The Corporate Crunch

Few days back, I saw a discussion on TV regarding HR management and talent crunch that companies worldwide are facing. And the crisis is truly global, spanning from Ho Chi Minh, to Bulgaria, to Peoria, across Asia, Europe, USA and Latin America. But each company, across sectors, across cultures, across geographies, across demographics identified with one common problem - not enough people who are both able and willing to do the work for the posted pay. Infosys mentor Narayan Murthy’s statement reflects this “Only 2% of the fresh resources that we hire are directly employable”

It was after decades that in 2006 each nation in the world posted a positive GDP growth rate. Money is on the Roll, Markets are happening, Liquidity is on an all time high, Consolidation across sectors is happening......be it Steel, Telecom, Retail, Aviation, Banking....

What's going on here? Globally CAGR has been 5% since 2004. The potential reduction in labor costs via offshoring work to low-wage countries is running out of gas far sooner than many expected. The seemingly inexhaustible pools of cheap labor from China, India, and elsewhere are drying up as demand outstrips the supply of people with the needed skills.

Moreover, the crunch is being aggravated by two factors. China produced everything cheap....so cheap that lack of quality control, violation of human rights and environmental degradation was conveniently neglected. But now, places like India, Vietnam provide almost similar cost benefits with much superior quality, with the added advantages of its democratic setup.

In India, The very clients who cheered the low cost service sector in India are getting victimized by the very growth of this sector. India was never just a nation of English speaking bookworms. The Indian IT-ITES services have scaled into their operations and services, and are moving fast towards better prospects. Value addition in an average Indian is very fast and dynamic. 10 - 15 years from now, Indian homegrown Software firms would be engaged in consulting and high end product development, with expertise in niche areas. Already, low end outsourcing is shifting from India to places like Philippines and South Africa.

Places like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Russia are catching up fast. There is heavy investment in the social sectors of these countries, in primary education and healthcare, in housing and agriculture. This will further generate a large pool of young people. To become globally competitive, companies require exact people with exact skills in exact places....and their inability to do so is primarily leading to this global resource crunch.

I guess thats all for now, but I'll be back soon with a post on companies handling its employees.

QOTD:

“Six out of ten is all it takes to produce an enviable record on Wall Street”.
Peter Lynch

Just another trip to the mall...

This Good Friday turned out to be surprisingly Good for me. Its only now that I truly understand what is meant by Serendipity.

So, we were there, waiting for 50 odd minutes to pass by till the movie show started.
Loitering here and there with my friends, I saw her...in the queue for popcorn. She stood there, surrounded by a bunch of nobody girls. Red top with the nike Swoosh at the front, black jeans - faded, black hair - straight long...And that face, WOW !!! I dont have words to describe it...

It doesn't happen often with me...It was like what "Michael Corleone" felt on seeing "Appolena" when he was hiding in Italy (Godfather I). Yeah,struck by a bolt of lightening. That one person who is so damn beautiful that you become spechless...You forget where you are, who you are...

And without saying a word to anyone, I stepped forward (Guess I was too numb to feel fear) My friends watched in anticipation (After all, how many times do you see a guy actually just start walking towards the girl he has seen 5 minutes before to talk to her). They were all waiting for something aweful and embaressing to happen. Some great masala for them to pick on me for ages to come...

The distance of a few steps felt like miles. Midway through the walk, I regained some of my senses..."Hey, what the hell are you doing?" I asked myself. But by the time I could answer that, my feet had taken me within close proximity to her.
"What the hell", I thought and went straight to her and said "Hi"...

And believe me, this is the most vulnerable part of such a conversation. What followed, will remain close to my heart for the rest of my life. What followed filled me with a new hope, a new energy, something I had never experienced before...After all, theres always a first time for everything...

