Archive for December, 2009
Posted on December 23, 2009 by Tahlent Team
What have you been doing lately?
a) Worrying and praying
b) Gossiping about your ex-boss
c) Networking
If you nodded yes to ‘c’ you’re in good company.
Today job seekers are not the only ones who go online to look for jobs. Most employers have savvied up to the online game and directed their recruiters to scour social and professional networks to spot the best and the brightest.
This, clearly, is good news for those people who “while away time” on the Web. These compulsive networkers who cannot stay away from Facebook, SlideShare, Twitter, Scribd, Youtube or blogs for even a minute are ahead of the rest of the pack in the search for their next job.
But really, is effective networking really about spending all your life online? Perhaps not, but the quality of the time you spend does matter.
Social networks have their relative strengths and weaknesses and your success is determined by how smartly you use their features, and ultimately about how you project yourself.
Here are a few tips to get the most out of social networks:
- Separate personal and work accounts by creating unique identities to be used with each set of audiences.
- Tweak your privacy settings to ensure that your work colleagues don’t see what is meant for your friends.
- Divide your team between job sites and building your social media presence.
- Seek out relevant groups or networks and join them.
- Listen to relevant conversations on your groups or communities and participate in them.
- Seek and showcase recommendations from your superiors and colleagues.
- Create an online portfolio of your work. Make digital copies and upload them to SlideShare (presentations), Flickr (images, artwork and photographs), Scribd (works of text for which you own the copyright), YouTube or Vimeo (videos).
- Tahlent’s unique interface allows you to compile a professional profile by mashing up audio, video and presentation formats and integrating feeds from your Flickr images, SlideShare presentations, Youtube videos and blogs.
- As an extra precaution, make sure that you don’t upload any potentially objectionable content even in your non-work identities.
Soon enough, your presence will be felt.
Tags: Careers, employability, employers, facebook, flickr, job sites, networking, recession, resume, slideshare, social media, Tahlent, talent showcase
Posted on December 17, 2009 by Tahlent Team
With faster lifestyles, global workforces and 24/7 schedules, the impact of workplace stress is becoming severe on working professionals across the world.
Today, stress may be caused due to a variety of factors, not just the pressure to perform under severe deadlines. The cause of stress may result from your interaction with superiors and co-workers, personal problems such as troubled marriages or bereavement that spill into your office life, performance and teamwork issues, low self-esteem, fear of job loss, and health issues.
A little stress is actually useful because it fires away the body’s self-defense mechanisms – alertness, high adrenalin levels, etc. However, prolonged stress can do a lot of damage. For people in demanding professions such as travel, sales, hospitality and medicine, as well as self-employed professionals, stress can extract a high toll. To beat stress before it gets you down, you must recognize the early warning signs.
Things may be far worse if you hate your job. Deadlines, bosses and co-workers all become sources of stress.
Here’s how to deal with stress:
- Slow down, take a deep breath and take a good long look at yourself. First, try to identify the root cause of why you are stressed. Is it something that happened at work or at home? Is it something you are not talking about? Is it something that makes you afraid or insecure about your job? Do you feel threatened by a co-worker or a superior? Are you in the right job? Be honest with yourself and try to pin down the problem.
- Understand the boundaries of work and personal life. When you come back home, take your mind off work. Remember, it’s good to be passionate about work, but take care not to over-commit or set unrealistic deadlines. Be realistic of what you can achieve and work towards your goals.
- Take a break every few hours, go for a walk or stand upright at your desk and relax your body.
- Be realistic about the fact that certain things are beyond your control. Tell yourself that it is important to be calm and in control of your emotions and reactions, not external situations. Think before reacting.
- Overcome escapism and avoidance. Rather than avoid a situation, brace yourself to tackle it. For instance, “presentation stress” is a common cause for concern because many of us are nervous about speaking before large audience. While some are gifted at it, most are not. To overcome this mental block, rehearse your presentation before a mirror. Get help from your co-workers or friends and do a dry run. Get feedback, incorporate it and improve your presentation.
- Exercise. Stress is aggravated by a sedentary lifestyle. Exercise not only helps you burn away calories but also works off the tension and induces sound sleep. Yoga and aerobics are great to beat stress. If you feel you don’t have the time to learn anything new, just take a walk.
- Be open about your stress and speak to your manager about it. While doing so, maintain your dignity and make it clear that you are requesting his or her understanding, not a favor or a reprieve.
- Many employers offer counseling services and helplines, which you must use if your self-help efforts do not seem to work.
- If you continue to be stressed, speak to your friends or consult a doctor or a counselor.
- If all the above measures do not deliver satisfactory results, consider changing your job and take up a less demanding role.
Tags: healthy workplace, job stress, managing stress, positive attitude, reducing stress, Workplace stress
Posted on December 11, 2009 by Tahlent Team
We have all read success stories of bright young people who came up the hard way, studying under street lamps or tutoring the neighbor’s kids in their spare time to pay for their education. In the digital age, they could tap into something more interesting and infinitely more rewarding.
Meet the homework specialist, the latest player to benefit from outsourcing.
The economic downturn has made many American families rethink the monthly budget and where they put their money. A solid foundation in school, many Americans believe, will secure their future in a competitive global economy. Education, therefore, has taken top priority in many households.
