Using Twitter for Recruiting !

With more than 55 million tweets a day, many accuse Twitter, the micro blogging site, of being a drain on productivity. But that’s a misconception you had better not encourage. In fact, scores of companies have piggy-backed on the popular communication tool to build some wonderful productivity apps.

What makes these companies tick is Twitter’s open ended framework that provides users with endless possibilities within the 140-character limit. Using this structure, people have simply begun building conduits and pipes to connect to the service to perform various day-to-day tasks.

Instant sharing, of course, is the central idea behind micro blogging. And built around this capability are tools such as Twit-Pic .com and Twitter share .com that lets you swap photos and other digital media with friends and family. For those into software programming, for instance, a Twitter-based services on Snipt.org allows the sharing of snippets of code.

Spun from the same fundamental concept of sharing, there are sites such as TweetMyJobs.com and TwitJobSearch.com. These have turned Twitter’s limited format of short, text-based announcements into a front-end for employers to promote their job openings, and for jobseekers to search for those jobs. Since Twitter is as real time as it gets, there is a perception amongst jobseekers that career openings show up here before they hit the traditional online jobsites such as Monster or Naukri.

Think regular news sites give dated stories? Microblog-based applications can help. Take, for instance, Tweetnews.appspot.com, a brainchild of Yahoo BOSS engineer Vik Singh. This app simply takes Yahoo’s news results and compares them to emerging topics on Twitter. In short, it uses topics that are most popular on Twitter as an index for determining the importance of different news stories.

Other similar sites that use Twitter trends to sort top world news include TwitScoop.com and Twittersphere .com. The Twitter trend finder gives them an edge over the algorithm-based ranking systems, such as Google News, by offering faster updates and better relevance, Twitscoop claims.

Twestival.com is another example wherein people have piggybacked on the microblogging framework to organise events to raise money for charity. The site claims to have already organised more than 150 offline events across the world, and raised over $1.2 million within 14 months.

On the hardware side, businesses are making use of the ubiquity of Twitter to keep you connected with your home appliances. Botanicalls.com, for example, has a Twitter-enabled hardware kit that lets your home plants ask for water every time the moisture level in the soil dips.

The DIY assembly kit has a tiny moisture sensor attached to a circuit board with an Ethernet port that connects to your internet. After you have the system in place, you just need to place the sensor into your plant’s soil. This keeps tabs on the moisture level, and once it drops below a certain range, the system sends you a tweet saying your plants are thirsty.

On a similar principle, IBM’s Andy Stanford-Clark claims to have hacked into his home electricity meter to tweet energy usage. If you follow his tweets (www.twitter.com/ andy_house), you can see in real time when Stanford-Clark turns his lights off or whether he has an unusually high electricity usage on a particular day. Updates are sent via sensors in the home, and the system uses IBM middleware to connect to the service.

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Employee Retention Strategies to curb attrition

Bangalore: Desperate to rein in high attrition levels, India’s top information technology (IT) firms are offering mid-term hikes, promotions and even restricted stock (shares that are locked in for a fixed period before they can be sold) to keep employees from hopping on to rival companies.

Most IT firms had cut perks and frozen salary hikes during the downturn of 2008-09 as business from customers had slowed.

But with the economy improving in the US—the largest market for Indian IT firms—customers are offshoring more work to save costs and remain competitive.

Graphic: Paras Jain; photo: Madhu Kapparath/Mint

To meet this spurt in demand, IT firms are scouting for experienced employees who can deliver quality codes to their customers.

Much of this requirement is at the three- to seven-year experience level, the segment where most IT firms are losing employees.

Some “85-90% of IT-ITeS (IT and IT-enabled service) companies now are looking at off-cycle compensation-related interventions such as retention bonuses, off-cycle salary increases and equity-based incentives to control this situation,” said Sandeep Chaudhary, performance rewards consulting practice, South and West Asia, for US human resource consultancy Hewitt Associates.

Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second largest IT firm, has given two salary raises —8% and 13-17%—since October. In June, it gave at least five shares to each employee to commemorate the beginning of its 30th year.

These measures, though, haven’t cured it of its troubles yet. In the June quarter, Infosys lost 15.8% of its employees—its highest attrition since 2002.

Chief executive officer S. Gopalakrishnan isn’t daunted. “We expect attrition to subside in the next two to three quarters” as the churn settles in the industry, he said.

Wipro Ltd, the third largest IT firm in the country, gave promotions to 20,000 employees earlier in July—more than double its typical number in a year—and handed out restricted stocks (securities locked in for five years) to 8,000-9,000 middle and senior managers.

“Typically, promotions are given to 7-8% of the workforce,” says Saurabh Govil, senior vice-president, human resources, at Wipro Technologies, the firm’s IT services arm that has some 112,925 employees.

“Steep hikes are not the only answer,” he said. Staff would also be given options to work onsite or in different roles. Wipro’s attrition in the June quarter was 23%.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s (TCS) attrition at 13.1% was the lowest among the big three. India’s largest IT firm gave promotions and average wage hikes of 10% in April, after a gap of one year. Its focus now is on non-monetary components: rotating jobs more often, not just within projects but across technologies, verticals and locations; and encouraging more first-time managers to take up people management courses.

“Retention is the focus today,” said Ajoy Mukherjee, vice-president and head of global human resources at TCS.

He ruled out a mid-term pay hike, but the variable pay component distributed every quarter, he said, would help retain people.

Chaudhary, too, does not favour excessive hikes. “While compensation may seem to be the most obvious cause of the current attrition, excessive usage of compensation-related interventions is not recommended as this will actually intensify the problem of wage inflation.”

