During my days working with a software company, I came across many resumes, even from relatively senior candidates, who never bothered to proof-read their resumes.

In majority of cases, resumes have simple typos or are grammatically wrong. However, every now and then a resume contains a mistake that is hard to ignore.

The following infographic, created by folks at career journey,  depicts some real life examples of mistakes people have made in their Resumes / CV’s and they are hilarious, especially the “spelling mistakes” part.

If you do not want to have similar mistakes in your resume, make sure you get your Resume/CV read from a third person. You will be surprised, just how many mistakes are there which you are unable to detect.

I am sure you enjoyed this infographic!

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Microsoft was ranked the Most Attractive Employer to work for in 2012 by Global HR services company Randstad. Microsoft has won this award 2nd year running!

The survey by Randstad was conducted amongst a large audience of 8,500 respondents from over 150 biggest employers in the country, to find India’s most attractive employer brand. The rankings were based on 10 following parameters like Financial health of the company, Good training opportunities, Long-term job security, Opportunities for career advancement, Strong management, Interesting job content, A pleasant and stimulating working environment, Competitive salaries and employee benefits, A good work-life balance and Progressive policies concerning the environment and society (CSR).

So, on what basis do employees find employers attractive? According to the survey Financial Health of the company is the biggest influencing factor – More than 1 in 3 respondents of the survey said that Financial well being of a company was the biggest attractive factor to get employed. It is followed by Long Term job security (15%), career progression opportunities (8%), competitive salary & employee benefits and international career opportunities(8%).

However, the influencing factors change by Gender, Age, education & marital status. The survey clearly shows that men tend to prefer innovative companies that are financially healthy and offer quality
products and services, good training and career prospects, whereas women prefer factors such as easy accessibility, flexible work arrangements, pleasant atmosphere and interesting job content.

There is a greater concern for strong management, values and image, quality products and good work atmosphere among older respondents while the younger workforce looks for technological innovativeness, good training, flexible working arrangements and global career opportunities.

Here are how respondents ranked the Top 3 Indian companies. The results are separated by Gender, Age, Education and Citywise.

If you see, most of the respondents ranked Microsoft as the most attractive company for all the factors except Long Term security, which obviously will go to a Public sector Undertaking company. However, Microsoft was a overwhelming winner in all other factors. Google could be rated as the 2nd most attractive company in India followed by Hewlett Packard.

For me personally it is a bit surprising that Microsoft has been preferred over Google, which is probably far more financially healthy right now and offer great benefits to its employees!

[Read the entire Randstad report pdf]

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If you are an IT professional and in midst of a change of job or an appraisal, this report may be very beneficial for you. ZDNet Asia conducted an online survey between March 2011 and March 2012 to find salary packages of IT professionals from India.

The study findings are based on 508 Indian participants. Of these, 176 of them had less than 5 years of experience in IT industry and 254 had between 5 and 10 years, while 78 had more than 10 years’ worth of experience. Although this is definitely not a very large size, it is enough to draw broad conclusions about the salaries that IT professionals get in India.

So, if you are currently unsure of if your salary is more or less compared to your peers across IT Industry – This should definitely give you a good pointer at where you stand.

Average annual salary by IT skills & Experience (in rupees)

It is clear that if you are less experiences IT professional, Web development is currently the hottest thing. With everything moving on cloud, there is no doubt that web development is only going to grow. While if you are a senior IT professional or a consultant, you stand to earn higher than you peers who have other IT skills.

On the other hand system admin & Operating system jobs are lowest paid in the IT Industry on whole.

Average annual salary job function and industry (in INR)

If you are an IT professional working in IT or Telecom Industry you stand to earn much more than your peers in other Industries. Government, Education & health are the worst paying Industries for an IT professional.

