A doodle contest for kids from Google

Poornima Mohandas — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:18:00 GMT

Every once in a while I notice the doodles around the red,blue,green and yellow all too familiar logo of Google and wonder what's special today. Google puts out those doodles celebrating artists and scientists, historic days and the like.
Today Google has announced a doodle contest open to all school kids. The winner's drawing will appear on the Google India homepage on November 14, childrens' day. The world's largest internet search engine will also give out a laptop to the winner and a technology grant of Rs 1 lakh to the winner's school.
To apply students can register online at www.google.co.in/doodle4google
Faculty and students of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad will play judge on the basis of artistic merit, creativity, how well the idea is conveyed and a supporting statement which explains the idea behind the scribble.
Google is out to capture mindshare among internet savvy, Indian kids who are only too familiar with the search engine. Whenever my 6-year old nephew needs to find something he goes, "Can you find it on google?"

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A day at a BPO walk-in: wasted call?

Taru Bahl — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:47:00 GMT

My sprightly 70-year old father is just not the cribbing sort. But one thing that he does tend to feel a bit sore about is Indian recruiters’ penchant for ignoring resumes sent by ‘seniors’. Inspite of skillfully juggling three assignments, he still subscribes to Employment News and religiously goes through job supplements of national dailies. He even applies to jobs he thinks he fits in with. And his chief grouse: Why do the bulk of job adverts in Toi's Ascent and HT’s Horizons’ seek services for the BPO sector from a right-out-of-college generation.

With the world sliding into recession, the trend of ITeS companies overtaking merchant banking and finance companies at placement weeks in B-schools, is only going to put the spotlight more brightly on this ready-to-work lot. So while dad will have to learn to live with this ‘inequity’ I got some direct feedback from a company that had a marathon walk-in recently.

Walk-in interviews have been hugely successful for manpower intensive industries like ITteS, retail and healthcare where entry-to-mid level positions have been filled in a rather cost effective manner. Pick up any Ascent and see that 80% space is devoted to luring suitable candidates to simply walk-in to the swanky offices of Convergys, Infosys, Google, Wipro, Oracle and IBM with their resumes, have a quick interview and walk out with an appointment letter.

In a single stroke this process of recruitment has done away with 'middlemen' – recruiters, consultants and HR departments. Sans any screening and elimination of candidates and no one having to pay anything for every 'deal that gets struck', it seems like a win-win for all. It makes applicants feel good about being part of a fair process of job selection in an otherwise competitive job market and it gives employers a wide talent pool to choose from.

Imagine then, the shock and awe of a Noida-based IT company that thought it was going through a refined search process when they decided to skip the ToI and HT job supplements and instead post their requirement on select websites like naukri.com and monster.com along with referrals from within the office. Idea was to narrow down search for those 50 positions for whom the prerequisite was having a B.E/ B.Tech/ M. Tech, MCA qualification.

At 9 am the security alerted director, HR that about 50-odd people were at the gate. By 11 am the number had gone up to 1,500 and by 3 pm it had swelled up to more than 5,000. If parallels have to be drawn, the scenario was similar to what exists in the Indian Idol selection rounds. Apparently word had swiftly spread, thanks to the Internet. Engineering colleges across north India had the job brief pasted on their notice boards. Resultantly, applicants had trooped in from Rohtak, Panipat, Sonepat, Karnal, Chandigarh, Lucknow and all corners of Delhi (and these are not places known for peaceful co-existence!)

Now while the management seriously toyed with the idea of calling in the cops since the scenario outside their gates was far from amiable, HR tried handling the situation, as HR 'professionals' normally do(!). Departmental heads – from administration, accounts, purchase and hospitality were called in and asked to set up 'interview stations'. A standardized question format was prepared and an average of four minutes spent on each candidate, quizzing him/ her on various job required parametres.

At the end of 11 hours, the company had filled in only 15 positions. What to me was worrisome was that here were students who had legitimate engineering degrees while some had work experience too. Yet, when it came to a job fit, only 0.3% were found suitable. The HR head justified, "education is all very well, but where is the employability of a bulk of students who pass out from a medley of institutes? We were not asking for the moon, and we most certainly wanted to fill in our positions asap but looking for the right candidate is increasingly becoming like a needle-in-a-haystack kind of operation."

How much dedicated blogs (Walkin.wordpress.com and ChaloWalkin.com) and jobsites on walk-ins help remains a question, though there is little doubt that it will contribute to the effectiveness of word going around and a swelling number of applicants thronging company gates!

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On The Job : Google

A doodle contest for kids from Google

A day at a BPO walk-in: wasted call?