The IT biggies, meanwhile, are adding to the churn in the industry.

Infosys has raised its hiring forecast for fiscal 2011 to 36,000 from the 30,000 it announced in April. TCS plans to hire 40,000 people. And at least a third of these hires would be experienced professionals from rival firms.

poornima.m@livemint.com

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Offshoring creating more jobs in India

Offshoring and outsourcing in services from call centres to accountancy and medicine have created good jobs in terms of pay and working hours in developing countries, according to a study published on Monday.

But the International Labour Organization (ILO) study found that improved work practices in the outsourcing industry could reduce excessive rates of staff turnover.

The study gives the lie to claims that outsourcing of such work has created "cyber-coolies" or "electronic sweatshops", said Jon Messenger, an ILO researcher and main editor of the study.

"The jobs being created in offshore business services in developing countries are reasonably good quality jobs by local standards in terms of wages and working conditions," he said.

The book looks at outsourcing in the two biggest markets, India and the Philippines, and two growing Latin American centres, Brazil and Argentina.

A study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) last year found the global market for information technology-enabled services was about $54 billion in 2008. The industry includes companies such as India's Infosys Technologies (INFY.BO) and Wipro (WIPR.BO).

100 PCT TURNOVER

Wages are below those for similar jobs in rich countries -- one of the main motives for companies to outsource operations -- but average pay in the sector in India is nearly double that in other areas of the formal economy, the ILO study found.

In the Philippines they were typically 53 per cent higher.

The study found that average weekly hours were 46-47 hours in India and 45 in the Philippines, whereas one fifth of workers in developing countries work more than 50 hours a week.

But negative factors such as frequent night work to handle customers' different time zones, and demanding targets enforced by electronic monitoring resulting in a low level of worker autonomy, led to extremely high levels of staff turnover.

Sometimes the turnover rate in the typically young and well-educated workforce could exceed 100 per cent a year, and rates of 30-40 per cent are not unusual.

"A few key changes in policies and practices could actually make these good jobs even better while simultaneously helping to reduce staff turnover which would benefit businesses," Messenger told a briefing.

These could include steps to improve health and safety for night workers, such as regular check-ups, and more flexibility for workers to organise their time and to meet targets.

Naj Ghosheh, an ILO researcher and the other editor of the book, said governments would want the industries to develop and innovate to move up the value chain rather than simply replicating imported processes. They would also want to retain skilled workers at home rather than encouraging them to emigrate.

The industry is highly influenced by language skills, with India and the Philippines serving English-speaking countries, Argentina serving Spain and Mexico building up operations to serve Spanish-speakers in the United States.

Africa is relatively underdeveloped although Nigeria's computer-literate population gives it potential.

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Why Employees leave Job ?

Do you get into the office without a plan of action for the day? Are you not being rewarded for your efforts? Does your boss often pull you down and embarrass you in front of colleagues?

If any or all of these ring true, it might be time to shake things up.

Here are 10 signs that could indicate that it’s time for you to move on – either from your current job function or from your organization – to other adventures.

1. Social networking but not working

Are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter taking up more of your working day than preparing that PowerPoint presentation? If your company doesn’t allow access to these sites, perhaps your energies are focused on finding proxy sites which allow you to access sites that have been blocked by your company.

Or, do you simply dread coming to office and wait for the day to end quickly?

If this happens some days a week, then maybe you simply need a holiday. “But if one spends more than a month populating Farmville on Facebook, then yes, it’s stagnation and you need to move on,” says Purvi Sheth, chief executive officer of Mumbai management consulting firm Shilpusti Consultants.

2. Been there, done that

If your job has become so routine or monotonous that you can do most of it without thinking much, what are you doing in it? Essentially, you are not learning much or growing in that role, so you won’t be able to stay motivated for long. “Careers are not ponds, they are streams; they have got to be going somewhere from somewhere,” says Dony Kuriakose, director of Delhi-based recruitment firm Edge Executive Search Pvt. Ltd. “If you’re not moving, you’re dead in the water.”

Remember that if you have become too complacent and start taking the company for granted, your employer will soon recognize that, putting your role in jeopardy.

3. Not challenged enough

This is related to the point above. But if you feel that your organization is not giving you the right exposure or a challenging enough position, you could end up becoming very frustrated. “Take the initiative of engaging with (your) employer and…ask for more responsibilities,” says Pankaj Arora, managing director of Protiviti Consulting Pvt. Ltd, a business consulting and audit firm. If that doesn’t work, look for challenges elsewhere within or outside your organization.

4. Unmet goals

You want to become a team leader or a business head but your employer is moving you around into different departments without really promoting you. “It is time for you to move on when you feel your career objectives are not being met or fulfilled by your employer,” says Ms. Sheth.

5. Too big for your shoes

You were good at your first job, so you were promoted to the next level and the next level and so on. But now you have reached a position which is too much for you to handle. This is popularly referred to as the Peter Principle which states that in a hierarchy, employees rise to a level of their incompetence.

Either you need to re-skill and reinvent yourself pretty quickly to survive in that role or you need to move into another position which is a better fit for you.

6. Closed to change

Today’s organizations are nimble on their feet and are often changing their processes or businesses to meet delivery and cost pressures. If you can’t handle that change because you are too set in your ways, you could end up getting left behind. Or, maybe you don’t agree with your organization’s changes at a philosophical or an ethical level. “There are certain reasons why you work at a place and there are certain things that enthuse you,” says Mr. Kuriakose. “If those core issues change and you suddenly find that you’re working for a place that you wouldn’t have joined” it might be time to rethink.

