What is your salary expectation?- I

When you find a probable good fit in your selection process, one of the questions that you ask, without which the interview is incomplete, is what your salary expectation is. There are different kinds of answers I get, some realistic and many unrealistic and in this posting, I am going to share some of my interview experience on this. Let us check it out.

Scenario - 1 - Freshers - Let us check the salary related conversation with a Fresher

HR: What is your expected salary?

Fresher: I expect CTC of 4.00 lakh per annum

HR: What is your rationale behind this CTC and how do you justify it?

Fresher: One of my classmates is getting the same CTC and my cousin with same educational qualification is also getting the same CTC

HR: Does it mean that you should also expect the same salary? May be they are more knowledgeable than you.

Fresher: May be, but not that much.

Points to think through:  No employer decides on your CTC based on what your classmate or cousin has got. That is not the basis on which compensation policies are framed. So don’t compare and rather be prepared justify why you expect what you expect.

Qualification is a passport to get an interview and the salary that you aspire to get depends on how you perform in the interview and how employable are you ie., whether you are an employable or trainable candidate.  

You need to take a realistic call on your skills and competencies. For instance, not all the MBAs in a class will get the same CTC. It will differ from one person to the other in the group and the gap could be huge between the highest and lowest offer.  Being in cloud nine without self-awareness will not help.  However, the good part of the story is reality orientation does take place for the candidate after few interviews. When reality does strike hard, one has to fall off the cloud nine.

Moreover, when you start your career as a fresher, you need to be little flexible on the salary front and check out the learning opportunities that can help you build your foundation for a good career.

CTC discussions with experienced candidates: There are candidates who switch over from one company to the other every year and there are candidates who get promoted without any promotions just by hopping jobs.  It may sound funny but I’ve seen such candidates. Cutting the story back to salary expectation, I’ve given below couple of interesting scenarios.

Scenario - 1 (Experienced candidates)

HR: What is your current CTC

Candidate: 5.00 lakhs per annum

HR: What is your expected CTC

Candidate: 10.00 lakh

HR: Do you know your expected CTC increase in terms of percentage?

Candidate: I guess 50%

HR: What is 50% of 5.00 lakh?

Candidate: 2.5 lakhs per annum

HR: So what is your CTC expectation in percentage?

Candidate: I am not sure

HR: That's fine. How do you justify this increase?

Candidate: Because I have 5 years’ experience

HR: But your skill set is not equal to 5 years. You are not working on any niche technology? How do you justify 10 lakhs?

Candidate: My friends with similar experience are getting the same CTC. Why not me.

HR: What is your minimum expected CTC below which you will not join?

Candidate: 10 lakhs per annum

Scenario-2 (Experienced candidates)

HR: What is your current CTC?

Candidate: 5.00 lakhs per annum

HR: What is your expected CTC?

Candidate: 30 -40 % increase

HR: But you've joined your current organization just few months ago and you are quitting now. How do you justify 30-40% % increase within this 5-6 months?

Candidate: It is an industry practice to get minimum 30% when you move from one company to the other company

HR: Where have you heard this from?

Candidate: Of course I know it!

HR: But, out of 6 months, you were on training and bench for almost 3 months. What have you learnt in just 3 months to expect 40% increase?

Candidate: As I said, this is the industry practice. What is wrong in expecting this increase?

HR: OK. So, assume that we hire you with 40% increase and you are leaving us in 5-6 months’ time. Would you expect another 40% increase from your next employer?

Candidate:  Yes. Why not. That's what the industry practice is.

In my next posting, I would write about how one should ideally look at their salary increases.  Do stay connected and watch this space! Happy weekend. 

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JIT - Just In Time

JIT is one of the TQM concept and it stands for Just-In-Time.  JIT advocates alignment of raw material procuring and manufacturing with customers demand. To put it simply, you don’t manufacture cars and then sell. Rather you find out how many cars are to be sold and then you manufacture. The objective is to have zero inventory which means unrealized profit and it’s not good for any Business.  I remember to have read that Toyota was one of the pioneers practicing JIT and I am not sure if they still follow it.

Like JIT, even the feedbacks to employees or team members have to be just on time and it should never be delayed.  That’s what I am going to write about and Let us look at the scenario given below to understand what it really means..

Let us assume that you are a new joiner into an Organization.  You undergo a detailed Boot-camp training and then inducted into live production. The nature of job involves interpreting various data points precisely without any mistakes.

Few days into the production, you are making a mistake, ie., you capture the data as $ 100,000 USD instead of $ 10,000 USD.  Your colleagues says that what you've done is a big mistake and you need to brace yourself for a discussion with your boss.

