How God Failed to Achieve Perfection in Designing Humans

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The other day, when I shared with a friend of mine, likely to be my partner soon in a JV that we are launching soon, about a rainbow taste of life that I have been experiencing, he said: Unbelievable.

Thank God, he didn't say, impractical. Because, actually, one can never imagine the depth of others' helplessness unless he himself experiences it.

Pretty bad, because, that makes it a bit confusingly difficult for the other person at the receiving end of the conversation: How to react positively, while looking seriously concerned.

Well, that friend of mine is a gentleman, and I have huge regards for him as one of the most worm-blooded professionals I have ever met on this lonely planet. Although he was unable to connect, but I bet, he was trying his best.

Why only he ?

I'm sure, 99.99% of the middle-class and lower middle-class Indians wouldn't have experienced how it feels to remain hungry for several days -- forget about other life-changing extreme experiences.

How can they connect to something, that they can't even imagine in dreams. Well, for that, credit goes to our down-to-earth ancestors, who preferred to play it safe for living a steady life.

Thanks to them, for teaching us the science and art of saving money and lead an uneventful but secured life.

But, as exception defines the rule, idiots like me, who defies the rule for good or bad, still exist to make the God realize -- where, and how, he went wrong in his grand design: Humans!

And, I'm sure, God must be thanking me for this useful feedback, so that, in future, taking a corrective action, he fails to produce a replica.

Innovation, A Must for Successful Hiring

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Despite running a talent sourcing firm, I've been struggling to identify and hire the best available candidates for my own company. And I'm sure, it's no different elsewhere: leadership from all industry verticals are facing acute talent shortage.

Much have been debated over this issue and all conventional methodologies are being implemented by organizations, not really producing desirable outcome though.

Hence, the need of the hour is to design a few  innovative and result-oriented strategies with a total commitment for their effective implementation.

Some of them, in my opinion, are:

1. Put in place a Dynamic Hiring Manager

For getting best results, you must assign the job to a dynamic Hiring Manager with excellent social intelligence skills and the ability to work under pressure.

With intense competition heating up the market for picking up best available candidates, even a small negative attitude demonstrated by your Hiring Manager may abort an otherwise successful deal.

I have seen it happening, and a number of times.

2. Create a magnetic work culture.

Potential candidates talk amongst themselves, and also take feed back from the market, about work culture of the organizations for which they are being approached. When you initiate a recruitment drive and start conducting interviews, they talk even more.

When you create a magnetic corporate culture, the news spreads like wild fire, and you automatically start attractive the best available candidates.

3. Hire a committed external Recruiter

This is an important strategy, but conveniently neglected by most of the organizations.

The role of a recruiter is not just identifying the talent from market but, through their knowledge based communication with the candidates, help organization build an impacting brand equity as one of the most sought after employers.

Most of the organizations, being in a hurry to fill-up the positions, always share same assignments with more than half a dozen recruiters - creating a chaos in the job market, there by spoiling their brand equity.

However, some of my clients, who have been successfully recruiting the right talents, are always offering exclusive rights - dividing the positions.- for a set assignments to their empaneled recruiters  This approach helps all involved.

It's high time for leadership to start innovating in hiring management for attracting the best available talents, because neither technology nor a killing idea fuels growth but quality of employees who are driving those through against stiff competition.

Why Corporate Leaders Must Maintain Personal Blog

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Effective leadership is not about acting as a leader by virtue of the power of that position you hold, but about making your team-members having trust in everything you say. And that happens, only when they watch you doing what you say -- or said!

However, it's practically impossible for a leader to keep telling his own people about those real-life stories that could inspire him grow into a leadership position.

But if, the leader maintains a blog, where he keeps sharing his experiences through story-telling, I'm sure his associates would get a clear idea about his ethical standard, belief system, value proposition and most importantly -- true character!

Nothing can make you a better leader than sharing those inspiring shades of your true character, putting them in black and white, and living them in reality. That's what, is all about real leadership: Seamlessly integrating leader's real world with that of his followers.

