Tuesday, December 20, 2011

How Resumes Get Read


Ever heard of the thirty second rule? The one about how long recruiters actually spend reading resumes?

Good recruiters, that is. It takes a lot of practice to accurately read resumes at the speed of a QR code scanner. Note the word “accurately”. It’s one thing to make a brief read of a resume. It’s another thing entirely to achieve a high quality assessment at the speed of light.

New and inexperienced recruiters tend to spend a lot of time trying to knock square pegs into round holes. They waste a lot of time trying to match jobs to candidates instead of candidates to jobs. Tenured recruiters tend to know how to quickly size up a resume. So rather than focusing on those thirty seconds as if it’s a negative thing, let’s dive into what should happen inside those thirty seconds.

Here are some strategies for reading resumes at the speed of light while still catching every qualified candidate that makes their way onto your desk. For job seekers, know that this is the way a lot of recruiters will read your resume – prepare your resume as such!

First ask yourself: Does the candidate live near where you’re recruiting for or have they clearly stated that they want to move to that specific area? If not, you just saved yourself thirty seconds.

Hold the resume at arm’s length: Really. Look at the way the resume is formatted and laid out on the page. Is it five pages long? One? Is it highly stylized? What’s the font tell you? Does it look like someone else, like a professional resume writer, wrote it for them? Compare this first impression to your perception of other qualified candidates in the domain that you’re recruiting. Does it look like other people’s resume or does it look weird? Weird isn’t bad, but it might cause an outside of the box search.

Next, read it backwards: Just figure out where they went to school, if they went to school, and if it looks like they did a good job and value education. It’s important, especially if your company or client organization values education.

Then read their current job: Determine their core industry and what the person did on a day to day basis. Try to ignore job titles. If you’re recruiting for people to process annual reports, does it look like the person regularly processed annual reports? It couldn’t be simpler. But it’s hard. Just get out of the way and ask yourself, has the person been recently doing what the job requires? Determine if the employer is in an comparable industry or type of company. Think like you’re dumb. Insurance companies like to hire employees at other insurance companies. Startups like people from startups.

Now figure out their “big” job: Everyone had their break somewhere. Don’t pay as much attention to chronology and the formatted length of each job description – look for the job that gave the candidate the bulk of their experience. Oftentimes because of a natural tendency to favor the most recent, candidates will spend more time detailing their latest three assignments – even if those assignments comprise only 5% of their overall career. Find that big, real job where the person spent the majority of their career. In trying to figure out what a person does, that’s where the money is.


Do a check for job hopping: Then look again, it’s vital. In general, you want to see a solid work history with long(ish) tenures at their employers. However (and this is also necessary), you have to figure out if the person either A) consulted a lot or B) had an incredibly fast and regular progression through job titles. Consulting work is fine, but you want to see a long history of success with consulting. Fast climbers will also tend to move through employers rapidly, as they jump for new opportunities – this can be good or bad, depending on the opportunity that you have for them. When you’re scanning for job hopping, what you’re really asking yourself is “Does this candidate seem to have a rational progression and a history of success?” Anything else usually can suggest a low performer.

Finally, do a gut check: Ask yourself if you think the person could do the job that you have for them. This means not just trying to line up past experience with the required experience, but rather asking yourself if your job feels like a natural progression for someone with that background. Certain job titles tend to slip naturally into the next. Other times, you have to make a reasoned leap of faith – if the person doesn’t even have a previous position that would normally fit into yours, do they have a background that could indicate success? Have you had “luck” with people from a particular company or with a certain set of skills? Your gut is the part of a recruiter that needs the most training to be strong. If you’ve lived inside a certain geography or industry, recruiting day in and out, you’ll be able to trust this last step more than any other. If you’re just starting out, don’t give yourself the luxury – think dumb and simple matches. A recruiting machine and nothing more.

Do you have a solid feel for the resume? Can you imagine the person doing what they do? Do you have a sense of their real job and skills beyond their simple job titles? If so, then you have done your job well. Have thirty seconds gone by yet?

If you’re getting all the right signals, it’s time to pick up the phone. And get down to all the easy stuff. Salary requirements. Culture match. Hopes and dreams – really. But that’s another discussion entirely.
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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

How to Tell if a New Recruiter Will Sink or Swim in the First 90 Days


The recruiting industry is not for the faint of heart. Agency recruiters must exhibit rock star-sales abilities while juggling a myriad of other responsibilities. And corporate recruiters must excel at headhunting while keeping an eye on the bigger picture of the economic health of an organization. It’s no wonder that nine out of ten rookie recruiters wash out in the first ninety-days. Some recruiting shops provide new recruiters with a thorough orientation and personal training in the entire life cycle of a recruiter, while others offer limited training in sourcing techniques, the latest software and how to hit your sales targets.