Cashing in on the opportunity, a number of Indian companies have started to offer remote tutoring services to American students with websites offering online tests and quizzes. What better way for American schoolchildren to get higher grades by outsourcing their homework to qualified and competent teachers in India? And what better way for Indian teachers to make some extra income?
However, entrepreneur Krishnan Ganesh, CEO and founder of the Bangalore-based TutorVista, has taken the business to the next level. TutorVista puts American students in touch with teachers in India. Both parties can sit in the comfort of their homes and conduct their business.
According to GlobalPost, for $99 a month, American customers of TutorVista get unlimited coaching in English, math or science from tutors based in India. Note that similar personalized services in the United States can cost up to $40 an hour. On an average day, the site serves about 3,500 students.
For teachers, it is a great work-from-home model. Ganesh says that TutorVista has added 1,500 teachers to its rolls over the last month. These include fresh graduates, retired professionals and stay-at-home mothers. The service also attracts qualified professionals based in smaller towns and cities and gives them access to job opportunities that are unavailable locally.
Tags: education, education sector, employment, employment opportunities, fresh graduates, India, Jobs, market, Outsourcing, retired professionals, small towns, students, teaching, tier 2 cities, tuition, tutors, work from home
Posted on December 7, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Nearly everyone carries a notepad into a meeting. Some people make detailed minutes of every meeting while others delegate subordinates to do the “dirty work”. But really, why is taking notes considered such a bother?
That depends on what you write in your notepad. Some people doodle, others dawdle. Some people hate writing and prefer to type instead. Others have handwritings that are almost impossible to read. And – face it – some people are more organized than others while some others just don’t pay attention at a meeting.
True, things may happen so fast in a meeting with so many people saying different things that it becomes impossible to put it all down on paper. Maybe that’s why some notepad pages are a jumbled mess of words and abstract shapes and figures that make sense only to the note-taker. Sometimes, even the note-taker has trouble understanding his or her notes when he or she re-reads them.
Some people attempt to make things easier for themselves by using voice recorders. However, the flipside of that approach is that listening to the recording and transcribing it is awfully time-consuming. Quite often, a lot is spoken that is quite irrelevant to the purpose of the meeting. Listening for the necessary bits can be a waste of time. Worse, recorders may run out of battery or stop working for other reasons. In such cases, it is always better to back up by taking notes.
A good note-taker does more than just write down minutes. Remember, the goal of every meeting is a successful outcome. Rather than merely jot down what is spoken and discussed, note-takers must make connections, link up views and outline possible solutions to issues and problems that are discussed at the meeting. A structured note-taking approach can be a very useful aid to generate solutions on the fly.
Here are few tips for effective note-taking:
- Go beyond the words and make visual references
- Be creative and think beyond the arrows, bulleted lists and boxes
- Mindmaps are a great idea, because they can help you join the dots between what people are saying
- Columns are also useful to delineate discussion points from action points
- Speech bubbles can be used to highlight and emphasize the points made by speakers and the responses from other participants
- Thought bubbles may be used to indicate your reactions or opinions
- Always note the time and date
- Always capture the context and purpose of the meeting and outline the next steps
Now we come to the hard part – preserving your notes. Seldom do people go right back to their computers and scan images of their notepad pages. Instead, they extract points from their notes into an email or a memo. In the process, a lot of firsthand information that was discussed at the meeting gets lost. And more often than not, the notepads eventually find their way into the shredder or the box meant for recyclables.
So what’s the way out? The good news is that somebody has already thought about it. MightyNotes™ and Evernote are two applications that help you digitize the note-taking process and simplify a lot of tasks associated with making quick and nifty notes.
MightyNotes™ is freeware and has a great intuitive interface that helps you break text into columns and use symbols to make your notes insightful and action-oriented. Evernote, on the other hand, is shareware and helps you integrate snapshots of web pages, clip text and images and pretty much every kind of media into an online notebook.
At the next meeting, volunteer to take notes and make a difference.
Tags: effective meetings, meetings, minutes, note-taking, productivity, symbol lexicon, taking notes, words
Posted on December 1, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Location: Pune
Vacancy: Management/Executive Trainee, Australia-headquartered multinational
Experience: 0 – 1 year
More info
Location: Mumbai
Vacancy: Junior Content & Communications Specialist
Experience: 0 – 3 years
More info
Location: Bangalore
Vacancy: Supply Chain Management (SCM) Associate
Experience: 0 – 1 year
More info
Location: Chennai
Vacancy: Project Delivery Executive
Experience: 0 – 1 year
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Location: Chennai
Vacancy: Graduate Engineering Trainee, telecom company
Experience: 0 – 1 year
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Location: Bangalore
Vacancy: HR executive
Experience: 0 – 1 year
More info
Location: Ahmedabad
Vacancy: Customer Care Executives
Experience: 0 – 5 years
More info
IMPORTANT NOTE: These listings are compiled from third-party sources. Tahlent does not accept responsibility for the validity, reliability or accuracy of the openings posted, or of the employers named here. Job-seekers are advised to be cautious and verify the information thoroughly before applying.
Tags: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, freshers, job openings, Jobs, Mumbai, new jobs, position vacant, positions, Pune, vacancies