Day-1 - You are nervous and you are anxiously expecting your boss to call you.  Boss is Busy

Day-2 - You are again nervous and you are anxiously expecting your boss to call you.  Boss is Busy

The entire week goes on and to your surprise, you were never called. So you get to think that, may be, this is not a serious or big mistake and you carry on with your work as usual.

The next week, on Monday, you again make similar kind of mistake. This time, it’s not just one mistake but there are many such mistakes.  What adds fuel to the fire is, it’s already delivered to the Customer and they have come back with a strong feedback.

Your boss really gets irritated and calls you for a discussion and all you get to hear is his strong reaction.  And then he also explain how this mistake could affect the Business.  You come out feeling dejected.

Can you guess what has gone wrong in this scenario?

Wheather the mistake is big or small, you need to give the feedback right away, not after a week.  If you were to talk after a week, it loses its value. You would have to literally remind the employee of his mistake and then give the feedback.

Hit the rod when it’s hot. Give the feedback immediately.

What could have ideally happened?

# The Boss should have called the new joiner without wasting any time and given the feedback immediately.

# Considering that the employee is a new joiner and it’s his first mistake, he should have explained the consequence of his mistake from the customers perspective without strong reaction.  May be with an example as given here – Let say you go to ATM and punch in 5000 and  you obviously expect to get 5000 bucks. But you get only 500 bucks instead of 5000 bucks.  You also notice that by mistake"50000" bucks getting debited from your Account.  It's a matter of just 0s in this transaction. However it makes a big difference. That's how it affect the customers too.    

# Had he given the feedback the very first day and the very first time, it could have put things in the right perspective and probably, the new joiner would not have repeated the mistake.  He would have become lot more serious in his work.

# Reaction after a week can only demotivate especially if it happens to a new employee or fresher

According to Gallup, any feedback or appreciation should be given on time and on an on-going basis.  An employee need not wait for a week or for his appraisal review to get to know what he did well and what he messed up. Any feedback, whether it’s positive or negative, the employee must get to know it then and there.

What do you think of JIT in Human resources? 

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Are you listening?

We are living in a world wherein multi-tasking is the norm and by default, everyone is expected to multi-task, every task literally. There is one school of thought that says multi-tasking is not good since as human being, we are designed to do only one thing at a time more effectively and multitask will dilute the effectiveness or the quality of tasks being multi-tasked. To give an example, you cannot be on the phone while driving. You either drive or stop and talk so you do justice to both 100 per cent. If you have to multi-task both, you either risk your life or others life on the road or you don’t pay enough attention to the other person on the phone. Not all activities need to be as risky as this.  However, there would be consequences, which can be less serious or more serious.

In this article, I am going to write about an interesting incident that I’ve come across recently.

It was appraisal time wherein I needed to collect market data and I called up my friend.   Here goes the conversation that we had.

ME: Hi ABC.. How are you?

ABC – I am good. (Click sound from mouse. And some key board sound) how are you (And some key board sound)

ME: Am also good. Its appraisal time. I need to collect some market data. Can you help me out?

ABC: Sure…(Again ..click. and some key board sound)

ME: Do you have any survey reports ?

ABC: No not done yet. We will be doing it…(Again ..few clicks from the mouse )But …(Again ..few clicks from the mouse ) I’ve got couple of free survey reports (typing sound from key board) which I (mouse clicks) can give it to you ( again some mouse clicks)

Me: Ok. Can we catch up next Friday?

ABC:  A pause in the conversation wherein I could hear mouse clicks and typing sound from key board and then he said No. I am held up this Friday.

Me: I thought he did not listen what I said and repeated next Friday.

ABC:  he said OK. (again some mouse clicks)

I hung up the phone.  Had you been in my shoes, what would you have felt at the end of this telephonic conversation?

Though he could be your friend, I am sure you would have felt little dissatisfied about the conversation. May be you would not be sure if your friend has really understood what you discussed and you would have wished he has listened to you keeping the laptop away for a while.

However, the fact is, most of us do this when we are talking to our friends or our colleagues at workplace or while talking to our clients too.  What we don’t realize is the person on other end can hear you working on your system and it can raise doubts as to if we are really listening to them.  So we are risking our credibility, trust and relationship.

If what is being discussed is something very important, it is certainly going to irritate your college or customer.  If it happens for a couple of times, it’s going to be a sure recipe for a disaster in any relationship.

To conclude, you can risk multi-tasking any task but not listening.

Listening cannot be multi-tasked with anything else since what is at stake is your very credibility.  

So next time when we have conversation with anybody, let us keep ourselves away from the laptop or anything that can distract the conversation.

Remember, Small things do matter. Sometimes, it matters the most.

Are you listening?

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Do you have any questions?