So, if you are holding a leadership position and aspire to grow exponentially, I suggest you must maintain a blog for sharing your real world experience and analysis as well - as much as possible - with those hundreds or thousands you lead.

Nothing Would Change At the Top, Unless Bottom Accepts It!

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Nothing really works in real sense, unless there is an element of reality in it.

I realized it an hour ago, while waiting in the Q of a Pan shop, when a policeman came and bought ahead of us what he wanted because the Paanwala was visibly scared of him.

Despite telling him to adhere to the basic rules, that Policeman, conveniently ignoring it, ran away without reacting to my protests: Coward!

Unfortunately, the illusion is, being a policeman, he is still perceived to be above the reach of law and order! Amazingly, he, who is supposed to enforce law and order in the country made a mockery of it.

And that brings out the point: What reforms are we talking about in India, particularly against corruption, targeting the top-guns, when the bottom is completely corrupt?

I am convinced that the fight against unfair practices has to begin at the bottom of the system, because, only then people at top would realize the threat against indulging into corrupt practices.

Until then, every efforts to eradicate corruption out of the system would remain a dream unfulfilled.

No Anna Hazare can lead us to a corruption-free civic society, unless we, the common man, decide to protest, unlike that Paanwala, against every instance of corruption in our daily life.

A Match Winning Combination in the Game of Life!

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"Politics is not my cup of tea, so I quit it." That's what one of the most successful actors from Bollywood said, accepting his failure in public.

I'm talking about Amitabh Bachchan, the actor who completely mesmerized a whole generation while achieving what very few can even dream of.

A hugely successful professional from Indian film industry but a miserable failure in the game of politics, he is. Why he failed to prove himself as a successful political leader is not what I'm interested in, but his ability to accept that fact is what I'm trying to highlight.

"Failure is the pillar of success," the proverb sounds highly inspirational but very few would realize how conditional is that message. What I mean is, not everything is everyone's cup of tea.

Putting in your best efforts, while fighting against unrelenting agonies from repeated failures, even for several years, may not fly you to the dreamland of success unless you are standing on the right platform.

Quitting wrong platforms as soon as possible and honestly accepting the failure, and Identifying the right platform and sticking onto it -- can make your success journey less painful, and rewarding as well.

Practically speaking, if you have a choice then it may sound realistic. However, even if you don't have a choice right now, why don't you create one? Who is preventing you from finding out the platform that suits you best?

I think, you yourself! Because you are afraid of the dangers from unexplored terrains of life. So you decide to continue fighting a battle that you can never win, and keep blaming destiny for your failure.

Better don't, rather, the moment you feel and also get convinced that you're fighting a battle that you don't deserve to win, don't feel shy to give up and start afresh in a different battleground.

Accepting your imperfections and nurturing your strengths that would match minimum requirements of a particular strategy, is undoubtedly a match-winning combination in the game of life.

Why Effective Talent Management Starts with Hiring the Right Talent Manager

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"Abhijit, we are in a hurry to fill up a few critical position. Please, take them on top most priority and send us a few CVs immediately." That was the instruction given to me by HR Head of a few billion dollar plus MNC when I met him yesterday morning.

At the same time, he instructed his 'Talent Management' Head to hand over the JDs to me. The gentleman in charge went to his seat and came back after a few minutes, saying he would mail them across immediately.

When I didn't receive any mail till evening, called him up to remind. He said, since it was a tough day he would do the needful tomorrow.

His tomorrow is almost over today, and I'm still waiting for his mail.

Logically, there has to be either of these two reasons for this delay: Either he doesn't want to associate with us, or he is terribly slow in taking action.

Whatever it may be, but my concern is: When the whole industry is facing an acute talent shortage in general - and his company in particular - can companies afford to keep such personality as the face of their organization -- for attracting the best available talent?

With the increasing trend of organizations appointing an exclusive hiring manager for facilitating  effective talent management programs, a wrong intake has the potential to bring the company down in the long run.

Leadership must look into this issue and take necessary action, before it is too late.