Read the entire survey by ZDNet Asia who also have benchmarks based on various IT Job functions, years of experience & IT skills

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Reaching required targets and goals, fulfilling KPIs, conducting regular appraisals and getting work done from subordinates – are these only yardsticks to gauge a manager’s performance? No. Effective managers are ideal combinations of soft skills and numbers. If you are a manager or in a position where you are leading a team, use these yardsticks to find out whether you are really an effective manager or not.

Do you provide relevant and immediate feedback?

There are essentially two broad categories of employees. One category comprises the star performers and the positive learners who will specifically await feedback from their managers from time to time so that they can act upon the same. The second category comprises the procrastinators and the slackers, who exist to solely clock in their 9 to 5 hours and get their monthly salary. For both types of categories, prompt, well observed and well recorded feedback is essential.

This may not necessarily be the feedback in relation to achieving monthly sales targets or some such. This is kaizen type of feedback – the theory of providing feedback for continuous improvement. And how will this help you deal with your slacking and annoying employees? Effective managers keep their feedback well recorded for such employees so that when it’s time to fire or de-rank them, they have solid reasons and evidences to do so. As you can see, effective managers make relevant and immediate feedback work for them in more ways than one.

Do you allow your subordinates to make reasonable mistakes?

A manager who is arrogant, uptight, feared and inaccessible is not strong, but actually of no use. Effective managers must create a culture where employees can grow by making mistakes, correcting them, thinking about how they could have done something better, brainstorm innovative and creative approaches to problem solving and so on. To be able to handle failure, seek corrective and cooperative measures for other employees’ mistakes and be humble enough to admit their own, are some of the crucial characteristics of an effective manager.

Do you give credit where it is due?

The problem with most managers and senior executives is that they tend to micro manage tasks and take direct reporting to their up-line executives in their own hands. While that is how the managerial hierarchy is supposed to work, managers tend to take more credit for something done well rather than individually passing it on to the group of employees who have actually performed the task. They key is a simple acknowledgement. No employee wants a standing ovation at the annual general meeting or a gold medal for the report they make over 6 months.

A simple email from the manager with a CC to the supervising executives or a message left on the company’s intranet or its internal social media platform will work wonders for strengthening the loyalty, motivation and enthusiasm of subordinates. As a manager, have you tried appreciating your subordinates’ work in public?

Do you create short term winning situations?

As a manager, do you think your employees are really going to bother with a performance appraisal which is a year away? In any case, simply retaining employees or helping them achieve their targets is not the true yardstick of an effective manager. To create employees of good value, you need to train them by creating short term goals that you know are achievable.

These win-win situations could be anything – from letting your subordinates take lead in a negotiation to asking them to respond to a technical query that you are actually supposed to or to create a conflict that you expect them to solve. The rate at which your employees grow under the umbrella you provide them is a crucial yardstick in determining whether you are an effective manager or not.

Do you have a one-on-one relationship with your immediate team?

In SMEs, it may be possible for managers to have a one-on-one relationship with employees or teams that they work with. But in larger organizations, this is understandably not possible. An effective manager will take steps to ensure that there is at least one opportunity where he/she and the subordinate have interacted personally.

This will give the manager a chance to know the employee as a person, what their interests are, what their mindset is, whether or not they are long term types of employees worthy investing time in, do they have specific abilities, so on and so forth. While these are things that you will discover as you go along as a manger, having a personal relationship with your teammates will definitely hold you in good stead at the workplace.

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According to a recent report by consulting giant Mercer, executives in India will be pocketing higher levels of average base pays in 2012 than any other country. While that is something to cheer about, the survey also pointed out that the average base pay for heads of organizations in India which was 8.4% in 2011 will shrink a bit to 8.3% in 2012, followed by China at 6.5%. The survey looks at 201 participating companies in Asia out of which 41 are in India. 63% of participating Indian companies were publicly-traded.

The Mercer survey pointed out a blaring difference in pay structures of the company heads of Indian companies as compared to their counterparts in Asia as only 10% of the average Indian company head’s salary was made up of Long-term incentives. In comparison, 25% of remuneration packages of company heads in other Asian countries comprised Long-term Incentives (LTIs).