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There she stood before me
That twinkle in her eye
A tremble went through my knee
And I blurted out a "Hi"

"Hello", she said, a bit surprised
Still putting me at bay
Looked at me, as a possesion prized
Now it was my turn to say

"Are you alone", I asked
Ensuring my manners were mild
"Do you wish I were", she said
laughing like a cute little child

Her friends giggled behind her
But that was OK
Simply too pleased to find her
The whole world was OK

"Which movie are you in for"
I extended the conversation
"I've already got tickets"
She stroked my desperation

Reality came crashing down
The sun would never shine again
How could I re-live that moment
which I may never find again

Then came the sweet shock
Too good to be true
"Can I have your number",she said
My struggle was through

Gave my number, asked for her's
With all nicities thrown
But life's not that generous
I should have known

"You should wait till I call"
Pat came her reply
Pulling back her hair
She waved me godbye

I saw her going back
Into the lift she went
Another wave of her hand
And that was the end

I dont have her name
I dont have her number
Its been a day now
And my hopes have started to slumber

It could be a joke, it could be a lure
Such memories it has brought
But there is one thing for sure
That was the sweetest NO I ever got

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PS: If I ever do actually get a call from her (I'm almost sure it will be to play a prank on me), the story will continue on this blog.

Desperately waiting for that call............

My body - My identity - My life

Played football last Sunday, after such a long long time. Seems like it was an alltogether different era when I was a regular in college. And on sunday, 5 minutes into the game, I was panting...totally breathless. Gasping for breath, there I stood, drenched in sweat, throbbing pain in my thighs and feet,blood rushing to my head....

And during all this time, only one thought pounded my brain....Is this me? The guy who did seven continuous lengths in an Olympic size swimming pool? Who ran 10+ rounds of the upper ground in college without much problem? Who played football for 5 continuous hours (After MUQABLA ended, and the floodlights were on for the whole night....It was a dream come true, playing till you grow so tired that you become oblivious to pain) ? Who could play volleyball forever and ever and ever.....

I was on the field hardly for 20 minutes on Sunday...played awfully. Then, depressed, dejected and bereft of feelings, I came back home with an empty head. Then headed straight to the shower. The cool water soothed my aching muscles a bit....

As I stood under the shower, I looked at myself in the mirror. And I didn't like what I saw. My reduced weight was clearly showing on my body. A slight hint of a tummy protruding from my once flat stomach.
And I've shrunk overall, literally. Maybe it doesn't show that much on my face....gets camouflaged by the French Cut I guess.

Have been hearing it from eternity, "Health is Wealth". Its all about the well being of the human body...a wonderful machine created by nature. Never gave it a second thought before. Took it for granted. Well, at least upto last sunday...

I guess it takes one moment. A flash through your mind. One moment to realize that the sense of your own identity is closely linked to the condition of your body. And the effect of health on the psyche of an individual is profound.
My body - My identity - My life.

I feel that I lived that moment last Sunday. Its been 5 days since, and still each paining muscle and each thought seems so real. I can still feel the despair and the pain. The whole thing has constantly lingered at the back of my mind. The shock keeps on growing. I am angry with myself for letting this happen. I am very angry. Just because I have a completely different life now doesn't give me an excuse to ruin myself.
After all, its my body, my identity, my life.

This will not last. I won't let it last........

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life"
(A line delivered by Kevin Spacey in 'American Beauty')

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Is it enough

Is it enough
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Is it enough to survive
In order to be just alive
What meaning does life have
When painful memories thrive

I once had dreams
And I was not afraid
The boy within screams
How did those dreams fade

Trudging across the endless mire
If only I rekindle that fire
Stop dreaming my funeral pyre
Somehow try to relive my desire

The truth always stares you in the face
Only a rat wins a rat race
Your dreams exist for you to chase
Dont leave this world, without leaving a trace

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QOTD :

"Me? I'm dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest"?

A dialogue from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

The Tico fisherman and the Wall Street Analyst

The whole point of success of SMEs...as they plunge into the Stock Market....this story makes you laugh at the simplicity of the whole issue, and cringe at the same time, coz maybe somewhere down the line, its not that easy. How to create that personal balance between time for your success in the external world and time for your inner peace.

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The Tico fisherman and the Wall Street Analyst



An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Costa Rican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin Tuna.

The American complimented the Costa Rican Tico on the quality of fish and asked him how long it took for him to catch the fish.

The Tico replied " only a little while ". The American then asked why he did'nt stay out longer and catch more fish. The Tico said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.

The American then asked, "Then what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Tico fisherman said "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor."