One of the questions that i invariably ask to candidates at the end of the interview discussion is "do you have any questions?".  Having interviewed many candidates, I've come across different kinds of responses and I thought i would talk about them in this posting.  I hope this must help the job seekers (fresher and Jr. candidates) to understand what they should NOT be asking when this question is asked. I mean “Must No-Questions”.

Let us check out some of the interesting questions asked to me when I asked - "Do you have a question?"

Questions related to leaves

# What is your leave policy and will I Be eligible to avail leave?

# Do you work on Saturdays or all Saturdays are off Saturdays?

# Do you provide permission?

Look at these questions and tell me what kind of inference you would make about the candidate.  He has not even joined and he wants to know the leave policy and thinking of his leave plans.  Your chances of coming across as a serious candidate and getting selected is very less.

Questions related to Interview performance

# Do you think I performed well?

# How would you rate my performance on a 5 point rating scale?

# What do you think are my strengths and weaknesses?

# How is my communication skill?

The intention is good and it's appreciated.  However, it's the other way of asking the interviewer to hint if they would select you or not.  With all the questions asked and the responses given by you in the interview discussion, you should be able to self-introspect and see what you did well, what you messed up and what you need to improve.  It's for the interviewee or the interview candidate to do it and don’t expect the interviewer to give you feedback on this.  So these are also the questions that need to be avoided.

Questions related to the Organization

# Can you tell me about your company?

# May I know something about your company?

# What is your company doing ? what is the Business you are into?

Any prospective candidate is expected to some homework and get to know something about the Organization before showing up for interview. If it's not done, you are not serious enough.  I've seen both fresher and experienced candidates failing here.  In case you had already checked the website and you are raising doubts, it's fine. Otherwise, it’s not a good idea to ask the interviewer to give you a brief about the company. 

Questions related to study holidays / exams leaves.

# I am planning to do my Post-graduation / higher education. Will you give long leave for my studies and exam?

# Can I get a month leave for my exam preparation?

Different companies have different policies on higher education. However, when you take up a job, your first priority should be job and you can pursue higher education as long as you can strike a balance between your job priorities and higher education. You will not get holidays or long leaves for studies and exams that you would have got as a student. Limited no. of leaves are fine.  No organization would want to hire a candidate who looks at the job as a second priority or stop- gap arrangement.  Let us practicable.

Questions on selection

# Am I selected ?

# Will you select me?

#Am I  good enough to work in your Organization?

# I like to work in your company. Can you pls. select me?

If you are selected, you would get to hear.  It's as simple as that. It is fine to ask when you will announce the result or when I will get to know my interview status. But don’t press the panic button and ask any of the above questions.

Questions related to salary?

# When is my next salary increase?

# How much increase would I get?

# When will I get my salary?

No one does job for charity and end of the day, money matters.  However, these questions don’t show you in good light.  

Some of the good questions I’ve been asked

# How long have you been working here ? What has been your carreer growth?

# What will be my career growth?

# What kind of projects you do and in which project i would get to work?

This shows candidates' career orientation, achievement orientation, learning orientation and commitment to grow along with the company.  These are some of the good questions that you can think of asking.

If you don’t have anything to ask, it's better to leave rather than asking something for a sake of asking and losing your chances of getting the job. 

Remember, you may ask something wrong out of ignorance. But Ignorance is not accepted in life.

So do you have any questions?

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Proactive Escalation

In this posting, I am going to write about what proactive escalation with few examples. Let us check out.

Let us assume that you are boarding a Bus in the morning to reach your office.  The Bus is little crowded and however, after few stops, luckily you get a seat.  I know how it feels like in Chennai public transport. A great relief.  After few minutes, you hear a ticking sound right under your seat. Out of curiosity, when you look down, you are shocked to see a bomb that's ticking to go off in the next few hours, let us say, 4 hour. 

If you were to be in this situation, pls. let me what would you do?

1)  4 hours means plenty of time and I don’t have to inform right away. I think I can inform later after reaching your office.

2) I would get down in the next 30 min so it's not my problem. Somebody else can notify it to the Bus conductor or the concerned authorities

3)  Just ignore the bomb and go ahead as if I’ve noticed nothing unusual

4)  Inform the Bus conductor / driver & concerned authorities immediately without wasting any time and get the passengers out of the Bus on war-footing.

The answer is obviously 4. 

Though there could be 4 hours, I don’t think we would wait till the last minute to put it off.  We would react immediately so there is enough to put off the ticking bomb.

Even in real work environment, there could be serious issues cropping up (similar to the ticking bomb) and any executive or Manager is first of all expected to assess / anticipate such issues which are like potential bombs much before it causes any damage. That's what I call it as proactive escalation.  There is no point in doing an escalation or alerting the Manager in the last minute wherein you or your Manager cannot do anything. This leads to a crisis situation and you need to do fire-fighting instead of acting proactively.  Doing anything after the issue has happened is only a post-mortem and it’s of no use.