Despite the fact that more Indian companies use LTI as a component of executive remuneration, why is the percentage composition of LTI (10%) lower than their other Asian counterparts? Shanthi Naresh, Principal, Human Capital at Mercer, recognizes this and said "Linkage of pay and performance is not as strong in India as other Asian countries". He further explained that the survey highlighted the need for ‘greater transparency in awarding incentives’.

"Fixed pay is still considered the most important and effective pay component in India and constitutes 58% of total remuneration for the head of the organization" states the survey. However, it does not seem to be the case that Indian companies and their HR policies are not aware of using LTIs.

In fact, 72% of Indian companies use LTIs in the remuneration package of executives. In Asia, only 45% do so. No prizes for guessing that stock options are the most favorite and popular, with a whopping 40% of Indian companies using it as their LTI vehicle. The survey also pointed out that none of the companies are expecting to make any changes in their plans pertaining to LTI.

What about Short-term Incentives? Well the survey found that 87% of Indian companies link individual performance measures to Short-term Incentives (STI) as compared to 72% in Asia. The report also talks about companies aligning STIs with the revenue and profit of the organizations, talking about which, about 63% of the Indian companies that were in the survey expected their profits to rise in 2011. This is something to cheer about despite the fact that the economic outlook for India Inc is uncertain at the moment with a lot going on, both from an international and domestic perspective.

So does India Inc have the correct balance of fixed pay, LTIs and STIs in the remuneration packages of heads of companies? Shanthi Naresh sees room for innovation and said "Growth, leadership shortages and high inflation have boosted India’s executive pay in the past years. There exists an evident need for companies to explore innovative ways to manage and reward executive talent."

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Is HR’s role centered around hiring staff? Is it just about arranging training facilities, making background checks, negotiating bonuses and conducting hiring procedures? Gone are the days when HR’s role was limited only to hiring and firing.

India Inc must gear up to the new role of HR in the ever changing, dynamic, competitive Indian corporate and economic scenario. Let’s take a look at the strategies that HR in Indian corporates should adopt.

Connecting with Gen Y

For the longest time, PSUs and other government organizations in India have been reluctant in believing in the power of Gen Y, laying down employee engagement strategies or enabling HR to map out young talent within the company and offer them leadership development. And the results of such behaviors have been obvious. One of HR’s significant roles these days is to ensure that young blood is continuously circulated through the system, they are challenged constantly and are allowed to make mistakes. Judhajit Das, Chief of HR at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co. tells WSJ India that HR needs to hone young talent and train them within the company infrastructure instead of hiring already experienced professionals at market price every time. Whether it is a direct connect with the company’s CEO and senior leaders, guest lectures from industry experts or off site interaction, the HR department can do a lot to harness the power of the youth.

Enabling change

In this day and age, HR professionals should see themselves as change makers and champions of increasing people productivity, not just as the evil devils who hand out pink slips. For instance, corporates like Maruti Suzuki, MakemyTrip.com and Airtel have been conducting and organizing brainstorming sessions to being about innovation as per a TOI report. MakemyTrip.com calls its brainstorming sessions ‘Gold Mine’ meetings because they enable employees to take their blinkers off their yearly targets and spur some innovative solutions for the company.

On the other hand, Bharti Airtel launched Sparkplug, a quarterly forum that enables employees to participate in problem solving sessions or simply discuss any given 10-12 topics. HR teams of companies have to make sure that the wisdom and experience of senior management is set in a context of ideation from across the company board, so that strategies remain real and grounded.

