Authored Articles

Employers will be increasingly frugal with training budgets, but employees have options that include external certifications, MOOCs, building applications for fun alongside a community to practice, code challenges, and hackathons.

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it” according to Eric Qualman, best-selling author of Socialnomics and motivational speaker. This may be self-evident, but the way in which companies think about social media the risk vs the reward— employee engagement, impact on productivity, collaboration —is constantly evolving". 

Research finds that millennials, born between 1981 and 2000, make for top-notch product designers, store promoters, and research specialists.

Most employers are well aware that the problem isn't so much attracting Millennials as it is keeping them over a long period of time. To that end, the key is to make it a workplace that is fulfilling to the needs of younger employees- those needs include flexibility in terms of work-life balance, learning & development opportunities and room for rapid growth.

Giving your first interview can be quite unnerving. I remember the first interview I gave for a campus placement. After clearing two rounds comprising of a group discussion and a role play, the final stage was an interview with the panel.

It started off with a volley of questions beginning with a quintessential one “tell us about yourself” to “why did I choose my area of specialization”, so on and so forth. I was going strong till a question hit me - why should we hire you?

The dictionary definition of 'soft skills' is "desirable qualities for certain form of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge."

They include common sense, ability to deal with people and a positive flexible attitude.

I would say soft skills is all of the above and a lot more. It includes skills such as communication skills, language capabilities, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, social skills to name a few.

Education may be the most important of the 3Es because in the modern world of work, the most important vocational skills are reading, writing and arithmetic and you can’t teach kids in six months what they should have learnt in 12 or 15 years. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint

Find your aptitude. Think beyond engineering and medicine

The class 12 results have just been announced in most states of the country. This is the time when most students are wondering what to do. Should you go ahead with graduation in science, commerce, arts or should you try something different? Something new?

Before you decide, keep in mind that what you take has to be based on whether you have the aptitude for that career. It is important to not make a career choice based on what others are doing.

Sunita, a diploma holder in Electronics from rural Haryana, has been struggling to find a job since last 1 year. Like Sunita, there are lakhs of kids who are graduating every single day but finding it extremely difficult to get a job, mainly due to a lack of capability and skills. About 90% of the job openings today need skills which are missing in almost 90% of our youth, even among postgraduates. Yes, 15 years of education does provide them with a qualification, but does not make them job-ready.

In many sectors, recruiters are looking for "work-ready" graduates with clear evidence of job specific skills in addition to high-level graduate attributes

Attracting the best human capital needs moving PSUs into an independent holding company.