7. Politics over mechanics

Every organization has politics and it’s smart to keep on top of major changes as well as the movers and shakers of your organization. But if your professional relationships at work have become so entangled and complicated that they are keeping you from your work, that’s a problem. Don’t let politics become more important to you than the mechanics of your job.

8. You’ve been overlooked — again

Are your batch mates from school and college more successful than you are? Or is your company promoting people with less experience and fewer achievements above you? Figure out why that is happening. If they’re working harder and are smarter than you, then consider adding to whatever skills are keeping you from that next job. But if your company is overlooking you, then it might be time to go where you get more recognition.

9. Don’t want your boss’s job?

We typically envy our bosses not only for their higher salaries but also for the responsibility and authority they command. But if you don’t aspire to be in your boss’s position at some time in the future, then it’s time to look around and reconsider your career plans. You can’t stay in your current position forever. Not everyone has to be the top dog, but a career path that promises advancement and satisfaction is a good road to be on.

10. Evil thoughts about your boss?

Ok, so all of us have some evil thoughts about our bosses every now and then. That’s normal. If you hate him or her as a person, deal with it. But if your professional relationship is troubled, then you have a problem. “You have to work with all kinds of people,” says Mr. Kuriakose. However, a boss who is always pulling you down, and maybe embarrassing you in front of colleagues, could be harmful for your morale and progress. Time for some introspection and perhaps an exit strategy.

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Where are the jobs ? Banking

Till 2007 almost 53% of the new hiring took place in this space and it was also the sector which was hit big time in the last season on account of lower credit off-take and the overall recessionary sentiment around it.

“The sector is now witnessing between 8 and 10 new players (health insurance, general insurance, NBFCs, and banking entities). This, coupled with a depressed hiring over the last year and announcement of over one lakh vacancies in the PSU banks, is likely to fuel hiring,” says Alok Bansal, CEO, Alethia Education Services.

Some of the private sector players such as Yes Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI, SCB are back in the market looking for young workforce. Most insurance companies are also in the fray and are changing the way they looked at hiring in the past.

Hiring talent from tier 2 and tier 3 cities is also on the rise. They believe that it will help them reach these towns easily and also help in managing attrition. New players, especially in the health insurance segment and with their aggressive targets, are likely to fuel hiring growth here.

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Where are the jobs ? BPO

BPO Sector

A sector largely hit by the recessionary trends and the near collapse of the US economy had put a freeze on hiring.

“The same sector in the hay days hired from every possible place and background fuelling a mushrooming of the placement and training business and also ensured that the overall entry level salaries showed an unexpected and irrational jump. This is the sector which also is back in action in terms of recruitments. Some of the bigger BPOs like Genpact, IBM etc have once again announced a carefully-drawn plan to hire,” informs Mr Bansal.

The list of KPOs operating in India has also shown an expected jump. Companies in their bid to retain their share of the outsourcing market have upgraded their setups and are now gradually moving up the value chain. More and more companies are looking at young engineering and other technical graduates to beef their teams to provide high end knowledge services to their clients, be it the stock analysis, GPRS, high-end business analytics, financial modeling or forex trading. This sector is back at the campuses.

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Behavioral Interview - Guidelines

What is a behavioral interview? Behavioral based interviewing is interviewing based on discovering how the interviewee acted in specific employment-related situations. The logic is that how you behaved in the past will predict how you will behave in the future i.e. past performance predicts future performance.

Traditional Interview vs. Behavioral Interview

In a traditional interview, you will be asked a series of questions which typically have straight forward answers like "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" or "What major challenges and problems did you face? How did you handle them?" or "Describe a typical work week."

In a behavioral interview, an employer has decided what skills are needed in the person they hire and will ask questions to find out if the candidate has those skills. Instead of asking how you would behave, they will ask how you did behave. The interviewer will want to know how you handled a situation, instead of what you might do in the future.

Questions in a Behavioral Interview

Behavioral interview questions will be more pointed, more probing and more specific than traditional interview questions:

• Give an example of an occasion when you used logic to solve a problem.
• Give an example of a goal you reached and tell me how you achieved it.
• Describe a decision you made that was unpopular and how you handled implementing it.
• Have you gone above and beyond the call of duty? If so, how?
• What do you do when your schedule is interrupted? Give an example of how you handle it.
• Have you had to convince a team to work on a project they weren't thrilled about? How did you do it?
• Have you handled a difficult situation with a co-worker? How?
• Tell me about how you worked effectively under pressure.

Follow-up questions will also be detailed. You may be asked what you did, what you said, how you reacted or how you felt.

Preparation for the Potential Behavioral Interview

What's the best way to prepare? It's important to remember that you won't know what type of interview will take place until you are sitting in the interview room. So, prepare answers to traditional interview questions.

Then, since you don't know exactly what situations you will be asked about if it's a behavioral interview, refresh your memory and consider some special situations you have dealt with or projects you have worked on. You may be able to use them to help frame responses. Prepare stories that illustrate times when you have successfully solved problems or performed memorably. The stories will be useful to help you respond meaningfully in a behavioral interview.

Finally, review the job description, if you have it, or the job posting or ad. You may be able to get a sense of what skills and behavioral characteristics the employer is seeking from reading the job description and position requirements. Take a look at what employers are advised about developing the job posting for a behavioral interview on the About Human Resources site.