Revolutionizing campus placements

While recruiting and hiring remain an important part of HR’s function, many Indian companies are innovating within the same. TOI reported an interesting method through which organizations are currently revolutionizing campus placements. Giants like Wipro, Mahindra Satyam, Tesco Hindustan Service Centre, Cognizant and MphasiS have decided to deploy their recently graduated employees and senior managers to their respective alma maters as the company’s ‘brand ambassadors’. This has a couple of advantages for recruiters and students alike. While companies can better penetrate into student population to recruit the right talent in competitive markets, students can freely approach these ‘brand ambassadors’ who would assume a mentor-like role. Brand ambassadors would also be able to test students in a transparent way by creating an informal ambience unlike that in an interview held at company headquarters. This would make the campus placement process faster, cheaper and more efficient for recruiters and friendlier for students.

Forming a multi-faceted employee base

A significant challenge for HR professionals these days is to be able to cater to varying job expectations, changing mindsets, evolving job philosophies and a workforce that spans 2-3 generations and socio economic backgrounds, notes Judhajit Das. He further suggests that HR teams must align the company’s existing policies and practices to position itself as a preferred employer for qualified young professionals from all sorts of backgrounds. HR teams needs to cater to and retain employees who bring the experience and insights of their hobbies and other interests such as philanthropy, sports, entrepreneurship, social media, networking, academic backgrounds and so on into their jobs. Gone are the days when remuneration was the only point of interest for a job seeker.

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While making your resume, have you ever experienced the temptation of adding a few extra digits to your previous remuneration package or a few personal skills that any HR person wouldn’t be able to cross check? Well, according to ‘Background Screening Trends of India’ survey from April to June 2011, out of every 1,000 background screenings done in India, 96 were found to have discrepancies. This survey was provided by First Advantage, a global risk mitigation firm illustrated, reported Mint. And most of these discrepancies are found in the areas of a job seeker’s pay, designation and responsibilities, states ET.

"Commonest of all falsifications are showing better past remunerations, showing extended dates of past employment and mentioning fake jobs to cover gaps in employment history. Other falsifications that we have observed are boasting of past achievements, showing better titles and responsibilities handled, omitting earlier jobs to cover up bad employment history, falsifying reasons of leaving the previous jobs."  – N P S Sethi, VP, HR & Administration, Jindal Intellicom  [Source]

While faking details may be extremely lucrative for some, be cautioned that it can land you in a soup, especially if you are applying for mid level or senior positions. HR professionals in India Inc are known to carry out heavy cross checking though references along with hired background checking for screening out fake resumes. Keeping this in mind, here are 5 areas amongst many others that you should never lie about, in your resume.

Salary and Remuneration

Most job seekers lie about salary and bonus packages to apparently be able to better negotiate their future package. For HR, the logic of doing this is extremely fuzzy, considering that there are now stringent policies in place for HR professionals to get in touch with the candidate’s previous employees and cross check the numbers. While salary figures from contemporaries in the same industry are meant to be confidential and competitive, there are ways in ways HR personnel from both sides can engage to discuss a specific case. Make sure that case isn’t you!

Education and skills

Most job applicants in India take advantage of the fact that there is really no easy way to verify education certificates because of the lack of centralized databases in Indian colleges and universities. With a variety of deemed and self financed colleges on the rise, job applicants only get more leeway for faking certificate, fabricating degrees or covering up academic failures. HR carries out manual checks on certificates submitted and this can take a long time. Since many educational documents can be easily faked though technology there days, application procedures often give more emphasis to skill based tests to genuinely asses an applicant, reports WSJ India.

Job profiles

Many applicants tend to think that whatever content they put under skills and job responsibilities doesn’t matter because it is simply meant to make the resume ornamental. Who’s really going to bother to read what tasks you were given in your previous job? Well, the truth is that for junior positions it may or may not matter, but as you climb the corporate hierarchy, every single detail in your resume will come under the scanner. While fabricating such details for smaller positions may or may not be caught, it will immediately give the employer an idea that you can be easily influenced to get something done the wrong way.