Whatever the extent of the training provided to new recruiters, they are soon sent to the phones and it’s sink or swim time. How can managers determine if a rookie recruiter has what it takes to succeed over the long term? What are some of the warning signs that a new hire is not cut out for a career in the fast paced world of recruiting?

Becomes Deflated at the First Sign of Failure

Successful recruiting requires a positive can-do attitude. Making 80-100 calls per day can become mind numbing if you don’t keep your eye on the prize. The ultimate prize is a successful placement, but there are many smaller victories to be had before a sale is made and a deal is closed. And each step in the process takes skill and determination. For a new recruiter, the process of phoning, connecting, making recruiting presentations, securing job orders, sourcing and sendouts, is a veritable minefield. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Add shaky candidates and overly cautious hiring managers to the mix and new recruiters may just call it quits well before making their first placement. But the contenders have the innate ability to brush off their early missteps and forge ahead, while retaining optimism and a positive attitude. If a new hire shows signs of becoming deflated when encountering the many obstacles in the fierce recruiting life cycle, he or she probably won’t make it past the first twelve weeks.

Can’t Connect With People


Recruiting is a service industry that requires the ability to connect with people and develop long-term relationships with hiring managers, as well as candidates. A good recruiter exudes confidence, competence and is able to instill trust. Your sales manager may be screeching in the background about numbers, sales targets and billings, but you must present a calm demeanor throughout the process. Never let them see you sweat! While you are stressed over your billings, you must take a deep breath and provide personalized service to both the client and the candidate. And you need to fully understand the business requirements of your client corporation to make a good match. And each step in the recruiting life cycle requires additional relationship building skills and talent in influencing others, before a recruiter can close the deal. If new hires aren’t effective communicators and good listeners, and are unable to connect with people on a personal level– they won’t last.


Bad Time Management Skills


Recruiting is a fast-paced business that requires superb time management skills. And the sales targets, metrics and expectations are intense. New hires can easily fall into the trap of wasting time on unqualified candidates, administrative tasks and bad job orders. And at the end of the month, they have nothing to show for their efforts. Building strategic relationships isn’t about whiling away your days schmoozing and kibitzing with everyone you meet. In the course of a day, busy recruiters must hit their activity metrics, by producing four to five hours of market connect time, qualify candidates, schedule sendouts, negotiate contracts, calm candidates and present a sense of urgency to hiring managers to propel the process forward and make a placement. There’s a lot of juggling. Recruiters must bring an existing job order to the finish line, while lining up new business. It’s a never-ending cycle. If you see a new recruiter becoming bogged down with activities that don’t or can’t result in placements and billings, he or she will probably make a speedy exit within the first ninety-days.

Successful recruiters are competitive, independently driven, determined and focused. If new hires also possess superb time management skills, relationship-building skills and continual optimism, they have an excellent chance of surviving beyond the first ninety-days of the make-or-break period. There’s no greater feeling of accomplishment of rising to the surface and perfecting a butterfly stroke in record time. And once you start swimming, the rewards are great. The recruiting industry offers lucrative earnings and the satisfaction of placing quality candidates in the workforce. Turk, surgeon and best friend to J.D. on the comedy series Scrubs, said it best during the third season—“Dude, today I had to sink or swim all on my own; and guess what? A brother swam.”

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

LEADERSHIP IN ORGANIZATIONS





LEADERSHIP 

Leadership is an integral part of management and plays a vital role in managerial operations. It provides direction, guidance, and confidence to the employees and helps in the attainment of goals in much easier way. In business and industrial organizations, managers play the role of leader and acquire leadership of subordinates, their efforts towards the achievement of organizational goals and activate the individuals of an organization to make them work. Leadership influences behavior of the individuals. It has an ability to attract others and potential to make them follow the instructions. Individuals can be induced to contribute their optimum towards the attainment of organizational goals through effective leadership. Leadership acquires dominance and the followers accept the directives and control of a leader. Leadership provides direction and vision for future to an organization.


DEFINITION

Leadership is the art of influencing and inspiring subordinates to perform their duties willingly, competently and enthusiastically for achievement of groups objectives.

According to Wendell French, "Leadership is the process of influencing the behavior of others in the direction of a goal or set of goals or, more broadly, toward a vision of the future”,

According to Keith Davis, “Leadership is the process of encouraging and helping others to work enthusiastically towards objectives”.

According to Koontz and O'Donnell, "Leadership is the art or process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly towards the achievement of group goals".