During the Behavioral Interview

During the interview, if you are not sure how to answer the question, ask for clarification. Then be sure to include these points in your answer:

• A specific situation
• The tasks that needed to be done
• The action you took
• The results i.e. what happened

It's important to keep in mind that there are no right or wrong answers. The interviewer is simply trying to understand how you behaved in a given situation. How you respond will determine if there is a fit between your skills and the position the company is seeking to fill. So, listen carefully, be clear and detailed when you respond and, most importantly, be honest. If your answers aren't what the interviewer is looking for, this position may not be the best job for you anyway.

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Best Companies to Work For - Survey Methodology ital

Why do we work for the company we work for? Is it because the company gives us the highest salary we can command? And a career profile that best suits our abilities? And a career prospect that best fits our aspirations? And training and mentorship to enhance our skills and confidence? ...the list can go on and on. In reality, getting all of these in one company would mean getting a dream job. That may be an unrealistic target to set for ourselves.

But we can surely aim for a good job. For the past eight years Business Today, along with survey and knowledge partners, have been bringing you an annual listing of India's Best Companies To Work For. The exercise goes much beyond just the listings. In the process of arriving at our rankings we have also tried to highlight and analyse the best HR practices and how they have evolved in India. This year's survey takes a huge leap in this direction it not only captures a much larger number of companies, but also reveals several facets of HR as it is practised by India Inc.

The superior outcome of this year's survey wasn't exactly in our minds when we first thought of drastically overhauling the methodology sometime in the middle of 2009. That we should be reviewing some of our processes had occurred to us while concluding our last year's survey that appeared in BT dated January 25, 2009. While reporting on companies we came across certain discrepancies in the data that companies had provided during the course of the survey and what they were sharing with us after the survey results were ready.

It wasn't that companies were misleading us through gold plating of data, but due to regional and inter-temporal variations in ratios like attrition rate, promotion ratio and training budget, the data recorded in the survey and that in the reporting were beginning to differ. While we could have found ways to fix this, the occurrence of variations made us wonder if there is a totally different way to arriving at The Best Companies To Work For.

A new way that not only helps address the discrepancies, but also settles some other outstanding issues like:

* Enlarging the scope of the study to include more companies.

* Identifying sector-specific best employers, in addition to the overall best employers.

* Getting out of the participation route, which exposes the study to a situation where a company can simply opt out.

* Getting more ''public'' data in the past companies would share lots of information only if we promise not to publish.

To address all these, and some more issues, the consensus was to make the study a ''by the employee, of the employee'' kind. That is, instead of reaching out to companies, we reach out to employees directly, asking them about the best employers based on a structured questionnaire.

We could then also ask them about what they think constitutes a good HR practice, what would make them quit their existing job (both the pull and the push factors), which company according to them is India's best employer (not only in their sector, but also overall). This way, among other things, we would be able to test the true HR equity of a company across the entire employee landscape. And, after all, a company's HR is only as good as its current, past and future (potential) employees think it to be.

But setting on this course would require committing to certain big tasks. Like reaching out to as large a set of employee base as is possible (we achieved close to 9,000); designing a questionnaire that captures all the nuances of HR, and yet is short and simple enough for maximum number of people to easily respond to; using a technology platform that allows us to reach out to people across regions, age, professions, functions; monitoring the survey process to ensure that dummy and motivated responses are not filled in that would skew results.

All this meant choosing a survey partner that has expertise and demonstrated comfort in conducting such surveys. We chose Indicus Analytics, a partner in several studies with our group's flagship publication India Today, as also with BT. For the design of the questionnaire and to help us interpret the results, we partnered with PeopleStrong, an HR consultancy.

The results of this year's study match most of the expectations we had. We have more companies, we have some of India's biggest employers and we have made a beginning towards sector-specific best employers. While details of the results and philosophy of the study have been dealt with elsewhere in this package of cover stories, a few more words on our approach to the study are in order.

The Approach: Internet was chosen as the media for the survey. This was because online research is known to get more honest opinions, as the employee reveals his views without the company ''watching over his/her shoulder'' The employee reveals preferences about the work environment in his own company, and also of other companies that he knows about, either from past experience, or from the experiences of his colleagues. In addition, tie-ups with rediff.com, advertisements with Google.com, as well as other online entities such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter were utilised for ensuring a wide coverage.

To ensure data authenticity, a threepronged check was done. One, at the questionnaire level itself several inter-connected questions were incorporated, and contradictions were identified. Such responses were rejected. Two, a verification back-check of about 30 per cent of the accepted responses was carried out by calling up respondents and re-administering part of the questionnaire.

Additionally, on analysing the data, cases of collusion (respondents of a single organisation attempting to get their organisations up on rankings) were identified based on comparable responses by persons working in the same industry and rejected if highly divergent opinions were received. One case was found where employees at a maufacturer colluded to give higher rankings. This company was excluded from this year's survey. The overall response rejection was under 5 per cent. Only those dimensions are being reported for which sample sizes were significant (at least 150).

Data Analysis: The survey questionnaire had two parts, the main survey and the demographic data. Using the two in conjunction, various slices of specific segments were constructed. Standard accepted statistical analysis tools were used for analysis. The key analysis (that of importance of 6 parameters), which involved converting importance rating to relative weights is described in the box If You Like Statistics. In step two of the analysis (rating of own company), scores were converted into linear scales ranging from very low to very high.

In case of ranking of companies, a single company was to be nominated by a respondent and percentage nominations within a segment was the basis for ranking. In case of factors that attract and factors that cause dissatisfaction, respondents were asked to rank the top 3. The overall ranking was computed by assigning higher weights to higher ranks. The analysis was sliced for various segments of respondents age, experience, geography, gender, functional area, size of company worked for, type of company worked for, industry sectors, salary levels etc. a total of nearly 80 segments with significant samples.

