Hiring the best possible candidate for vacant positions is a crucial part of any interviewer’s job. It requires thorough analysis of every applicant’s experience and competencies aligned with the job description before making the final hiring decision.

However, what is often seen is that applicants having strong references are preferred over the deserving candidates. Other than references, gender, age, religion etc often effects the hiring decision, not realizing these decisions ought to be made in the best interest of the organization and not on anything else. Another bias associated with the interviewers is that they tend to avoid to opt for somebody who is superior (in terms of proficiency) than him/her. Therefore, in order to achieve desirable results, these biases should not come in the way of the recruitment process because they aren’t in the best interest of the organization and is also a violation of the ‘Equal Opportunity Act’.

Kindly contribute your opinions/suggestions on this – how can unfairness in the recruitment phase be eliminated for the purpose of hiring the ‘right person for the right job’?

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Filed under: Corporate Culture, Enterprise Agility, Ethics, Human Resource Management, Requirement Analysis

Peace everyone.

An established ‘dogma’  - If (outsourcing IT) then {Territory= South Asia}.

India undoubtedly stands as the undisputed giant when it comes to IT resource outsourcing. Emerging markets like Pakistan, Bangladesh (and certain middle eastern countries) have yet to come anywhere near its exploits.

While we all know these things, we seldom come across hardcore facts relating to why exactly does such a complex, high qualification requirement industry get outsourced to relatively underdeveloped regions and third world countries.

Here are some stats that we need to see, before getting to our real question:

Pakistan’s IT industry has grown at 40% CAGR during 2001-2007, and it is estimated at $2.8 billion as of last year, with about half of it coming from exports. This pales in comparison to over $5 billion revenue a year reported by India’s Tata Consulting alone(2008).

The revenue per employee for the top Indian IT firms of Wipro, Infosys and TCS ranges between $40,000 and $50,000 per employee per year…about $20 t0 $25 per hour per employee, according to Gartner. The Indian revenue per employee is quite competitive relative to the US firms IBM Global Services, EDS, ans Accenture whose revenue per employee exceeds $150,000 per year, about $75 per hour. In comparison, the average figure of $28000 per employee per year (or $14 an hour) is extremely competitive for Pakistan’s IT industry average. Probably the higher-end firms make more while others make less.

Getting to the question - Does ‘money’ make the ‘IT’ world go round? Is the South Asian IT Industry for real - or is it just a low cost workaround, much like batteries from China - everywhere, but not really there. As of today, are ‘cheapest rates’ all that are left to consider in this once-technological industry?

Statistics from 2008 clearly show that this is so - growth of the Indian IT market, followed by that of Pakistan is a mirror reflection of the same case repeating itself - cheaper rates getting more growth. For you, Is the ‘rate’ really what IT is all about? Distributing points from a total of 10, what would be your scores for QoS(Quality of Service) vs costs?

Mine would be 7/3 , meaning QoS is twice as important (for me) than associated costs. Because, well.. good things dont come cheap.

Have your say people, constructive comments welcome.

Data Sources:

http://southasiainvestor.blogspot.com/2009/10/pakistans-multi-billion-dollar-it.html

http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/is/isi/isiexpt.htm

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Filed under: Global Technology Market, IT/BPO Bundled Services, Outsourcing & Agility, Outsourcing Advice, World Economics, financial crisis

I read some interesting articles this week about Facebook’s privacy settings. Specially an interview with an anonymous Facebook employee:
Here are a few Q & A from it:

Rumpus: You’ve previously mentioned a master password, which you no longer use.

Employee: I’m not sure when exactly it was deprecated, but we did have a master password at one point where you could type in any user’s user ID, and then the password. I’m not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less. It was pretty fantastic.

Rumpus: This was accessible by any Facebook employee?

Employee: Technically, yes. But it was pretty much limited to the original engineers, who were basically the only people who knew about it. It wasn’t as if random people in Human Resources were using this password to log into profiles. It was made and designed for engineering reasons. But it was there, and any employee could find it if they knew where to look.

I should also say that it was only available internally. If I were to log in from a high school or library, I couldn’t use it. You had to be in the Facebook office, using the Facebook ISP.

Rumpus: Do you think Facebook employees ever abused the privilege of having universal access?

Employee: I know it has happened in the past, because at least two people have been fired for it that I know of.

Rumpus: What did they do?

Employee: I know one of them went in and manipulated some other person’s data, changed their religious views or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but he got reported, got found out, got fired.

Do you think its time for a new Social Network to be launched for filling this gap or threat? What are your concerns and suggestions?

Reference:
http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/?full=yes
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/misc/local%20copy/8301-13739_1-9854409-46.html

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Filed under: Business Dynamics, Web 2.0, social networks

Peace, guys.

This is the biggest ‘rumor’ since the iPhone was getting ready to launch in 2007. January 27th, 2010 or so they say, is the day when the world shall see Apple tablets - and i’m not talking about ones with vitamins.

Before we go searching for a price tag, lets get the facts together.

Apple owns P.A. Semi, a microprocessor design firm it paid $278 million in cash for in April of 2008, so using an ARM-based chip of its own design(goodbye atom) might make more sense. Apple might just opt for Light Peak, an optical interconnect technology it suggested Intel create. Intel unveiled Light Peak at its developer forum in San Francisco in September of 2009.

News on Thursday that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office had published an application from Apple that seems to relate to multi-touch screen technology added more grist to the rumor mill. The patent, unearthed by Patently Apple, focuses on capacitive technology, which is particularly useful for multitouch.

The patent is titled “Next Generation Touch Screen for iPhone and MacBook-Tablet.” Last month, Apple tablet watchers began referring to the assumed product as the “iSlate,” based on a report that Apple owns a Web site by that name.

Coming to the question - Do you think this is really gonna happen? If so, would you get yourself one? How do you see this impacting microprocessor/hardware/ software markets over the globe. Is this just another publicity stunt, or will Apple once again change the way we live our lives?

Feedback appreciated.

Source Link: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Connecting-the-Dots-on-the-Apple-Tablet-69055.html

z

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Filed under: Apple, Hardware Innovations, Web 2.0, Web Broswers, Web Browsing, iPhone