According to Peter Drucker, "Leadership means the lifting of man's visions to higher sights, the raising of man's performance to higher standard, the building of man's personality beyond its normal limitations".

According to Grey and Starke, "Leadership is both a process and a property. As a process, it is used for non-coercive influence lo shape up the goals of a group or organization, to motivate behavior toward the achievement of those goals and to help define group or organizational culture. As a property, leadership is the set multi characteristics attributed to those who are perceived to be leaders".

Thus, leaders are people who are able to influence the behavior of others without recourse to threats or other forms of force towards the individuals. Leaders are the people who are accepted by the other individuals, as a superior person to them.


FEATURES OF LEADERSHIP

The features of leadership are as follows:

  • Leadership is the process of influencing behavior of individuals of an organization.

  • Leadership uses non-coercive methods to direct and coordinate the activities of the individuals of an organization.

  • Leadership directs the individuals to attain the tasks assigned to them by following the instructions of their leaders.

  • A leader possesses qualities to influence others.

  • Leadership gives the individuals, a vision for future.

  • Leadership is a group activity. Leader influences his followers and followers also exercise influence over his leader.

  • Leadership is meant for a given situation, given group for a pre-determined period of lime.

  • Leadership is continuous process of influencing behavior. It encourages liveliness in the group.


Importance of Leadership

The following points can judge the importance of leadership:

  • A leader should act as a friend of the people whom he is leading.

  • A leader must have the capacity to recognize the potentials of the individuals and transform them into realities.

  • A leader should have the confidence of the individuals of the organization.

  • A leader must be able to unite the people as a team and build up team spirit.

  • A leader should be able to maintain discipline among his group and develop a sense of responsibility.

  • A leader must be able to build up a high morale among the individuals of the organization.

  • A leader should motivate his people to achieve goals.

  • A leader should try to raise the morale of the individuals and should maintain ethical standards among the individuals.

  • A leader should act as a link between the work groups and the forces outside the organization.


Difference between Leadership and Management

Leading and managing go together but some differences exist between the two. The following are the differences between the leadership and the management:

  • Management takes rational and logical decisions while leadership takes decision on expectations of the followers. Leadership has an emotional appeal while management acts on rationality.

  • The management establishes relationship through a lawful authority while leadership establishes relationship through power.

  • Managers have formal authority but the leaders have no such authority.

  • All leaders are not managers and all managers are leaders.

  • Management is a process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling the activities of others to attain the organizational objectives. Leadership on the other hand, is a process of influencing the behavior of the people to attain their assigned tasks. A successful manager must possess both the managerial and leadership qualities.


TYPES OF LEADERSHIP

Following are the main types of leadership:

Autocratic or Authoritarian

In this type of leadership, there is a complete centralization of authority in the leader, i.e., authority is centered in the leader himself. He has all the powers to make decisions. He uses coercive measures and adopts, negative method of motivation. He wants immediate obedience of his orders and instructions. Any negligence on the part of subordinates results in punishment. There is no participation from the subordinates in decision-making. A leader thinks that he is the only competent person in the organization. According to Edwin B. Filippo, there are following three types of leaders in autocratic:

  1. Hard Boiled or Strict Autocrat: Leader, under such type uses negative influence and expects that the employees should obey his orders immediately. Non-compliance of his orders results in punishment. He makes all decisions and does not disclose anything to anyone. He is quite rigid on performance.

  2. Benevolent Autocrat: Benevolent autocrat leader uses positive influences and develops effective human relations. He is known as paternalistic leader. He praises his employees if they follow his orders and invites them to get the solutions of the problems from him. He feels happy in controlling all the actions of his subordinates.

  3. Manipulative Autocrat: Leader, under such type is manipulative in nature. He creates a feeling in the minds of his subordinates and workers that they are participating in decision-making processes. But he makes all decisions by himself. Non-compliance of his orders also results jn punishment.


Democratic or Participative

Democratic or Participative leadership is also known as group centered or consultative leadership. In this type of leadership, leaders consult their groups and consider their opinion in the decision-making process. Leaders encourage discussion among the group members on the problem under consideration and arrive at a decision depending on their consent. Participation or involvement of the employees in the decision-making process is also rewarded. Exchange of ideas among subordinates and with the leader is given encouragement. Leaders give more freedom to their group members, who feel that, their opinions arc honored and they are given importance. It develops a sense of confidence among subordinates and they derive job satisfaction. It improves quality of decision as it is taken after due consideration of valued opinions of the talented group members.

The demerit of this type of leadership is that it takes more time to arrive at a decision, as a lot of time is wasted while taking the views from the employee. It is, therefore, very time consuming.