The data this year's survey generated was so much that we aren't sure if we have done full justice to it. But this is only our ninth year (BT'S Best Employer survey is India's oldest). Sure that this new methodology is the way forward, next year we will return with an even bigger and more comprehensive survey, which will reach even blue-collared employees. If you still have doubts and questions on our methodology we will be happy to address them. Just write to us on bt@intoday.com Also, do log on to www.businesstoday.in for further details on the new methodology and a look at previous years' methodology.

The Old and The New

Earlier

* Company participation was voluntary they could drop out if they wished.

* The rankings were based on weights across factors like HR processes, views of stakeholders and employees.

* Company universe not large enough to arrive at more than 10 Best Companies To Work For.

Now

* No direct company participation sought. Only employee participation obtained.

* Rankings are based on what employees think about employers present, past and future.

* Universe big enough to arrive at 25 best companies and some sector-specific best companies.

If you like statistics

Use of standard multiple regression to arrive at weights: The idea behind standard multiple regression is the same as simple linear regression (Y=a+bx), except that you have several independent variables (typically X1 to Xn instead of just X) predicting the dependent variable (Y). In our context we wanted to predict dependent variable ''overall satisfaction'' Y) from independent variables like ''career and personal growth''x1), ''Prestige /Company reputation''x2), ''Training/ Coaching/ Mentoring''(x3), ''Financial compensation and benefits''(x4), ''Good job content (efficient and less stressful)''(x5) and ''Merit-based performance evaluation''(x6). The equation is built by using all the rating scores given by all the respondents for each of the above variables. Our equation is Y=a+bx1+cx2+dx3+ex5+fx6.

How much of the variance of ''Overall Satisfaction'' was accounted for by the joint predictive power of knowing a person's satisfaction with all the 6 independent areas of employee satisfaction? This value is denoted by R Square, which was 0.678. Best model fits are in the same range of 0.7 to 0.8. Does the model allow you to predict ''overall satisfaction''at a rate better than chance? This is denoted by the significance level of the overall F of the model, in our case 0.005. If the significance is .05 (or less), then the model is considered significant. In other words, there is only a 5 in a 100 chance (or less) that there really is not a relationship between ''overall satisfaction'' and other independent variables.

WHAT WE ASKED

Respondents were asked the following distinct sets of questions:

Rate the company you work for on six key factors and 18 supplementary factors (The Six Key Factors).

1. Career and personal growth

2. Prestige/ Company reputation

3. Training/ Coaching/ Mentoring

4. Financial compensation and benefits

5. Good job content

6. Merit-based performance evaluation

18 supplementary factors that further elaborated on the above six factors.

Factors that attract employees

What are the key factors in a new job offer that would make you change your current job? There were 9 factors and each respondent selected the number 1, 2 and 3. All other factors were unranked.

Factors that cause discontent

What are the key factors in the current job which can cause you to search for new jobs? There were 9 factors again and each respondent selected the number 1, 2 and 3. All other factors were unranked.

Would you recommend your company as a good place to work

The statement ''I would recommend our company as a place to work in to people who trust me for advice'' was posed to the respondents. They were then asked to respond as Very Strongly, Strongly, Yes, To some people, No.

Rank the Best Company to work for Overall

Respondents were asked to nominate a single company or organisation across industries as the best place to work in.

Ranking the Best Company to work for within your industry

Respondents were asked to nominate a single company/organisation within their industries as the best place to work in.

WHO WE ASKED

A total of 8,742 respondents participated in the survey.

Demographic composition:

* 800 Urban Centres

* 86 per cent Male

* 72 per cent Chief Wage Earners of Households

* 28 per cent greater than33 Years, 48 per cent less than28 Years

* 19 per cent PGD, MBA, PhD, Professional

* 12 per cent Non-Graduate, 69 per cent Graduate

* 40 per cent with Children, 43 per cent Never Married

* 15 per cent Mumbai, Mumbai suburbs and Pune

* 14 per cent NCR, 24 per cent from Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad

* 16 per cent Senior Management, 32 per cent Middle Management

* 32 per cent greater than10 Years' Experience, 19 per cent less than3 Years

* 4.4 per cent Salary greater than 12 L, 63 per cent less than 4.4 L

* 27 per cent from MNC, 40 per cent Indian Private Sector

* 14 per cent PSU, 7.5 per cent Govt

* Over 1,000 organisations

Sector composition:

* 10.2 per cent BFSI

* 14.2 per cent Softeare

* 6.7 per cent Education, training and consulting

* 9.3 per cen ITES

* 10.3 per cent Service

* 17.3 per cent Manufacturing

* 5.7 per cent Core sector

* 4.4 per cent Telecom

* 4.2 per cent Health

* 17.1 per cent Others

HOW WE ASKED

* 80 per cent from online panel of over 100,000 regularly tested and authenticated respondents

* 20 per cent from open promotions

* 30 per cent back checks and verification

PROMOTIONS

* E-mails to companies

* Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, others

* BT magazine and web site

* SMS alerts

* Regular panel mobilisation

* Incentives

The survey was open to participation from September 15 to November 30, 2009

Source : BT

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Best Company to Work For - RCom

Scale in any business, they teach you at business schools, is meaningless if it is not matched with productivity. Being in the hypergrowth telecom business, Reliance Communications, or RCom, has seen customer demand soar as at other phone firms. How it has dovetailed that growth with employee aspirations is what makes its story different.

RCom, which runs its business out of a 140-acre campus in Navi Mumbai, does so by offering ''scale and scope of opportunities to its employees to grow in their careers'' says Rajan Dutta, President, Corporate HR, at the company. Part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), RCom is India's second-biggest mobile phone services firm with some 92 million customers.

