Understand the Connections

Check kiva, its a wonderful concept.

"Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence."

The developed nations like USA can actively participate in promoting concepts like this where a little contribution with their currency would make a very large impact to the person who receives it in the other end of the world. I hope they run this for long time.

The much anticipated rival of the most popular iPod, Zune from Microsoft is expected to be launched in India during this Diwali/Christmas season. The instrument is going to be manufactured by Toshiba and I am guessing that its going to be WIRELESS. Yes, that is the only disadvantage with iPod that the headset with wires is really one annoying thing you realize over time.

When I visited US during 2001 (I was there when Sept 11 happened.) I visited many big electronics/music shops to pick some gadgets, happened to interact with the store owners and during that time I was very keen to get a CDMan, but finally did not buy one. My friend who took me around for these shops got frustrated and asked what was the real purpose to look around many shops and not actually buy a music player/CDMan, I told him that these music players are big and I would like to have something small in size and also capability to store enough songs, the store owners and my friend thought I was asking weird things, but then came iPod.

But what I would have never thought is software companies like Apple or Microsft getting into developing products like iPod or Zune. We always expected some traditional consumer electronic or particularly music player manufacturing companies to get into products like this, but Apple had one attempt which was really innovative took the market by storm.

I am not sure how Zune would be, I am sure that the picture on the left might be some prototype and the final product would be radically different, read somewhere that it would have FM aswell, well that would be really interesting. I think I will buy Zune for sure.

It’s a known fact that the attrition rate in BPO industry is very high as many people could not cope with high stressful work and the very odd timings. To identify those workers who would possibly quit in near future, convergys HR team had come with a tool named RAG. RAG stands for Red, Amber and Green, the person who falls in the Red category would be expected to quit very soon in a month.

I am not sure how or what factors/inputs are considered in getting the identification. But certain things which the BPO`s or Outsourcing companies can do to make their employees not quit.

a) Sponsor for part-time higher education – Most of the employees would fall in the (18-26 ) age category (its my guess from what I am seeing), the company can sponsor these employees to opt for part-time higher education where half the tution fees would be sponsored by the company and the rest needs to be paid by the employee itself. This would help the employee for sure and would retain him till he completes the education.

b) Work from Customer Country – Companies can setup centres where the employees would work for sometime or every 2-3 months in the regular timings of the customers. Say UK based outsourced work will let the BPO employee to work from UK for every 2/3 months. This would be costly for the company which is getting the outsourced job done and might actually defeat the purpose of cost effectiveness in the outsourcing altogether, but still this can be implemented atleast by the big players in the BPO/Outsourcing business.

c) 4 days working per week – Normally Saturday and Sundays are rest days, maybe for this industry they can implement to have one more day of leave so that it would help the employees to refresh and maintain the balance.

The BPO/Outsourcing industry picked up like anything in the past 3 or 4 years and I am eager to see what would happen after 5 years and whether the industry would thrive and become much better or …..

Let me clarify in the beginning, the Title question is about quitting/resigning your job to get into your next job, mostly for the reason of career progression or some personal reasons for which you need to change jobs.

Hmm, I am quitting my current job with a very good US based Delhi MNC and joining a very good Europe based Chennai MNC, and I would be relocating aswell. The good thing is the new state is my hometown.

When I joined my current company I thought that I would stay for a year or two and move to US as during that time job markets in USA was very good and in India almost every house had somebody who works in US and it was my turn I thought. But I did not move to US as I liked my job + company + environment and all the challenges that it brought in. I had spent almost 6 years working in that product and loved every bit of it. Now when I think about leaving it, I really feel little sad and at the same time when I think about the opportunities that the new job is bringing in I feel excited.

My friends tells me that 6 years in one company/product is good, I guess the main reason I stayed for long is due to Delhi only, I really like Delhi, its big roads, big cars and big monuments and etc etc. Everything about Delhi is perfectly the way I would like things to be. Change is the only thing constant and I am sure I am going to enjoy my return to hometown.

But the change does not happen very easily, though I have resigned I am waiting for transitioning my stuffs to the new person. I now realize the more years of experience you have in a company + the more responsibility you carry + the more knowledge you have on the domain = more & more time to transition. I am not actually liking this waiting for sure, once you decide and wanting to move out it becomes difficult to wait, you feel like jumping out immediately and get into your next job asap, and it really does not happen that way when you have notice period of 3 months and the more + more I said above.

In another 15-20 days I would be in a new state, new home and a new job, though its going to be in the same domain where I consider myself an expert with extraordinary skils (really ?), I did not expect this to happen some 50 days back nor I planned for it aswell, when I came to know about this opening through my friend, I knew I would fit like a perfect glove, thought of just giving the interview to see how it goes as I havent given any inteview for long and also for personal/family reasons, guess thats the start and though I planned something, God planned differently. The reason for having my blog name as "Understand the Connections" is to really ponder about on why/how these things happen? I had a friend who is very keen on Astrology etc and she always tells me that everything in this planet is already planned and it would just happen that way, when I think about how things unfolded in this case, I believe it might be really true ? Dear Friends, wish me goodluck for my next job.

Check this advertisement, I saw this in one of the leading newspapers in India. This is for an opening with one BPO company in Delhi, the matter of fact is, this advertisement really made me to think.

Look at it again, you would be able to follow

- At 23, many join as management trainees.
- At 23, you could be managing trainees.

So it gives an impression that if X who is 23 joins this particular company then its possible that X could be managing trainees, so who would he be managing ? My guess is he would be managing those people who got into this job without reading this advertisement, otherwise they themselves would be managing trainees.

So what happens to those who are 23 and want to join the company to manage trainees, say 20 people who are in this age group applies and all 20 want to manage trainees , so again , who are these trainees ? are these trainees are people who are not yet 23, otherwise they would have been managing the trainees themselves.

Anyhow doesnt make sense to me at all. Let me know what you think.

I have posted this idea with www.cambrianhouse.com for a web based application. Let me know what you think about it, Hot or Not ?

1) User X Create`s account
2) Marks his/her birthdays/marriageannivesarys/partys-at-home
3) Sends invitations through the site and invites friends/relatives for event/functions
4) Selects the list of Items they wanted/interested to receive as gifts on the above events/functions
5) Invitees receives the invitation mail and logins to the site and confirms participation
6) After login the invitees can check the wishlist that the User X has created for the event/function
7) They can contribute fully or partially from the wishlist of User X, then pays through paypal to buy that to User X or Contributes with others.
8) Once an wishlist is done its marked GIFTED and the User X should be able to view who has contributed/bought the gift for him/her
9) User X can also know exact number of people who had accepted the invitation.
10) Sellers can advertise their products directly in vgiftu.com or rsvp.org in the "sellers/available products" listings so that it can be selected for wishlist by users.