Update: With no other option available, I informed the HR - Head a few minutes ago and got an immediate reply from his Talent Manager. Thank God!

How to Create An Exclusive Space in A Overcrowded Market

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The idea of creating an exclusive space within overcrowded target market, much before making the service actually available, was indirectly floated by a friend of mine - a HR professional, running his own management consulting firm - with whom I've teamed up for entering into the business of Retained Executive Search.

His intention is to make our service comparatively better than the competitors by doing some exclusive value addition. And that comment of his made me think about the concept of making our service a hit by creating an exclusive space within an existing market even before launching it.

Retained Executive Search is a lucrative business, but mostly dominated by big players. Hence it hardly offers any space to the newcomers, unless there is an element of surprise in their package in terms of a unique set of value additions that would catch the attention of corporate leadership.

For implementing this concept of creating an exclusive space within a overcrowded market, through offering a ROI based talent management service, we have decided to go through the following 4 steps:

1. First find out, what are those benefits that our big brothers are offering to their clients.

2. Once done, the next step would be to identify what are those additions that our prospects may be willing to avail.

3. And then, we would focus on incorporating those benefits into our proposal, in such a way, that would convince the prospects about getting a higher 'Return on Investment' from our service as compared to others.

4. Finally, once the package is ready for sale, we shall launch a marketing campaign through impacting presentation to target audience, and go all out to make them understand how these additional services - that we are offering - are going to benefit their organization in terms of effective talent management.

Let's hope, we design it right and market it right too.

What could be some other ways of offering high ROI based talent management services? Please, share your opinion.

Keep Fighting Against Destiny's Terrorism, Never Give Up!

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I don't think anybody had ever gone through a situation, at least once in life, when he wouldn't have felt extremely dejected and helpless.

Some are fortunate to experience it once, but for a few it becomes a regular affair to keep fighting against the terrorists of destiny.

Let's not get into an argument, whether all the time they themselves created the problems or not. Because, in my personal opinion, more often than not, a series of compelling situations must have kept thundering their life with the rains of disaster.

A parallel can certainly be drawn between the fear unleashed by terrorism and the ruthless injustice inflicted upon us by destiny. Because, in both the cases, victims are innocent souls.

When the whole world is desperately fighting against an ever increasing menace of real-life terrorism, how do we, the individuals, prepare ourselves to thwart destiny's terrorism off the coast of life-accomplishments is what perhaps defines the course of our life events.

Despite not being from anti-terrorism squad, either in reality or on intellectual platform, the best solution that comes to my mind for successfully preventing destiny's bombing of our life -- is to gather sufficient intelligence information, in terms of making us both materialistically and emotionally impenetrable to its devastating consequences.

In simple words, what I mean is the ability to rise from the ashes: Never give up!

If we possess that unique psychological warfare of fighting against the might of destiny's terrorism, trust me, sooner or later, we would successfully emerge out of the mother of all destruction in our personal life: VICTORIOUS!

Inspiration: Down the Memory Lane!

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So vivid is the memory of getting up in the morning, everyday, just a year ago, thinking about who was going to be my next victim.

Don't misunderstand me, by victim I mean the target, and by target I mean someone known to me whom I could ask for some money.

Because, during that period, often I used have no money for even buying essentials for a family of four: Me, wife, and two daughters.

Asking someone, however close he or she may be, for money, is perhaps the most unwanted task in everyone's agenda and I too was no different. However, for me it was the question of survival for the entire family.

There was no choice. Sorry, there was a choice -- the choice of calling it day, and quit this world.

But I failed to embrace the word 'Quit' and, swallowing down a series of lethal strikes on self-esteem with a smiling face, kept on moving.

Many of my family members and friends came all out to help me, a few refused though, and I continued living in this world.

Now, after a gap of more than a year, I have made a turnaround and determined to make it happen in life in a big way.

I have repaid the loans and now, by the grace of God, embarking on a highly ambitious business expansion that I'm sure would completely change the landscape of my future very soon.