Automation of HR processes at RCom, a company of 53,000 employees, helps reduce stress on the organisation and throws up far-reaching benefits. Every event in an employee's lifecycle is managed on the company's Intranet through its portal, MyWorld. It captures a potential's interest to work at RCom, does regular reviews, productivity tracking, training and even exit interviews.

Job rotations both at RCom and between it and ADAG, for instance, are driven by daily postings. Even in the middle to senior levels, managers have moved to ADAG's direct-tohome television, Big TV, and employees are encouraged to make such movements. Employee interest is kept high in the portal with ADAG Chairman Anil Ambani and other top executives blogging on it.

"With automation, the HR department is focussed on development of employees, how to create value for our employees and how to engage them better," says Arup Gupta, Vice President, Corporate HR. RCom was placed second alongside bigger rival Bharti Airtel in the telecom sector behind stateowned BSNL in this year's BT-Indicus-PeopleStrong survey.

RCom, which hired some 4,000 people in 2009, a year that saw industry peers shed flab, has programmes to help its people pursue courses at Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore and XLRI. "High performers are taken through various development programmes, which not only help them in their current role but also help them develop and prepare for future leadership roles," Gupta adds.

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Best Company to Work For - BSNL

You receive 3 lakh applications for some 2,500 junior officer positions you've advertised. What do you do? Run for cover or pat yourself on the back that thousands of candidates want to break down your door? If you are in charge of human resources at state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., or BSNL, you do neither, choosing to stay quiescent.

''People want to work with BSNL because we give them a stable job,'' says Gopal Das, Director (HR), who runs the people function for BSNL's 3 lakh employees. ''We also offer compensation that is comparable to private and public sector salaries (at the entry level).'' For junior officers, to cite an instance, salaries on a cost-to-company basis are around Rs 4 lakh a year though annual hikes are tiny compared to private firms such as Bharti Airtel, which manages with about one-sixth the staff of BSNL.

There is then the growth opportunity in a business that has been exploding in the last four years. Mrinal Kanti Mandal, a 28-year-old electronics engineer, who joined BSNL in April 2009 from Hero Corporate Service, a financial services, ITES and consulting firm, was quickly spotted by his seniors and given additional responsibility of business planning apart from the existing IT-implementation role.

Mandal today is scoping new businesses for BSNL in its Karnataka circle. Pointing to his experience of working in different domains, he says: ''For learning purposes and enriching skills, BSNL is the best place for me.''

The company has 20 training centres across India, each the size of an engineering college. ''For every (pay) scale upgradation, an employee has to undergo mandatory training of two weeks. This is separate from the annual training of 2.5 days per employee,'' says Das.

There are BSNL-only avenues for employee progression. While filling up vacant executive ranks, for example, the company reserves half the positions for its own non-executive employees. ''Several among such employees, who account for 81 per cent of BSNL's workforce, are talented and ambitious,'' says Neeraj Verma, Deputy Director General (Training).

Still, the company knows it will have to bring in external talent to reverse its shrinking revenues. For some 210 mid-level managers it is likely to hire in near future, BSNL will for the first time, on this scale, make lateral hires from consumer care, durables, retail and IT companies, says Das. It may then have to deal with another deluge of applications.

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Best Company to Work For - IOC

The BT-Indicus-PeopleStrong survey reaffirms the attractiveness of the oil and natural gas majors. The respondents did not choose Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for prestige, building careers, training or compensation. They were in it for stability and low stress two things that even money cannot buy in the private sector's rat races.

IOC, the country's only refining-toretailing petroleum major, is ranked 29th on overall basis. Specifically, for good job content, the respondents rated IOC 18th best for attributes such as job security and some other ingredients of work-life balance.

IOC's employees stick with it because of the way it nurtures them and their families. ''It's a caring company with a human touch,'' says Subhajit Sarkar, Senior Manager (operations) at its Panipat Refinery. Sarkar joined it 18 years ago as a fresh engineering graduate.

Most IOC employees start their careers at IOC and stay on till retirement, never trying another employer. Those who accept offers from private competitors, usually go because they are given more cash in hand. IOC's long list of perks includes free electricity and water, easy loans and annual maintenance allowances for any material possession conceivable from curtains and couches to personal computers and cars.

Sarkar admits he's not happy about the salary, but his family's preference for the IOC lifestyle and job security has held him back. There are others like him ensconced in the cocoon of largely same-for-all increments and promotions devoid of firings.

''One can always hop, skip and jump, but here my mistakes are not looked down upon,'' says Sarkar, who has turned down offers from Essar, Shell and Reliance. On the contrary, IOC wants to learn from its employees. For instance, it rewards those submitting suggestions and ideas, whether or not the ideas are found worth implementing.

The survey reaffirms what the HR team says about trying to ensure that the offices are transparent so that staff can work without pressure. What it hasn't captured yet is the technical work experience and training that the company says it offers.

''IOC is the only oil PSU where an all- rounded career in marketing as well as refining is possible,'' says HR Director V.C. Agarwal. ''There is tremendous learning opportunity and challenge for our employees,'' Agarwal adds.

If that is true, the real challenge for IOC is to break out of the PSU mould it has been typecast into.

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Best Company to Work For - NTPC

If you want to know why people love to work with NTPC, ask Sangeeta Kaushik. Deputy General Manager (Corporate Planning), NTPC, Kaushik joined NTPC in 1986 as a fresh engineering graduate. It was then National Thermal Power Corp Ltd, 11 years old, and had an installed capacity of around 4,000 MW. Today, it is India's largest power company with an installed capacity of 30,644 MW, and aims to enter other energy sectors (hence its decision to become simply NTPC Ltd).