Employment tenures and gaps

Shiv Agrawal, CEO of ABC Consultants tells ET that exaggeration and hiding employment gaps are two things that make for 50 to 60 percent of fabricated resumes. Job applicants typically lengthen their employment tenure in a well known company that they might have worked with and freshers fake internships left, right and centre. Job seekers often cover up for a break in between jobs or tweak their graduation dates in order to cover up for a failure. Nipa Modi, Chief Marketing Officer at CRP Technologies India Pvt. tells Wall Street Journal India that this happens a lot in India because gaps between two jobs are not considered normal. While in the West, applicants often mention why they took a break and what they achieved in their time off that enhanced their career.

Designations and titles

If you’re thinking that notching yourself up from a Junior Sales assistant to a Sales Assistant in your resume will hardly catch the attention of an HR professional, you’re grossly mistaken. Companies look at falsifications like this as a slur on their brand value and do not choose to recruit such employees even if they have a fantastic academic background. Today you manipulated a designation, tomorrow you’ll manipulate a profit report. Where does the buck stop?

“Discrepancies in a CV reflect the candidate’s poor value system.” - Nihar Ranjan Ghosh, Senior VP, HR, RPG Retail [Source]

Would you really want to build a career on a poor value system?

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Company structures are attempting to become flatter, leaner and more transparent. No longer can companies afford to wash their hands off by letting junior incumbents ‘mingle’ with senior management by simply holding one annual event of formal address. If organizations want the benefits of efficient leadership to percolate down to their junior most rung, they have to try and devise ways to do so. Here are 5 ways in which companies can reduce the gap between senior management and employees.

Offsite activities and events

Activities beyond the workplace are an easy way to allow juniors to share one on one space with senior management without being intimidated. These are the times when HR plans offsite socialization for employees as permanent fixtures in the annual work calendar. This could be a high tea, a sports event, a special day celebration set up by the company and so on. Simple outings like day trips to resorts that witnessed soaring popularity with the BPO culture are passé now. Companies have woken up to the fact that team building exercises and leadership jargon have no meaning until the employee shares a bond with the company and its people, ET reports. In fact, special HR solution firms are roped in to plan activities with trained facilitators who can drive these lessons home whilst employees are having fun. If not for offsite events, there is no way senior and junior employees panning different cities in larger organizations would ever meet.

“The context that you create during the offsite will speed up work and output the next time you reach out within the firm.” - Devashish Chakravarty, Quetzal Verify, HR Solutions firm

“Activities that bridge the gap between management and employees is not considered as an expense but an investment.” - Vivek Punekar, Chief HR Officer, HCL Infosystems [Source]

Addressing by first name

Calling each other on first name basis is an inherent feature for the corporate world in the West. But in India, corporates and organizations still maintain respectful addresses of Sir and Madam for seniority by position or age. These words of address are inherently hierarchical. Addressing seniors on a first name basis helps in the process of ideation and brings a certain openness in discussions and forums. A layer of intimidation is also removed between the two and a first name address makes the senior management seem much more approachable. A small but effective step like this one can go a long way in reducing the gap between senior management and employees.

Shared participation in CSR

Corporate social responsibility has become a mandatory initiative for almost all major Indian corporate. Unfortunately, CSR initiatives of many Indian companies still functions out of a small CSR department with a handful of employees which in fact falls within the purview of the Corporate Communications department. Letting junior and senior management engage together in CSR initiatives of the company, whether it is strategizing for CSR or doing some hands on grass root level work, would work very well in bridging the gap between the two. Additionally, the organization can get some PR take away from such initiatives where the top brass is seen and heard mingling with juniors.

Increased use of corporate social networking platforms

Corporate social networking platforms such as Yammer, SociatText, Socialcast, Quad, Jive, Connections, Chatter etc. encourage teamwork and best practices, add the spice in company intranets and allow employees to have fun simultaneously, states Pramod Bhasin, Non-Executive Vice chairman, Genpact, reported TOI. These networks facilitate collaboration amongst employees across the board to allow ideation to happen from the bottom up.

