Good things I have learnt from my past managers

Change the circumstances and the same people will behave differently.

It is not the people but the circumstances which create the problem.

Separate the people from the problem.

What would I do if I am a chef of a restaurant and I have customers who are waiting eagerly for a meal? I would put some onion and start frying it. The smell would tell the customers that something is cooking and their patience level would rise. This would give me time to prepare what they want.

I can show you the path, but I cannot walk for you.

Why do I reject lots of resumes?

Some time back, I have been assigned the responsiblity to scan resumes for Linux requirements in our BU. The Human Resource team sends me a list of resumes which they believe should suit the profile, I go through them and then give my feedback to them. In the feedback, I am supposed to suggest to them about the candidates with whom we should go in for a telephonic interview. A thing which I had not been noticing and was brought to my notice by an E-Mail was that I was rejecting a lot of resumes at the initial scanning stage itself. Now that makes the job of the HR more tough because it means they need to get even more resumes. I was asked the reason on why I reject so many of the resumes. That made me think about what we are focused on.

I am working for the Wireless BU of a semiconductor company which is responsible for delivering sample network drivers for different BUS interfaces in Linux kernel and also other Embedded Operating Systems.

The above line summarizes the logic on the basis of which I shortlist candidates for telephonic interviews:

1. Wireless
2. Network Drivers
   
3. BUS Interfaces
4. Linux Kernel
5. Embedded Experience
6. Operating Systems

If the resume matches 6 out of 6 criteria, then he / she is my first priority. If the resumes matches 5 out of 6, I still shortlist them. Anything lesser would not do.

I am very much inspired by the following excerpt while shortlisting people (and I would be even more choosy if I had to run my own company):

An important thing to remember about interviewing is this: it is much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate. A bad candidate will cost a lot of money and effort and waste other people's time fixing all their bugs. If you have any doubts whatsoever, No Hire.

For more details about the article, refer to The Guerilla Guide To Interviewing

And I Quote :)

How many times have you heard this quote doing the office rounds?

"Please do not tell it to anybody"

The end result of the rumour mills working overtime is that

"Everyone knows everything but no one knows anything"

Someone resigns and no one knows it
Someone does not resign, still everyone believes he / she has
Someone is promoted and no one knows it
Someone gets a new job responsibility and no one knows it

Did the Google Guys listen to me?

In my post "This is not fair" I had raised a question on Googles ability to search my posts properly. I had started adding a Category to each of my posts to make the search of the posts easier, but unfortunately the keyword search wasn't working properly. In the post, I had requested Google team (hmmmm, do they read all these posts or is it just sheer co-incidence) to check why it wasn't working? Now, they have introduced the CATEGORY FEATURE in the Beta version of Blogger. THANKS GOOGLE :)

Lage Raho Munnabhai

Director: Rajkumar Hirani

Theatre: Liberty, New Delhi

Date: 2nd September, 2006

Khosla Ka Ghosla

Director: Dibakar Banerjee

Theatre: PVR Spice, Noida

Date: 7th October, 2006

Dialogue: Jaisi bimaari waisa ilaaj

DOR


Director: Nagesh Kukunoor

Theatre: Shakuntalam

Date: 8th October, 2006