As it grew, so did Kaushik, now 44. In 2004, NTPC gave her the option to upgrade her skills. ''Moving up the ranks, I started handling bigger projects in which I had to look into the financial aspects also. So, I did an executive management programme from MDI Gurgaon,'' she says. NTPC paid for the course around Rs 5 lakh.

There are many Kaushiks in NTPC's workforce of around 24,000. ''Our guiding principle has always been 'people before PLF (Plant Load Factor)','' says R.C. Shrivastav, HR Director. New talent is attracted by a combination of factors. ''Not only are the payscales at the freshers' level higher than comparable private and public sector companies, NTPC's brand reputation and word of mouth works like a real magnet,'' he says.

In addition to low attrition rates (0.27 per cent), NTPC boasts one of the highest average career tenures 23.5 years. ''The maximum attrition rate is at the fresher's level. A person who stays for one year stays forever,'' says Ashok Swarup, DGM (HR). A nearly-zero attrition rate can lead to stagnation at any organisation, but not at NTPC, though it hires around 1,000 executives as freshers each year.

NTPC employees also get unlimited healthcare at its empanelled hospitals and education facilities such as loans of up to Rs 15 lakh for studies abroad and Rs 10 lakh within India for a child's higher education.

Over 75 per cent of NTPC's employees stay in its townships that are equipped with schools, hospitals, clubs and recreation facilities. The company follows differential compensation system where people working in hilly or other hostile areas are paid 80-90 per cent more than other employees.

The HR team's main challenge is to bring down the average employee age (now 47 years) and the male to female ratio (18:1). The latter, especially, is a big challenge. ''Traditionally, women are reluctant to work in the far-flung areas where our plants are located,'' says Shrivastav.

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Best Company to Work For - BHEL

Quick! What is the full form of BHEL? Be Happy and Enjoy Life ...It's not, but that's how employees of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd see their company. Don't get them wrong: BHEL is not the typical sarkari company (the government has a majority stake) with products that nobody wants and staff that does no work. It has been working three shifts to build equipment that every power utility wants. And it is minting money.

BHEL's business requires high technical skills. Sure, it cannot compete with the private sector on the compensation front. But it sure does a good job by retaining talent with constant training and creative outlets.

''We encourage experimentation and mistakes are not punished in the process of learning ...We tolerate failure, but of course, not at the cost of repetition,'' says B.P. Rao, Chairman and Managing Director, who has been with BHEL for over 31 years now. ''When employees are given freedom to innovate, they often give their best,'' he adds.

Most never leave for greener pastures (attrition is less than one per cent), and those who leave maintain their links. Last year, when BHEL opened its doors to former employees, several applied, and it took back in 46. BHEL has given around 30 CEOs to India Inc.

The secret: Rigorous training schedules and extensive mentoring. Its average annual training per employee (over 16 man days) is higher than comparable international benchmarks of around 12 days. Last year, 800 of the 45,000-odd employees were trained as mentors. ''This is not sporadic. It is the culture of the company,''; says Rao.

If work satisfaction is a major attraction for BHEL's employees, the quality of life is what keeps the wife and kids happy. Work-life does not need balancing. Benefits such as the comprehensive medical cover stretch beyond retirement, while soft loans and self-sufficient townships keep the families comfortable. Rao does agree that today's restless younger generation finds it difficult to appreciate this BHEL way of life. But last year's recession made the company stand out like a beacon for IIT and IIM alumni who would otherwise queue up for multinationals.

BHEL was among the first PSUs to have an HR director on its board and to publish a comprehensive HR manual, pioneering performance and open appraisal systems. No wonder, BHEL's employees have their own acronym for the company.

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Best Company to Work For - Grasim

Sunil Kulwal, a former executive president of the chemical division of Grasim Industries at Nagda in Madhya Pradesh, is in a different territory now. In another continent, Down Under. In fact, as chief executive officer of Aditya Birla Minerals, which handles the group's mining business in Australia.

ABM, which has extensive copper operatons in the Mt Gordon area and Nifty, is owned by another group company, Hindalco. Santrupt Misra, the head of global human resources at the group, says that the biggest attraction for Grasim employees is the integrated approach of the Aditya Birla Group, and talks about Kulwal as an example of what ''systematic talent management'' can do to a person's career. Kulwal, by the way, is neither a chemical engineer nor a miner: He is a chartered accountant by training.

''Our integrated value proposition takes care of personal development, career development and family development,'' Misra says. ''Our HR processes are always trying to find the best opportunities for an employee. Even within Grasim where we have four businesses, employees are provided a wide exposure,'' he adds.

Nagda is a location that has also seen a new effort to provide access to top doctors to the employees through telemedicine. However, Khor in the same state saw something more interesting.

Vikram Cement, which is still a part of the cement business of the company, has built a spanking new Young Managers Accommodation with a very modern design with new gadgetry at hand. The message is clearly that you need not give up the luxuries of city life if you work for Grasim in a remote location.

All this, Misra explains, is achieved by not focussing on innovation but rather on the needs. ''We find the needs of the employees first and then we meet them innovatively,'' he says.

Misra points out that the company did not cut jobs during the downturn. ''We see productivity as a continuous process. We never take short-term measures like cutting jobs. Instead, we decided that all directors of the group will stop flying business class.'