Laissez-faire or Free Rein

In this type of leadership, there is virtual absence of direct leadership. It is, therefore, known as "no leadership at all". There is complete delegation of authority to subordinates so that they can make decisions by themselves. Absence of leadership may have both positive and negative effects. Free rein leadership may be effective if members of the group are highly committed to their work. The negative aspect shows that the leader is not competent enough to lead his group effectively. Members may feel insecure and develop frustration for lack of decision-making authority.


Bureaucratic

This type of leadership emphasizes the rules and regulations of an organization. The behavior of a leader is determined by the rules, regulations and procedure to be followed under his leadership. The leader and the subordinates both follow these rules and regulations. Therefore, there is no difference between the management and the administration in this type of leadership. The employees, themselves cannot do anything in this regard. It is the rules that determine their performance.


Manipulative

This type of leadership manipulates the employees to attain their assigned tasks. A manipulative leader is quite selfish and exploits the aspirations of the employees for his gains. He knows very well the needs and desires of the employees but he does very little to fulfill them. Due to such attitude, he has to face the hatred of the employees at times.


Paternalistic

The paternalistic leadership believes in the concept that the happy employees work better and harder. It maintains that the fatherly altitude is the right one for better relationship between the manager and the employees. Everyone within the organization should work together like a family.


Expert Leadership

The expert leadership emerged as a result of complex structure of modern organizations. This type of leadership is based on the ability, knowledge and competence of the leaders. He handles the situation skillfully with his talent. The employees feel relieved as they are working under a person who is expert and can handle the situation without any problem.

In modern organizations, human resources vary in terms of skill, knowledge and competences. They differ in quality, determination and their attitude towards the organization. They exhibit different behaviors as they differ in attitude and outlook also. The leader must understand their behavior and accordingly can make use of the various types leaderships. The manager should assess the situation and adopt that type of leadership, which suits that situation. He should remember that leadership is situational. If situation changes, the use of leadership among its various types also changes. A successful leader is the one who assesses the situation, studies the psychology of the subordinates and adopts the most useful type of leadership to lead the people at work to accomplish the organizational goals.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Performance Analysis.


Scope of This Tutorial: 
A variety of profiling and execution analysis tools exist for both serial and parallel programs. They range widely in usefulness and complexity: 
Simple command line timing utilities 
Fortran and C timing routines 
Profilers 
Execution trace generators 
Graphical execution analyzers - with/without trace generation 
Both real-time and post-execution tools 

Most of the more sophisticated and useful tools have a learning curve associated with them and would deserve a full day tutorial themselves. 

The purpose of this tutorial is to briefly review a range of performance analysis tools, and to provide pointers for more information to many of these tools. 

Although a number of the tools reviewed are cross-platform, the emphasis of this tutorial is their usage on the IBM SP platform. 
 Motivation: 
Writing large-scale parallel and distributed scientific applications that make optimum use of computational resources is a challenging problem. Very often, resources are under-utilized or used inefficiently. 

The factors which determine a program's performance are complex, interrelated, and oftentimes, hidden from the programmer. Some of them are listed by category below. 

Application Related Factors:

Algorithms 

Dataset Sizes 
Memory Usage Patterns 
Use of I/O 
Communication Patterns 
Task Granularity 
Load Balancing 
Amdahl's Law 

Hardware Related Factors: 
Processor Architecture 
Memory Hierarchy 
I/O Configuration 
Network 

Software Related Factors: 
Operating system 
Compiler 
Preprocessor 
Communication protocols 
Libraries 

Because of these challenges and complexities, performance analysis tools are essential to optimizing an application's performance. They can assist you in understanding what your program is "really doing" and suggest how program performance should be improved. 


Performance Considerations and Strategies 



The most important goal of performance tuning is to reduce a program's wall clock execution time. Reducing resource usage in other areas, such as memory or disk requirements, may also be a tuning goal. 

Performance tuning is an iterative process used to optimize the efficiency of a program. It usually involves finding your program's hot spots and eliminating the bottlenecks in them. 

Hot Spot: An area of code within the program that uses a disproportionately high amount of processor time. 

Bottleneck: An area of code within the program that uses processor resources inefficiently and therefore causes unnecessary delays. 

Performance tuning usually involves profiling - using software tools to measure a program's run-time characteristics and resource utilization. 

Use profiling tools and techniques to learn which areas of your code offer the greatest potential performance increase BEFORE you start the tuning process. Then, target the most time consuming and frequently executed portions of a program for optimization. 

Consider optimizing your underlying algorithm: an extremely fine-tuned O(N * N) sorting algorithm may perform significantly worse than a untuned O(N log N) algorithm. 

