The way of sharing lots of thoughts, hobbies, passions and many more are the keys to start a relation or friendship or at least respect for each other.

In last couple of years many “social services” came out and are the major source to build the network. It’s a different thing that how we use the social sites depends on our thoughts and personality but they can definitely help us to connect with the people to make the relationship that can be helpful for future.

In last couple of years I used many “social sites” has increased my network and many of people came across my profile and give me the opportunity to get in touch with them or advised me that increase my knowledge and confidence to expose my skills areas.
By using social sites I found many of my past friends, colleagues and having a network of both well known and unknown people.

As we use different social sites each of them have a little bit different story, like “LinkedIn” is fully professional social site where as “Facebook” provides lots of activities and we all know it well, both are the major sources to connect with the people, organizations, and societies etc.

In my view “LinkedIn” is the best professional social network to get in touch with people or to look for a good job. It provides the way to make our profile much attractive, lots of contacts, endorsements and a very well professional environment. So we can increase our network by sending the request or by joining the groups/Organizations in many social sites available.Finally we can say that Social sites are playing very important role in our life…

The importance of having an impressive resume is very high in today’s job market as most of the recruiters/HR prefers screening to the point resumes rather than long/confusing ones. This article is to help the job seekers make an impressive and presentable resume. By following the below mentioned points the chances of your resume getting shortlisted will increase.

Start the resume with Name and Contact Details
Add this information at the beginning of your resume. This should include the postal address, contact number (preferably mobile) and e-mail ID (only one). If a recruiter/HR wants to call you for an interview or needs to have a discussion with you, they will look out for the contact information and incase it’s hard to find in the resume it can decrease the chances of the recruiter/HR contacting you.

Write an appealing Career Summary
Your career summary must include your strength, attitude, knowledge, skills and experience. There are two schools of thought for writing a career summary, it might be a 30 – 40 word paragraph or can be 5 – 6 bulleted points. Whatever way you follow you must ensure that everything mentioned in your resume must support your career summary.

Focus on the work experience, responsibilities and achievements
If you are an experienced candidate, your work experience is your main asset. You should mention your work experience in a chronologically descending order i.e. the last company first. While mentioning your project details you must enter Name of the Company, Designation, Client Name (If Possible), Duration, Tools Used, Responsibilities and Achievements. Make sure the details are in a bulleted format mentioning it in a paragraph.

For example:
Worked as Business Development Manager for XYZ Company from June 2000 to January 2004.
Job responsibilities:
• Setting up 7 franchisees across 4 countries
• Maximizing the business from existing customers to the tune of $ 200,000

Educational qualification
Educational qualifications play a very important role in the recruitment of fresher’s. If you are a fresh candidate, focus your CV on your qualifications and achievements during your student life. Mention your complete education details i.e. Course, Stream, Passed Year, University/College and percentage.

Mention the out-of-work achievements
Write about some achievements that display a facet of your personality. Like, if you have been the president of your college/university, do mention it. It shows your leadership skills.

Use short sentences with impactful words
Lengthy CVs can put the recruiter off. Keep the sentences short and use words that demonstrate your hold of the situation like managed, arranged, supervised etc.

Formal font faces
Font like Verdana/Arial-10 should be good for the content while the Name at the top can be written in Verdana/Arial-12, with a bold font face. Bold all the important heading in the resume like skills, education, projects etc.

Use the same tense throughout the resume.
Changing the tense in every second line leaves the reader confused and annoyed so it is always better to follow the same pattern while writing a resume.

I hope this helps, please comment with your additions and suggestions. Soon, I will be posting some points that one needs to avoid while making a resume.

Here are a few things which you can do to ruin your communication over emails, and how to avoid doing these mistakes, that is only if you wish to.

Not mentioning a clear and specific “Subject Line” or better without any subject line at all.
Instead, use subject lines which

* describes the message content
* specifies if there are any actions required & due dates
* If you can type your entire message in the subject line and don’t need to write anything in the body of the message – do so!

Blindly doing a “Reply to All” for a mail sent to you & marked to other persons in Cc.
Decide if this mail needs a reply to all the other recipients, and only when you are absolutely sure, then do it.

Starting the mail by talking about anything but business.
In the first 1-3 lines of your email, specify what this email is about.

* Does it include action required?
* Does it require a reply back by a certain date?
* What information is contained that the reader will find necessary for their job?

Mixing the To: and Cc: addresses.
Imagine sending a mail to a manager in To: with the subordinate in Cc:; wherein the manager required only information about the situation and the actual action needed to be taken by the subordinate. Be attentive about whom to put in To: and Cc:.

Start discussing or talking in email.
When people start talking in email, please stop; instead pick the phone and give them a call.

Carbon copying your manager on each mail.
You would not want to spam your manager’s mailbox with each little communication you are running. Take a wise decision on what he/she needs to know and accordingly mark him on those mails.

Using All-Caps or No-Caps
All-Caps come across as shouting, and no-caps invoke the image of a lazy teenager. Regardless of your intention, people will respond accordingly.