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Best Company to Work For - L & T

Ask Chief Financial Officer of Larsen and Toubro Ltd Y.M. Deosthalee what differentiates the engineering major on the human resources front, and he is quick to list five differentiators, not one. Deosthalee, who also oversees the HR function, says the first differentiator is that L and T is largely owned and managed by employees.

''Any one who is good and joins as a shopfloor engineer can aspire to reach the top and become a director someday,'' Deosthalee says. Not empty words: Of the eight executive directors on the L and T board including Chairman A.M. Naik, seven joined the company as engineers. The only one who is not an engineer is Deosthalee himself.

He says that is how it has always been in the company it was founded in Mumbai in 1938 by two Danish engineers, Henning Holck-Larsen and Soren Kristian Toubro, and has ever since been owned and managed by professionals. In fact, L and T is among the few large Indian companies that doesn't have a promoter (ITC Ltd is another) so the manager rules the company.

Deosthalee says extensive empowerment allows everyone to be innovative and creative. That's differentiator #2 at India's largest engineering and construction group. What are the other three? The wide range of businesses offer a lot of exposure; employees take a lot of pride in working for a company that claims to be building the country. Then, there are the training and development initiatives in conjunction with the Indian Institutes of Management and other top B-schools.

L and T is a happy poaching ground and the company has done a lot to retain its engineers. It started an infotech arm when the information technology industry started weaning away too many of its young engineers.

Deosthalee points out that the company has started many new businesses in the recent past finance, shipbuilding and power, among them. ''We have allowed our deserving employees to move to these businesses and shift to a faster track in their career,'' he says.

The L and T CFO also chose merit-based performance appraisal as the top factor from the six along with prestige and company reputation. In both these factors the company is ranked in the top 10 companies while its overall rank is 11.

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Best Company to Work For - Bajaj Capital

If Bajaj Capital had to put out a recruitment ad to woo potential employees, one of the slogans it could count on would be: ''Join Bajaj Capital and you could earn more than your seniors.''

That wouldn't be an empty boast. As Rajiv Deep Bajaj, Vice Chairman & amp; Managing Director, Bajaj Capital, explains: ''Write your own cheque is what we tell our employees. There is no upper ceiling that we impose on the bonuses that employees can get. So there have been cases when the financial planners have earned more than their seniors.''

One of the largest investment advisors in the country, Bajaj Capital shoots up the rankings as a preferred destination for employees entirely due to the culture of what the company calls ''entrepreneurial empowerment''.

While still family-owned (founder K.K Bajaj's sons, Rajiv and Sanjiv, are part of the management), the company has done its bit to professionalise. The testimony to that effort is Anil Chopra, Group CEO and Director, who has stayed on with the company for the past 25 years. The motto for 2010 is ''Think Big'' The company's mission statement is ''to make 1 crore people crorepatis'' A few of them could be employees, too.

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Best Company to Work For - ICICI Bank

One of K. Ramkumar's favourite films is Matrix, the 1999 sci-fi action flick that has Keanu Reeves as a secret hacker with the alias 'Neo'Neo, who is fast-forwarded in time to the year 2199 and who is prophesied to end humanity's war with intelligent machines, has a socket in the back of his skull that allows him to upload knowledge directly into his mind. That helps him pick up numerous martial arts disciplines and also fly a military helicopter by getting a helicopter programme uploaded into his brain instantly.

"Matrix was a great inspiration," recalls Ramkumar, Executive Director in charge of HR at ICICI Bank, the country's second-largest bank. "I believe Matrix-like skills can be uploaded into a human brain to get the desired results. We (ICICI Bank) have to take ownership to give that knowledge and skill. Employees, for their part, need to come with the right attitude," he says.

Ramkumar, 48, is the bank's first HR head to be elevated to a board-level position (it happened last February). An alumnus of Madras University, Ramkumar joined ICICI Bank as General Manager (HR) in 2001 after spending 16 years in manufacturing organisations. At the bank, Ramkumar also looks after the Operations and Credit and Treasury functions apart from the human resources.

"Every organisation recognises the role of a CFO who manages financial resources, but there is another equally important function of managing human resources," is how Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO at the bank put it to BT, recently. It's people focus that has helped ICICI Bank emerge as numero uno in the banking sector in the BT-Indicus-PeopleStrong study of the Best Companies to Work For in India.

Ramkumar's entry into the bank in 2001 was strategic as it coincided with the mega-reverse merger with development financial institution ICICI Ltd. "It was a Herculean HR task as a bulk of the workforce had project finance skills," says a bank insider. Those days, the bank consciously decided not to acquire resources from the market. "We follow an HR policy of creating a learning organisation and not a recruiting or compensation management organisation," says Ramkumar.

That emphasis on learning has stayed with ICICI Bank. In 2006, it became the first bank to partner with NIIT for training freshers in financial services by launching the Institute of Finance, Banking and Insurance and awarding a diploma. Two years later, the bank set up ICICI Manipal Academy to offer specialised banking and insurance skills to train probationary officers. Almost 20,000 people applied when it started two years ago. "We selected about 1,000 people in our first batch," says Ramkumar. The first two batches of probationary officers numbering 2,000 have been absorbed by the bank.

In 2009, the bank also took another path-breaking initiative by launching an online executive MBA programme for probationary officers who have completed The post-graduate diploma in banking. These graduates are rated on a par with IIM grads, and absorbed as managers at the bank. There are also specific programmes and exercises for leadership development.

In 2005, all senior general managers who are potential directors were invited to attend board meetings. "The board encouraged us to participate in the deliberations," says Ramkumar, who was one of the senior general managers to have attended those board meetings. That experience would have played a part in Ramkumar getting his place on the board!

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