Scenario-1: Let say that you are a rec executive and you need to onboard a 40 fresher in 4 weeks’ time (TAT).  So you need to select on an average 11 candidates every week considering drop-outs so you would have selected 44 candidates end of 4 weeks.  Four can be factored for probably drop-outs.  When you see that the candidates turnout less that what you would usually have and you could select only 10 end of the 2nd week, it's important to escalate it to your Manager immediately so it gives another 2 weeks’ time for you and your managers to plan and salvage the situation. If the issue is not assessed proactively, and escalation is done in the 4th week, it's not going to help.  It's like waiting for the bomb to tick till the last minute instead of informing it immediately.

Scenario-2:  Let us say you are a Supervisor responsible for product delivery (which could be IT or any ITes services etc.) that happens on a fortnightly basis. When you face unplanned high absenteeism for few days or drop out (attrition) of few important team members, it's likely to affect the quality and TAT or on time delivery. When you are in such a situation, it's critical to assess the likely impact immediately and escalate it proactively to your Manager. If it’s not done, it would leave you and your Manager with very less time to do anything and it will not help. 

Transferring Monkey to other’s / Boss’s shoulder: It's just not proactive escalation. We also need to recommend possible solutions or suggestions.  If we just escalate and sit back leaving it to the boss to figure out what needs to be done, it's like transferring the monkey from our shoulder to our Boss's shoulder and that's not an effective problem solving.

In the first scenario, the possible suggestions that we may give could be Participating in job fairs that are happening / releasing newspaper ads / planning the recruitment drives on weekends so we could attract more candidates and it also leaves us with more days within the TAT time / Off-campus drives etc.,  In the second scenario, the possible suggestions could be identifying similar talent or skills from the other teams within the Organization/ or talking to the customer for doing the delivery in 2 phases rather than delivering everything with quality issues etc.,  The point is, let us not transfer the monkey to other's shoulders and keep quite. That is not the right approach.

Remember, wherever and whenever you see a likely potential issue, it could be like a bomb ticking and you need to defuse it by proactive escalation.

Proactive escalation is one the important traits that every executive / Manager should necessarily have to be effective in their roles and to be successful in the career.

So let us be proactive. 

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Being humble-IV

Here goes one more posting on being Humble and my thoughts on why it’s important to be humble.

Is it difficult to be Humble?

Mohammed Ali once said, it's hard to be humble, when you're as great as I am.  This was when he was at the peak of his career. Does it not look like it’s tough to be humble especially when you are very successful?  However, as told by Swami Dayananda Saraswathi, being successful is all about being in the right place, in the right time with the right person and doing the right thing.  So given the right opportunity, even the so called less privileged can also be as successful as anyone. 

BTW, Mohammed Ali later said that a man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. So all are equal and if we are successful in our life, he should thank the opportunities that we’ve got in our life and keep our feet on ground and respect others and be humble. 

We are going to die:  No one gets out of this life journey alive (Dan Rockwell).  Whoever we are and however big we are, time is going to wither us and all of us are going die and leave this World.  We are mortals. Period.  When we are alive, we do not think of this.  But, if we think of this, it will put everything in the right perspective for us in our life.

As Stephen Covey says, when we die, what we would want our people to talk about us should help us prioritize our life values and the way we should live.  To give an example, the inventor of Dynamite, Alfred B. Nobel got to read his own obituary when a newspaper, by mistake, published his obituary news when he was alive.  The Newspaper called him as a man who made it possible to kill more people more easily than anyone else ever lived. So he realized that this was how he was going to be remembered and he did want to be remembered that way. The rest is a history that he created Nobel Prize which is still continuing.

How humble are we in our day-to-day life shows what we really are:   Let us look at how we carry ourselves in our day-to-day life. Few examples given below.

The Picture says it ALL

# When we go to a Hotel or restaurant and there is a delay in getting the food  how do we react to them? I still remember a situation where a customer reacted very baldy to a waiter for the delay. Though he left the place with a big tip, there is no price for the bad treatment that was meted out to the waiter.

# How do we treat our office assistants and office boys? Do we treat them with respect that every human being deserves? Do we know their names?

# When our security says good morning, do we respond to them? If we do, do we respond the way we would respond to our friends or boss? Do we greet them first at least once in a while?

It’s not how we treat our boss who has got every say in our career. It’s not how we treat someone who is superior to us.  It’s how we treat people below us who probably cannot do anything. Humble people, be it a boss, an employee or any professional, are the ones who would be always be liked and respected.

Let us be humble. 

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