The American scoffed "I am a Wall Street executive and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat and a web presence. A scalable go-forward plan would provide capital for several new boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would directly sell to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to San Jose, Costa Rica, Los Angeles and eventually to New York City, where you would outsourse tasks to third party clients to help you run your expanding enterprise in a vertical market."

The Tico fisherman asked "But senor, how long will this all take?"

To which The American replied "15 - 20 years"

"But what then, senor?"

The American laughed and said "That's the best part. When the time is right, you will announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You'll make millions"

"Millions, senor.....then what ?"

The American said "Then you'll retire, move to a small coastal fishing village where you can sleep late, fish a little, play with your children, take siesta with your wife , stroll into the village each evening where you'll sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

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QUOTE OF THE DAY :

"For the lack of a better word, GREED is Good."
(A dialogue delivered by Michael Douglas in the movie THE WALL STREET)

The Shepherd and the consultant

A hilarious story, depicting the mire that consultants put corporates into......Njoy !!!

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The Shepherd and the consultant

A Shepherd is herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand new Jeep Cherokee advances out of a dust cloud towards him.The driver, a young man in brownie suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and a YSL tie leans out of a window and asks:
"If I can tell you how many sheep do you have exactly in your flock, will you give one to me ?"

The Shepherd looks at the yuppie, then at his peacefully grazing flock and answers "sure".

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his notebook, connects it to a cellphone,surfs a NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS Satellite navigation system, scans the area, opens up the database and some 60 Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas.Finally, he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech miniaturized printer, turns around to the Shepherd and says "You have exactly 1586 sheep"

"That is correct.As agreed, you can take one of the sheep" says the Shepherd.

He watches the young man make a selection and bundle it into his Cherokee.Then he says "If I tell you what exactly your business is will you give my sheep back?"

"OK, why not" answers the young man.

"You're a consultant" says the Shepherd

"That's correct" says the yuppie."How did you know that?"

"Easy" answers the Shepherd. "You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to be paid for an answer to a question I already know the solution to. And you don't know anything about my business because you took my dog"

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QUOTE OF THE DAY :

It is difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame.
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins.

Orkut.....Google's dark Horse

I'm glad that I had a stormy session on Orkut with my collegues prior to lunch, which made me skip lunch and browse the net for checking the facts on Orkut ( I'm hungry like anything )....those facts intertwined with the fruits of our discussion are written below...didn't get much of it, but so far so good.

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A WORD ABOUT THE CREATOR :

Orkut Büyükkökten is a Turkish software engineer who developed the social
networking service called Orkut while working at Google. He developed Orkut as an independent project while working at Google, the outgrowth of a company policy whereby engineers can spend 20% of their time working on personal interests.

While previously working for Affinity Engines, he had developed a similar system, InCircle, intended for use by university alumni groups. In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Büyükkökten and Google based Orkut on inCircle code. The allegation is based on the presence of 9 identical bugs in Orkut that also exist in InCircle.
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As most of us know,Orkut is Google’s entry in the crowded “social networking” field. Orkut seems to be relying on the combination of the powerful Google brand combined with an invitation-only policy to create interest in a service that otherwise would be regarded as late to the game.

PECULIAR DISTRIBUTION OF USERS

The Orkut community has been watching a large surge of users:
Brazilian users (despite the overall percentage of Brazilian users decreasing)
This is the highest percentage of anysingle country's population using the service. According to the New York Times it's pronounced "or-KOO-chee". The number of Brazilian Orkut users is just under60% of the total users, followed by The United States and India, with about 12% and 15.9% respectively (As of December 12th, 2006)
Orkut is specially popular among teenagers and people in their 20s

COMPETITORS

In all the discussion of Orkut I've been involved so far, most folks are busy comparing Orkut to every other social networking web site around, typically mention Friendster ("it's so much faster!"), or the latest "Fropper", but such sites are a dime a dozen these days.

Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook are few other prominent social networking online services.

But Orkut might just prove to be the the answer to a vital chink in Google's armour.Sounds prepostorous, does'nt it ? I mean, who'll be nuts enough to think that Google can have a chink in its armour....well, even I was shocked to know, but its sure good enough to believe.

So,what problems might Orkut solve that Google would otherwise find significantly more challenging? The answer is :
Its user database.