Overreacting to nuance in email.
Think before you react to some sort of nuance on a professional mail, as you would not want to regret it later. It is in your best interest to simply avoid doing it.

Using bad formatting rules such as

* Using different fonts throughout the message content
* Using colored fonts in a professional email
* Vaguely using bold, italic or underline font style
* Not keeping the size of the font visible and constant
* Not keeping the paragraph and line spacing legitimate and visually appealing

Chat Lingo : Using short forms or slang (e.g. ‘u’ instead of ‘you’, ‘y’ instead of ‘why’, ‘r’ instead of ‘are’, etc). It would bring you across as some restless teenager chatting over yahoo or facebook, which certainly would not help your image.

Assuming privacy.
Unless you really intend to do it the wrong way, praise in public and criticize in private. Don’t send anything over email that you wouldn’t want posted with your name attached in a meeting room.

Attaching a file that your reader will have to download and open in a separate program, when you can just copy-paste the most important part of the document into the body of your message.
If it’s the message that matters, recognize that attachments

* consume bandwidth (do you want your recipient to ignore your request so as to avoid paying for a mobile download?)
* can carry viruses
* don’t always translate correctly for people who read their email on portable devices.

Not mentioning the list of attachments, if any, in the email.
It is important that the receiver knows to look for and open the files. Also, appropriately name the attachments so that the receiver knows what each document is just by looking at the name.

Not provide a closing statement.
Courtesy is always important, no matter how short the email really is. So, you can afford to begin with a not-so-costly “thank you”. Then, include an accurate follow-up statement such as, “I will contact you  again with further information,” or “I look forward to hearing your ideas.” If a response is required, be sure to state that information in the message.

Not replying to emails for a long time.
If you need more than 24 hours to collect information or make a decision, send a brief response explaining the delay or even with just an acknowledgement that you have received the mail and will be doing the needful.

 Email is an important aspect of dealing with your professional communications, if not the most important one. Surprisingly, most people do not pay enough weightage to drafting a proper email as they would do while drafting a legal document or a contract. Also, they lack a formal training on writing business emails, which might account for some of most important outcomes while dealing with their professional contacts.

While a professionally written email can leave your clients and colleagues impressed and lend an ear to what you have to say, on the other hand a loosely written email can get them off the hook and disinterested.

Manager is evaluated on the basis of quality of their decision making. To improve quality of decisions, they should know how quality of decision making can be improved.

Decision making is process by which we can select one position or action from several alternatives. In our life we always get the problem and we endeavor to resolve the problem and hence we search different alternatives and the most desirable alternative is chosen to solve the problem or to arrive at expected results. But we must remember a problem situation which does not have alternatives is not really a problem requiring solution though the problem may be quite injurious. It is a process to arrive at a decision. Existence of alternatives suggests that the decision maker has freedom to choose an alternative of his liking through which his purpose is served.

For the purpose of making decision very effective it is significant for us to emerge creativity. It is vital for decision making; either it is organizational decision or personal decision. One skill that significantly differentiates good decision makers from poor is creativity. Creativity is required to develop alternatives, enrich possibilities, and imagine consequences. The role of creativity is maximum in generating alternatives which can b considered for evaluation and choice. Before a solution to a problem can be implemented, it must be developed.

An effective decision should provide the way in which it can be implemented. Therefore, decision making should take into account all the possible factors not only in terms of external context but also in internal context so that a decision can be implemented properly.

]]> http://www.luzdel.com/effective-decision-making/feed/ 0 http://www.luzdel.com/leadership-management/ http://www.luzdel.com/leadership-management/#comments Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:13:47 +0000 amritkumar http://luzdel.wordpress.com/?p=23 Continue reading →]]> Leadership means to set a clear & goal achieving direction, define problem accurately, work in a group in effective & efficient manner & finally to give appraisal to them.

Leadership qualities are:-

• positive attitudes
• creativity
• intelligence
• a futuristic vision
• motivation power
• convincing power
• communicate effectively, etc

Becoming a good leader is a constant process of self evaluation & learning. In a leader it is important to have ability of learning leadership over time.

The most important aspect of leadership is team building, as; leadership can not exist without a team. Even a good leader today should be a good member of team itself. Bringing the group of individuals together & make them work together to achieve a common goal is the essence of team building.

Team is a set of various peoples of different thinking, tastes, preferences & of different working attitudes. So, it to arise contrasting views, disagreement. It is responsibility of leader to remove these differences.
A good leader can take out higher productivity from his team by good team building. If the leader has the ability of empowering people & team motivation, he can get the best result from his team.
Not only distribution of work, motivation etc are the work of leader, but make them enjoy, celebrate with them is also a part of leadership quality.

]]> http://www.luzdel.com/leadership-management/feed/ 0 http://www.luzdel.com/recruitment/ http://www.luzdel.com/recruitment/#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:57:02 +0000 soniamehra http://luzdel.wordpress.com/?p=17 Continue reading →]]> Recruitment is the process of searching the candidates for employment and inspiring them to apply for jobs in the organization. Recruitment is the activity that links the employers and the job seekers, a process of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment. The process begins when new recruits are wanted and ends when their applications are submitted. The result is a pool of applications from which new employees are selected.