The purpose of this post is to inspire a  few, who might be going through a similar situation in life; the purpose of this post to convince them, that they should never give  up even if there is no visible sign of a turn-around; the purpose of this post is to confirm  a simple fact, that "Beyond Every Night, There is Always A Dawn!"

This post is a tribute to those family members and friends of mine, who helped me make both the ends meet during a crisis that I couldn't have survived without their support. May God bless them!

Success for the Fittest: Never Give up, Keep Fighting!

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Nothing can make you surrender to the negativity of life, if you believe in yourself.

Some of us begin the journey of life traveling on foot, some by vehicles, and a few by airplane -- as dictated by fate. Most stick to their original travel plan, but a few dare change the mode of travel and upgrade to the next level -- and make it happen in life!

You may not change your fate, but you certainly can change the course of your destiny if you believe in your abilities to do so.

When you initiate the right step towards a remarkable improvement, destiny gets inspired by your positivity and gradually start favoring you in everything that you do. That's what a popular proverb says: Fortune favors the Brave.

Success is more about sustaining a series of ruthless attacks by circumstances on our fundamental existence and coming out in flying colors. That's how, life filters out the best from the lot. If survival is for the fittest, success too follow the same principle!

Even in the most compelling situation, you must fight it out to the best of your capacity to prove yourself the fittest.

For God's sake, never give up in-between like cowards.

Always remember: Beyond Every Night, There is Always A Dawn!

How Passion Almost Killed My Entrepreneurial Dream!

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An entrepreneur, running a business which is based on what he loves to do, may have to decide at some point of time -- whether he would continue doing what he is passionate about, or focus more on business expansion.

It had happened with me a few years ago: Conflict between pursuing what I was passionate about and the possibility of a huge a business growth - where passion won over the urge to make more money - eventually brought me back to the point where I started my journey a decade ago.

Don't you like to know, what was that passion?

My passion was to deliver world class executive search service to a limited number of high profile corporate clients, investing more than justified man-hours to ensure customers' delight, for earning the reputation of being "different from the lot."

It wouldn't have been achieved without my deep involvement in every activities performed by team members.

I went mad after maintaining a quality of service that not was not at all proportionate to the fees paid by my clients, and failed to strike a balance between efforts and rewards: Basic ingredient of a successful business.

Focusing too much on continuously improving quality, I failed to capitalize on a already developed brand equity by expanding my business horizon. And when recession struck in 2008, being too small the business almost collapsed.

Good that I have realized my mistake of sticking to the passion at the cost of business growth - before it was too late - and now taking every step to reach an intersection of passion and financial independence.

I am sure, lot of entrepreneurs commit the same mistake of being too passionate about what they love to do, forgetting the fact that beyond a certain point, for ensuring and sustaining business growth, they have no option but to focus more on efficiently running their organization!

Never Apply Mathematics to Relationship Management

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Torn between your own interests and that of others' you love and care for, you live a life that's never worth it from any practical angle.

Still you work hard to justify your failure, because, more than your own victory what really matters to you is the success of your beloveds.

However, when they don't acknowledge your contributions you feel deserted.

But why?

Why don't you think that what you did was the best that you could have, and it really doesn't matter what you're getting in return?

Why don't you just give it away, without expecting anything in return?

Because, you're taught to be calculative even in the realm of relationship management.

But for living a life worth it, you must learn to unlearn everything that was pumped into your amygdala since childhood, and learn to just give everything away unconditionally!

You must learn not to apply mathematics in relationship management, where success is not about what you are getting from others but that you're giving to them.

The day you learn to ignore the receivables in life's balance sheet, believe me, life would start showering every uncountable benefits to your equation of existence.

Never ask for what you truly deserve; time would take a note of it to return you efforts -- multiplied, several times.

Beyond Every Night, There is Always A Dawn!

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Every dawn marks the arrival of a bright morning; every pitch-dark night of failure turns into a shining day of success -- nature's law!

While negotiating through a dark tunnel of frustrations and misery, what really matters - that differentiates between success and failure - is individual's ability to sustain those killing moments of absolute silence and lack of vision and survive a series of lethal attacks on self-esteem.