There are numerous complex models available in the market to track down categories of internet users and subsequently use this data for better advertising.Several big Internet players have had these models in place for quite some time now, and subsequently generatwed huge databases.But Google has no such thing yet, and Orkut may just provide GooGle with that key leverage-
USERS.....Orkut's USERS

Now, anyone will say "Google has millions of users!" . True, but here lies the catch... How much do they really know about those users? Do they really have a user database from which they can mine interesting data? If they have one, it must pale in comparison to what Yahoo, AOL, and MSN have.

The traditional way to solve this problem : Apply a particular configuration of DBMS Models. Then try to convince users to start "registering" for Google. And wait for the DataBase to generate....and let valuable time pass by........

Now, the Google way to solve this problem : Why not piggyback on one of the most viral fads going around: a social network application? And, for added effect, make it an invite only system so that you feel special once you're invited.

Just think about it for a few minutes. Anyone who has been through the Orkut registration process, knows that it attempts to collect a ton of data about you. The kind of demographic data that marketing folks drool over. And right now there are lots of folks dying to get that special invite and begin the sign-up process.

Now to understand the importance of this user data, look at Orkut's Geographic user distribution across the world.
Brazil = latin America's Fastest growing economy - 60% users
India = One of the world's Fastest growing economy - 16% users
America - Economy with one of the highest Purchase Power Parity (PPP) - 12%

FAST FORWARD FUTURE

Google internationalizes Orkut and lets it run to the point that it has millions of users registered and active. That's not an unreasonable thing to expect. Then, one day down the road, they quietly decide to "better integrate" Orkut with Google and start redirecting all Orkut requests to orkut.google.com.

Bingo!

Suddenly they're able to set a *.google.com cookie that contains a bit of identifying data (such as your Orkut id) and that would greatly enhance their ability to mine useful and profitable data from the combination of your profile and daily searches.

The big online players already do this sort of thing to some degree or another. But Google's lack of intimate knowledge of their users is surely holding them back from doing some of the things they'd love to do. Maybe it's just a matter of time before they try to get "real" users signed up.

However, the other side of the coin is not so good....like all the other social networking services, Orkut has been designed to promote a set of pre-determined behaviors instead of enabling users to do what is most interesting and useful to them. Consequently, Orkut seems too inflexible to succeed as intended by Google as of now.

In its current form, Orkut is plagued with a broken relationship model, a too-strong focus on dating, a problematic interface, and features that seem to be barely considered. Orkut must correct these faults if it wants to become the first social networking service with staying power.

A long term serious hurdle is Orkut's user agreement. It states

“By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.”

Individuals who are aware of these terms are unlikely to contribute anything of substantial value to their profiles or to community forums. Artists, writers, and creative people of all kinds—sought-after members of any social network, online and off—will especially be inclined to use other services with friendlier terms. This will keep Orkut as a leisure service, as a mere fashion among people rather than pushing it to the next orbit where serious forums will be formed and professional endevours will be undertaken on this forum.

This can prove to be the major hurdle, as the world is racing towards an e-society.

THE REMEDY

Orkut can learn from its rivals.The friendly and progressive terms of competitor Flickr are much better:

“We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Flickr service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account.”

Similarly,Rival social network Ryze includes “Want” and “Have” categories in user profiles, but relies on individuals to find them by browsing.

THE UNSEEN ADVANTAGE

Unlike most services, which are focused on promoting a single type of social connection, Orkut has designed a system that will augment all aspects of users’ lives—personal, social, and professional.

Orkut must refocus on building an infrastructure that will enable user-directed “Better Than Reality” connections. Building pre-specified user interactions into a comprehensive service is a waste of time.
Building a solid system that will enable users to connect on their own terms would set Orkut apart. Otherwise, users will move to the next social networking application as soon as it is unveiled.

THE GOOGLE FACTOR

Google has, through innovation and excellence, accrued a huge reserve of public goodwill. Its chances to succeed are very high.....but Google has set itself a totally different set of Benchmarks....and it'll take more to push Orkut in that league.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY :

Wealth can be displayed in two ways - either by accumulation, or by selection.

Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged


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REFERENCES :

www.wikipedia.org
www.digital-web.com
Rebecca Blood
Jeremy Zawodny