post on Fistful of Talent here.

Afraid to Innovate or Don’t Know How?
Dawn Lennon via Business Fitness
Innovativeness” is one of those performance appraisal categories that often befuddle supervisors and employees. We often don’t know how the term actually applies to us. After all, we’re just doing our jobs. Innovation seems to have more to do with creative work (maybe in marketing) or in science (like in a lab somewhere). Too often we just don’t think of ourselves as being innovative as we go about our daily work. To innovate, though, isn’t as overblown an action as it may sound. It just means “to begin or introduce something new.” Read the full post here on Business Fitness.

The Daily Performance Review
Rachel Emma Silverman via Wall St. Journal's The Juggle
It’s an annual rite of passage that most of us dread, whether we’re managers or mere worker bees: the performance review. For many, annual reviews involve awkward conversations about performance and pay and maybe even some stinging criticism to add to the fun. What’s more, management scholars say that typical performance reviews are actually ineffective in terms of motivating employees and improving performance. Read the full post here on The Wall St. Journal.

HR Trends
Job Seekers Are Getting Tested
Ruth Mantell via The Wall St. Journal
And you thought vandalizing your high school's drama club room wouldn't haunt you in adulthood. As it turns out, your childhood misdeeds, along with whether you care about someone else's bad day and how much you read, may have an impact on how a prospective employer views you. To get a read on applicants, more employers are using pre-hire assessments, which can check personality, cognitive ability and competency, among other areas. About 56% of companies are using some sort of assessment tool as part of the hiring process this year, up from 48% in 2010, according to Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based research firm.Read the full article here on The Wall St. Journal.

Case Study: The Expat Dilemma
Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria, and Kerry Herman via Harvard Business Review
As the senior HR executive in charge of managing overseas assignments, Anton Danois made a point of spending time with Streuvels Chemicals' expatriate employees and their families. But this evening, dinner at the Lobatos's home wasn't going well. Ana Lobato, a Brazilian engineer, had been working at her headquarters assignment in Brussels for more than a year and was doing a great job, but her husband, Oswald, was increasingly unhappy. Right now Oswald was even more than unhappy — he was enraged. He was glaring at Anton, who steeled himself for the remote but real possibility that Oswald would reach across the table and punch him. Read the full case study here on Havard Business Review.

Business Schools Need to Focus on Students’ ‘Doing’ Skills: Srikant Datar, Harvard University Professor
Parag Dave via The Economic Times
The global economic meltdown in 2008 made the world critical of business managers and what they learnt at B-school. Around the time, Harvard University professor Srikant Datar was working on his latest book, Rethinking The MBA: Business Education at a Crossroad. When he completed the book in 2010, corporates were already wondering if they were hiring suitable candidates from B-schools or just bright students.
Datar's book suggests a curriculum review and stresses on 'doing' rather than 'knowing' skills. The book went on to become the base for a national conference on curriculum change organised in July jointly by IIM Ahmedabad and Calcutta. In an interview with ET, Datar says he is now working with B-schools in Asia and Europe for a similar exercise. Read the interview here on The Economic Times.

HR EVENTS
HR@EmployWise Webinar on Travel and Expense
Venue: Your Computer
Date: Thursday 15 September, 2011
Time: 03:00 PM to 03:30 PM IST
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HR@EmployWise Webinar on Learning and Development
Venue: Your Computer
Date: Thursday 22 September, 2011
Time: 03:00 PM to 03:30 PM IST
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HR@EmployWise Webinar on Organizational Design
Venue: Your Computer
Date: Thursday 29 September, 2011
Time: 03:00 PM to 03:30 PM IST
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