Not all but only a few can actually do it, I mean come out of the black cloud of continuous demotivation inflicted upon them by a ruthless world.

Because, for them, nothing is more challenging than the challenge itself.

The rest give up in-between!

However, I strongly believe that anyone with a right combination of self-esteem and self-confidence can easily surf through the Tsunami of failures, eventually reaching the dream island of success.

So, if, for any reason, you think that life has come to a grinding halt, please, never think of giving up on hope for a better tomorrow.

Always, remember, somewhere, someone, is testing your endurance limits, and if you fail to fail -- success is inevitable in due course of time.

The weapons that you need to defend yourself and win over the negativity of life are already there within you. Take them out, sharpen and use them to the best of your ability.

Keep fighting, and never get tired of moving forward.

Trust me, very soon you will the notice a disappearing darkness, signifying that you are about to each the end of this tunnel where a few angels of success are waiting for your grand arrival!

Why Grass Always Look Greener on the Other Side of the River?

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That's a question I don't think even God would be able answer to the best of anyone's satisfaction.

Who doesn't think: What I do, is the worst; what he does, is the best; I'm sure that I can do that, but situation doesn't permit.

What a dilemma?

Genuine Relationships are Precious, Don't Just Lose Them for Nothing

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Relationship break-up is as bad as losing a part of our body. We learn to live without it, but can never win over a sense of loss.

Similarly, losing trust, either way, is yet another blow to our existence. We never stop trusting people, but with an element of doubt hovering all the time.

Why Should Daughters be Deprived of Inheritance Benefits?

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When a daughter, along with her brother, shares father's happiness, sorrows, success and failures, why then, sharing fathers property with her brother is looked upon as a sign of greed by the society?

When I raised this issue with a few, most of them opined traditionally saying why should a daughter put her claim for a stake in father's property when her father has already married her off to the best of his capacity?

Start Ups: Never Compromise on Quality of Employees

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Choosing wrong people may cost you a few years of your entrepreneurship career, choosing the right ones would more than make it up; remember, life is all about learning from past mistakes and taking the right decision to avoid recurrence in future.

That's what I had experienced as an entrepreneur, and learned an unforgettable lesson too!

7 'Great Leadership' Symptoms!

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Everybody, consciously or subconsciously, aspires to be a leader: In professional life, or in personal life, and more often than not -- in both.

However, very few would work it out with a systematic approach to attaining that most desirable position.

Why People Betray Long Trusted Association?

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When you suddenly come to know that someone, who has been working for you for close to a decade, is intentionally damaging your professional reputation -- what would you do?

That he has been demotivating the newcomers to the company, projecting a host of wrong information about company's reputation and falsely projecting about a hostile work-environment, came as a rude shock to me because he used to be one of my most trust-worthy employees.

Talent Management: A True Story of Transformotive Recruitment

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Close to a decade ago, when Regional Sales Manager of a 200 Crore company approached me to help him building up a  senior level team for his organization, I was  a bit perplexed, unable to find out a link between his current responsibility and talent acquisition.

When he said that the MD of the company had entrusted him with the responsibility of identifying a recruiter who would not only dig-out the talents but also help building up brand equity of the company as an ideal employer for attracting the best professionals from target organization, I, sensing the challenge, immediately said yes to him.

The Brutal Killing of Professional Ethics!

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He joined a day before vanishing from our client's organization.

With no verbal or written communication to the concerned person in that company - except a text message saying that due to some unavoidable circumstances he had to leave - neither to us, the Search Firm that placed him there, he just disappeared.

Don't Misunderstand Recruiters, Planet's Most Stressed Species!

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The most uncertain business on planet Earth is 'Contingency Recruitment,' a model based on getting paid by the client only upon successful completion of the assignment - not even a rupee before!

Conventionally the same assignment would be shared with at least half a dozen agencies and, obviously, all but one - who finally pushes her candidate - would go back to square one having wasted their time and energy for earning absolutely nothing.