This is unlike the traditional top down technique, where the lower rung is only involved in the nitty-gritty of implementation. Let junior incumbents enter the process of familiarization with senior / top management without the involvement of HR through social media where they can share ideas about a new product or service, brainstorm about where the company should hold the next social do or engage in harmless banter about which stocks in the share market are doing well. Companies like Wipro Technologies, Bajaj Auto Finance, Asian Paints and Mahindra & Mahindra amongst a host of others are already using business social software to help employees move beyond their cubicles and reduce the gap between tiers of managements.

Midyear reviews to complement periodic performance appraisals

Companies who follow the system of having yearly appraisals can arrange for periodic reviews to take place on a midyear basis. Appraisals are opportunities when junior employees get to hear feedback straight from their bosses. Midyear reviews can be a bridge between two annual appraisals. For junior employees, these reviews will show a way forward to perform better in the coming annual appraisals. On the other hand, senior employees can get more insights on junior incumbents – Are they getting the resources they need? Are the systems complementing their skills? Are their ideas being heard? After all, it is all about bridging the gap, isn’t it?

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Internal communication is a bridge that connects the management, its policies and philosophy to the employees, and vice versa. If you are a manager or a business owner looking to implement effective internal communication strategies, let’s see what leading Indian companies are upto and how you can implement these tips in your own internal communication strategy.

Developing a system where employees can suggest ideas

Companies are known to implement reward systems where employees can communicate ideas with the management and if their idea is implemented as a business model, they may receive a share of profits or a fixed sum of money. Such systems of internal communication that form a link between the grass root level employee and the tie-suit clad executive are vital to the success of any company or business.

Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo is the woman who has spearheaded the company’s recent growth and strategies. She is also ranked as one of the world’s most powerful woman. Yet, this lady knows the value of being grounded, utilizing effective internal communication systems and keeping in touch with the roots of an organization – its employees. According to ET, sources in the industry believe that she writes to more than 150,000 employees every year to ask for their suggestions, feedback and more.

Use of screensavers, desktop backgrounds and other idle forms of internal communication

One of the basic aims of effective internal communication is to get the management’s message across to the employees. Whether it is a short ticker about a new policy or the management’s Thank You note to their employees for a terrific year’s work, screensavers, desktop wallpapers, calendars, etc can be a very effective tool. For instance, HSBC uses a Desktop Calendar which is a collection of photographs of staff from all over the world!

The best part about this idle and passive form of internal communication is that the management does not need to direct manpower or spend on resources to send messages to employees. Companies and managers can simply direct their IT teams to send messages to staff members via screensavers or desktop backgrounds.

Make internal communication friendly for the masses of the organisation

"What is the level of sophistication and knowledge of the average employee in the company?" is what managers should think of before they draft any form of internal communication or before developing an internal communication strategy.

While companies may be tempted to communicate to their employees their massive growth figures, profitability and other business jargon, the management should understand that the masses are probably more interested in communication that affects them, directly. This may include things like changes to policies that affect all employees directly, critical changes in company rules that employees are expected to follow, important announcements that affect the entire workforce, etc.

Managers must keep this tip in mind before circulating internal communication because the last thing they want is employees coming up to them and asking for clarification on jargon and issues that are not relevant to their day to day functioning.

Virtual conferences

Virtual conferences are a great way to boost internal communication and get each and every staff member of a business on a level playing field. Staff from different offices can interact with each other. This will boost employee morale and create a sense of belongingness to the company. This strategy was picked up by IBM India more than 5 years back when 20,000 employees logged in to a virtual and online conference to brainstorm ideas. The following year, global IBM CEO Sam Palmisano announced that IBM would launch 10 new businesses on which Chandrasekhar Sripada, VP and HR Head IBM India commented,

"That’s the power of communication, or better still, innovative communication."

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