Daily Archives: May 5, 2008

After The McKinsey Quarterly Forbes.com seems to have gone the social way:

Highlights include:

• An enhanced Top Story box, with five rotating news stories and larger photos
• Easier access to Special Reports and our franchise lists, which are now featured just below the Top Story
• Both Top Rated stories and Most Popular stories, as well as Reader Comments, are now featured prominently
• Each of the nine channels has four headlines visible on the home page at any given time
• The Forbes.com Video Network is now available full screen, with a bar that allows users to fast forward and rewind videos and directly access FVN’s main page
• The Stock Picking Community, CEO Network, and “What We’re Reading” (ClipMarks) are featured
• The Forbes.com Attache now appears on the top right hand corner of the page, with an easy to expand and contract format
• Markets data and the Market Brief feature are featured in the center column
• The Breaking News template enables us to react quickly and visibly to news
• In addition to ForbesAutos.com and ForbesTraveler.com, Investopedia.com and RealClearPolitics.com are now featured on the home page

Check out the new home page at www.forbes.com, and the editor’s note about the redesign here.

Stephen Collins has a very useful post on social tools being used in the organization and how he uses them:

Appropriate use policies that are very clear on what is and isn’t allowed and careful steps towards use and understanding are the way to go. As an independent consultant this is advice I give to my clients as I speak to them about the opportunity social tools offer them in terms of staff attraction, engagement and retention, for knowledge and information management and for collaboration. A little research is all that’s needed to find a wealth of information to support this position.

My business, acidlabs, uses social tools as a core part of the way I deal with clients and peers around the world. Using these tools has afforded me opportunities to become engaged in communities and work that might otherwise never have crossed my radar. In the last year, I’ve presented at a conference in the USA (I live in Australia) and met in real life in excess of 100 new and interesting people I might otherwise never have crossed paths with. Every one of those opportunities was as a direct result of the networking and information and knowledge sharing opportunities opened to me by using social networking tools.

I am a regular user of Twitter (probably one of the most prolific Aussies, actually), I use Facebook to track what my professional communities (and friends) are up to and are talking about, I use LinkedIn for strictly business networking and to ask and answer relevant questions, I use Upcoming to track and note my attendance at various events and I use several other social networks for their specific purposes – Flickr for photos, delicious and Magnolia for bookmarking, TripIt and Dopplr for travel and meeting coordination and BrightKite (a new network) for tracking location and arranging serendipitous connections with colleagues, peers and friends. I also blog and use tools like Google Calendar, BaseCamp and Google Docs to keep track and store information that is important to me and my clients.

There’s no reason your organization couldn’t be doing the same. If it’s good enough for Downing Street, who are officially blogging, using Twitter, YouTube and Flickr and significantly opening up the British government to constituent participation, it’s probably good enough for your organisation.

Hmm, the tools I have not used are Upcoming, magnolia, Tripit, Dopplr (but then, I don’t travel so much ). I notice Stephen hasn’t listed Friendfeed, but for those on Facebook all day Friendfeed and Twitter apps are a boon!

Linas Simonis has a post in which he links to a free ebook on Business Blogging:

All consultants are still recommending a CEO to post frequently.

What a mistake!

CEOs are in high time-pressure work, and insisting on posting frequently will keep them out of blogosphere.

How to act in this new web2.0 environment?

What new rules apply to business blogs that are different from teenager blogs?

What dangerous rules that are right for teenager blog must be rid off in a business blog?

To answer all these questions my new e-book ”The New Rules of Business blogs” is now released. You can download the free e-book by clicking on the link above. You are welcome to post comments about the e-book there or on your blog, or email the link to whomever you believe would benefit from reading it.

Thus, press on the link The New Rules of Business blogs, download and read it. Thank you!

According to a study by global management consultancy firm Hay Group, salaries will rise by 14.4 per cent during the year 2008. This will be the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth for Indian employees. The growing demand for experienced employees is driving pay hikes and creating a culture of job-hopping. Last year, the middle management level witnessed the highest increase in average annual base salary (16 per cent), while supervisory, senior management and the executive level had an average annual increase of 14 per cent in their base salaries. In 2007, the wage inflation in India was far ahead of China and second only to Sri Lanka. While India is considered a source of talented, educated and English-speaking employees, particularly in the IT and service sectors, there is concern about the quality of new recruits. According to Nasscom, only around 25 per cent of engineering graduates and 15 per cent of general college graduates are considered employable.

Asians Quit Jobs Mainly Over Salary: Report

A study by the human resources firm Hewitt Associates has identified unhappiness with salary as the top reason why Asian employees quit jobs. The study also found that 70 percent of the best employers see a large connection between improved performance and higher salaries. When it comes to discontentment with salaries, Japan leads with 73 percent of employees unhappy with their pay followed by 71 per cent in China, 51 percent in Hong Kong, 44 percent in India, and 42 percent in Singapore. Dissatisfaction with compensation averages 54 percent for Asia as a whole.

How Top 4 IT Companies Hired In Last Fiscal

The top four IT companies, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam spent Rs 28,322 crore on staff cost in 2007-08. The amount is 18 per cent higher than the previous year’s spending of Rs 23,941 crore. TCS added 22,116 employees in 2007-08 at a staff cost of Rs 7,854 crore. The top four added 48,000 employees and had a combined strength of 3.23 lakh at the end of 2007-08 compared with 2.87 lakh a year ago, an increase of 13 per cent. Slowdown in the US and the sub-prime did not show much effect on hiring of these companies last year and trend is likely to continue this year too.

H1-B Hopefuls Not The Best And The Brightest: Report

A report published in the May issue of the Centre for Immigration Studies (CIS) in the United States says that the vast majority of H1-B workers, including those at most major tech firms, are not ‘innovators’ but just ‘average’ workers. Thus, the report presents a case against the extension of the popular guest worker programme. The report titled ‘H1-Bs: Still not the best and the brightest’ is authored by Mr Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. He has based his argument on ‘Talent Measure’ or TM, which is the ratio of the foreign worker’s salary to the prevailing wage figure stated by the employer. A TM value of 1.0 indicates that the worker is merely average, not of outstanding talent. The report states that the median TM value for majority of foreign workers was just a little over 1.0 thus indicating their worth.

Dipto finds out in the course of the IPL matches that he remains shackled to THE CITY (of Joy we assume):

Mcgrath was in Delhi (where I stay), Dhoni was captaining Chennai (where I started my career), Rohit Sharma and Laxman were representing Hyderabad (another favourite city of mine), Sachin was in Mumbai (where I have stayed as well) and when all else fails, Preity Zinta’s smiles would have lit up my life. Or so I thought.
Inexplicably (or otherwise), the sadness I feel every time the Knight Riders slide to a loss is rather distressing. Every single chromosome of mine seems to be programmed to support Mohammed Hafeez’s half-volleys and Ajit Agarkar’s full-tosses.