For data dependent computations, benchmark based on a variety of realistic (both size and values) input data sets. Maintain consistent input data during the fine-tuning process. 

Take advantage of compiler and preprocessor optimizations when possible. 

Finally, know when to stop - there are diminishing returns in successive optimizations. Consider a program with the following breakdown of execution time percentages for the associated parts of the program: 
Procedure % CPU Time
main() 13%
procedure1() 17%
procedure2() 20%
procedure3() 50% 



A 20% increase in the performance of procedure3() results in a 10% performance increase overall. 

A 20% increase in the performance of main() results in only a 2.6% performance increase overall. 


The time command returns the total execution time of your program. 

The format of the output is different for the Korn shell and the C shell. The basic information is : 
Real time: the total wall clock (start to finish) time your program took to load, execute, and exit. 
User time: the total amount of CPU time your program took to execute. 
System time: the amount of CPU time spent on operating system calls in executing your program. 

The system and user times are defined differently across different computer architectures. 

Example csh time output: 

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1.150u 0.020s 0:01.76 66.4% 15+3981k 24+10io 0pf+0w



Explanation: 
1.15 seconds of user CPU time 
0.02 seconds of system (kernel) time used on behalf of user 
1.76 seconds real time (wall clock time) 
66.4% total CPU time (user+system) during execution as a percentage of elapsed time. 
15 Kbytes of shared memory usage and 3981 Kbytes of unshared data space 
24 block input operations and 10 block output operations 
no page faults 
no swaps 

Example ksh time output: 

  real 0m2.58s
  user 0m1.14s
  sys 0m0.03s
Explanation: 
0 minutes, 2.58 seconds of wall clock time 
0 minutes, 1.14 seconds of user CPU time 
0 minutes, 0.03 seconds of system CPU time .

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Self Innovation- Positive emotions

       

            Self Innovation

Positive Emotions:
Do you often find your negative emotions controlling your life? Do these feelings tend to have power over what you say and how you act? How does it affect your personal development? Does it lead you to what you want in life? To a better life? Or more of the same old stuff?


These emotions affect our moods, which as a result, affects our judgment and decision-making. It's because when our emotions get stirred up, there is something at stake. It may be your opinions, your plan of activities for the day, your approach towards people, or your success key in general. Negative emotions deviate you from the happier life that you deserve. It will continue to make you feel bad unless you learn how to manage these emotions and moods. This is not what you want in life, right?

But in what way do negative emotions block your way to a better life? The explanation is fairly simple. When you are full of negative emotions, they pull other negative feelings -- and eventually negative circumstances -- towards you. It will attract more and more negative feelings when you should be attracting positive energies, manifesting abundance and improving your life. Sooner or later, your life will be totally controlled by your negative emotions - the kind of emotions that draw all the negative circumstances and energies which are tough to deal with. It will not prop up your success key to its highest point and not help you achieve what you want in life. Who gets their way to a better life? It is every person who has the greatest emotional control.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

PXE-Preboot Execution Environment

What Is PXE?
Almost every corporate PC purchased since 1998 is "Wired for Management" (WfM) compliant. WfM is an industry standard, initiated by Intel to improv the manageability of client PC systems,
and is part of the Intel and Microsoft PC98 specification. The Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) is part of the WfM specification. What exactly is PXE? How does it helreduce cost of ownership and simplify client PC management? PXE is an open industry standard developed by a number of software and hardware vendors. It was initially designed by Intel, with input from
several other vendors including 3Com, HP, Dell, Compaq, and Phoenix Technologies. PXE works with a network interface card (NIC) in the PC, and makes the NIC a boot device.
The PXE vision is to "Make the network interface a standard, industry-accepted PC boot device." 1 This means adding the NIC to the traditional list of standard boot devices, such as floppy drives, hard disks, and CD-ROMs, that load the operating system or set up programs on the PC. It allows the client PC to "network boot." Booting from the network opens up a vast array of management and support features.

PXE boots the client PC from the network by transferring a "boot image file" from a server. This file can be the operating system for the client PC or a pre-OS agent (see the section, "Pre-OS," later in this paper) that performs client management tasks. Since PXE is not operating systemspecific, the image file can load anyOS. It provides support for network booting , of embedded and other operating systems. Because PXE works with the NIC, it requires a PXE-enabled NIC.
Most currently available NICs do support PXE, including those from 3Com, Intel, Digital, RealTek, and SMC.
PXE is available either as a boot ROM chip that you add to the NIC, or as part of
the system BIOS if the network interface is on the motherboard. PXE is specific to a type of NIC; a boot ROM for one type (for example, a3C905C) will not work on another type of NIC.