The recruitment process starts with the human resource department receiving the requirements from any department of the company, which contains:-

1) Posts

2) Numbers of vacancies

3) Communication skills

4) Responsibilities

5) Qualifications

6) Experience

7) Job location

And they start preparing the job description after getting the requirement. Search the relevant candidates through different sources like job portals, advertisements, headhunting, references etc.

Other activities involved are short listing the relevant candidates and arranging their interviews, if they find that candidates are suitable for the requirement according to the Job Description. Adaptation of the very way resultantly enables the candidate through with the interview process and finally the candidate gets the employment.

JD:

Testing Tools: Load Runner, Web LOAD, Open STA, Silk Performer, Performance Tester, QA Load, MACT, WAST, Jmeter, VSTS

Expertise in Performance Testing Tool

Install, support, understand, and use the performance tools effectively

Evaluate, recommend Performance tools for a given situation

Exposure to performance monitoring

Setup performance monitoring tools or processes

Collect and collate the data monitored

Analyze and identify any performance bottlenecks

In this the client is looking for someone having a good experience on any of the Performance Testing tools. So, the keywords can be – “Load Runner, Web LOAD, Open STA, Silk Performer, Performance Tester, QA Load, MACT, WAST, Jmeter, VSTS” (Any of the words) as all of the tools are related to performance testing, in this case we don’t have to mention performance testing in the skills.

Soon, I will be posting the importance and the best ways to search resumes on Job Portals.

Luzdel was incepted in the beginning of the year 2005. It was Ankur and I who laid the foundation for this. Initially, we had support from a senior person who acted as our mentor. It was hard for us to cope up with no experience in our hands. There was no knowledge, no experience of this industry. What we had in our hands was the willingness to do it, the zeal to establish Luzdel successfully. We got a couple of clients initially, and we put our dedicated efforts into it. Everyday was a learning experience for us. Soon we were able to close our first position and that too was a Project Manager. This was something to be celebrated.

Soon thereafter we got a few more offers. And we approached a big client. We planned this and that, but we were to soon learn the rules of this industry. The cycle of recruitments, the selling of offers by candidates, everything was giving us more and more exposure and making us stronger mentally. At this point I must say that the industry in which we were operating, and the people with whom we were interacting daily were not so professional in their manners. We were rising steadily and learning a lot of things. We grabbed another big client. Things were going good, when suddenly we lost the momentum and things went bad. We needed to gain our momentum back and I realized that we could never meet our targets completely by ourselves.

We moved to our new office. It was nearly 1 year since the inception of Luzdel. We hired a couple of people. We started afresh from here. This has always been our ideology, we have never been afraid to start from the grass root level. We didn’t let our spirits get down, and again put in dedicated efforts. Our old clients were lost somewhere in between, but our hopes were not down.

We got a few other clients and were now gaining the momentum back. It was during this time that Tejinder got associated with us, and this in itself was a motivating thing. He was having more than 3 years of rich experience of this industry behind him. During this time, we had a few setbacks as we lost some of our good clients and suffered intensely. But we had never learned to lose hope and get disoriented.

The major break through occurred when Tejinder finally got a very good prospective client for us. This got us back to our lives and we could see the intensity in everybody’s efforts. Now we needed to take this forward and build a reputation with this client. We put in every possible effort to make this work. And it now gives me a pleasant feeling to remember that we came out victorious. We kept increasing our staff continuously, all of us together worked hard. The credit goes to the entire team at Luzdel. Within six months of starting work with them, we were awarded as “2nd Top Most Consultant for Java Service Line for them”. We were initially catering to only their Java needs, but soon began working on every opening for them. After that there has been no turning back. We, sometime back, grabbed a few more clients which are amongst the top destinations to work at, in India.

We have worked on a wide variety of requirements for these clients, covering Generic, Niche skills, ERPs, DWH, Telecom, ITES, Non IT, Infrastructure Management requirements etc. Also, we have worked across levels beginning from SE and moving to Delivery Managers and Directors further ahead.

We are hopeful of a good future ahead of us, and are constantly working towards changing ourselves for good. During this whole time we have regularly evaluated our processes and have updated them as and when required, making them the most efficient and productive for us.

We at Luzdel understand the needs, aspirations, expectations, and preferences of its employees as this leads us to be in a strong position, to gain a competitive advantage in retention and ultimately, in terms of human capital. We are aware that employees are likely to have different preferences. Employees’ care about the total reward they receive from work, not simply their current salary.

I shall rather say that the major force with us is our ‘Never say Die’ approach. It lies within us. We are ready to start from the scratch at any time, so there is no beating to us. We are bound to come victorious at the end of the day. The philosophy of Luzdel has always been as stated:
“I win, you lose – I win only once
You win, I lose – You win only once
We both win – We win many times
We both loose – Game Over!”

Cheers and my best regards to everybody who is and who has been somehow associated with Luzdel at any point of time. Thanks for bringing Luzdel to this point.

Tushar Jain
Luzdel Consultancy Services