Notes: MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL

Rahul

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

In my yesterday’s note, at the bottom of this Webpage Write-up, I have added,

“Want your current employees to rate you without registering? Send me an email!”

Obviously, no HR Manager would want his current employees to register on IndiaRecruiter and lose them to competitors!

But —
If there was a way/a method whereby his current employees can rate the organization without registering, then quite a few HR Managers may want to explore such a possibility.

In such a method, we would have addressed his fear and still offered him his organization’s

PIP / rank-score
relative position (vis-à-vis other companies).

This/such offer may prompt some HR Managers to come forward and ask for our proposal before deciding.

Our proposal (essence) would be as follows:

On a CD/from email, company will give us a database as follows:

Company Name:
Sr. No. of Employee	User ID

Based on our instructions, company itself will generate User ID / Password for each of its existing employees.

We will store these in our database (online) on IndiaRecruiter.
Company will now ask its employees to log into the “EVE calling” page of IndiaRecruiter and login using their unique User ID / Password.
Our server will match these (in our online database) and honour/accept the same (as valid), without insisting that the person be “registered,” having submitted his resume (a special case).

Would you like me to continue transcribing the remaining four pages (3/6 to 6/6) next, and then assemble all six into a fully formatted Word document titled

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall — HR Employee Rating Proposal (11 April 2006)”?

As soon as our server recognizes the User ID / Password, it will open up the Rating Form, allowing the employee to fill in and submit.

Depending upon our prior dialogue with the HR Manager, we may split/divide the Rating Form into 3 parts, as follows:

RATING FORM

Part A	Company Name: __________________________
Employee Status	☐ Permanent ☐ Temporary
Designation	☐ Manager ☐ Supervisor ☐ Trainee
Length of Tenure	☐ Less than 1 year ☐ 1 to 5 years ☐ 5+ years

It is quite possible that the company may want to analyze the feedback received along the above-mentioned sub-populations (of employees) and even compare different sub-populations.

(Hand-drawn graph showing different curves for “Trainees,” “Supervisors,” and “Managers,” each with different feedback distributions on an X–Y axis labeled “% of Employees.”)

If the company wants such Employee Feedback (Employee Attitude Survey) to become an ongoing process, they could, over a period of time, even see any shift taking place, e.g.

(Graph showing June 2006 vs June 2007 curves for “Managers,” indicating a rightward shift in satisfaction distribution.)

Such shifts (towards left or towards right) would even tell them (the HR Managers):

1️⃣ Whether there is any improvement or deterioration in the feedback from a given sub-population of employees.

2️⃣ Whether management’s actions to modify/alter certain policies/practices (based on initial feedback) are leading to improvements (a shift to the right).

That would be proof that management actions are yielding the desired results!

Would you like me to continue with pages 5/6 and 6/6 next, and then compile the full 6-page document into a polished Word version titled

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall — Employee Attitude Survey via IndiaRecruiter (11 April 2006)”?

 Part B of the form will remain the same for all cases (for past as well as current employees — and whether registered or not registered employees).

 We will not allow the HR Manager to see any individual rating form — even though the form does not carry the employee’s name or any other clue to his identity.

 Obviously, a company wanting to use our Online Mirror service would need to register as a Corporate Subscriber (with any partner website).

 Whereas other companies will not be able to see one specific company’s Online Mirror graphs, we will use their overall average score (raw score) and plug it into our DTP formulation to plot graphs.
They have to agree to this (after all, we are giving a fabulous service, free of cost!).

 Company would have to agree that their Online Mirror graphs

…will also become visible/viewable by any of their current employees:

• to whom they have issued a User ID / Password, and

• who has actually logged in and submitted his duly filled-in Rating Form first.

We may agree that the individual employees are able to see/view only the overall graph (for the entire employee population) and cannot see sub-population-wise graphs.

What is our advantage?

Once, through such free/fabulous offers, we succeed in bringing millions of current employees to IndiaRecruiter, hopefully they will see Sample ImageBuilder and get tempted to register!

Rahul – Saurabh – Pranav

Examine the words used to describe this technology:

Snapshot
Subset
Vast storehouse
Optimized
Content density
Captured & compressed info
Sample
Millions of answers
Google / Yahoo

All of the above apply to a specific “search query” — as in Google/Yahoo and the search results.

Our Function Profile Graphs too are such a “snapshot” or photograph.

(Hand-drawn bell curve labeled “Function = Sales,” with total population 18,293 and sub-population 265, showing percentiles from 30–90.)

Data/info about 18,293 executives is “squeezed/condensed” into a small graph!
Hence, the graph has a very high Content Density.

And someday, one of our Resume Search methods will involve:

Displaying the graph, based on an HR Manager’s “Search Parameters.”
Enabling the HR Manager to place his cursor on the 70th percentile — then dragging to 90th percentile (thereby highlighting the graph’s area in between) & clicking.
This will result in a short display tabulation containing one-line summaries of only those executives whose percentile score lies between 70 & 90 — in descending order too!

Even before clicking, the highlighted section has told him that he can expect to see results for 265 executives meeting his criteria.

Any area shaded or graphically indicated will show the number of executives covered in that range.

12/04/06

Rajeev
cc: Vikram / Rahul / Saurabh / Pranav

A CRAZY THOUGHT?

We must not miss a single opportunity to impress / amaze jobseekers & employers.

Let us talk of Jobseekers.
Enclosed find a field-by-field comparison of “Submit Resume Forms” of Monster & IndiaRecruiter — almost identical.

Now if Rajeev’s Resume Download Spider starts downloading MonsterIndia resumes from today afternoon, and simultaneously creates a structured resume database (which, obviously, will be identical to IndiaRecruiter’s own resume database), then—

We can amaze the visiting jobseekers to our website as follows:

On the Submit Resume form of IndiaRecruiter,
a jobseeker fills in:

First Name
Last Name
DOB
Gender
City

Page 2/2

As soon as he has entered these fields, our software will compare these values with the values in resumes downloaded from MonsterIndia.

If it finds a perfect match (all 5 values matching),

On its own, our system will fill up automatically / instantaneously all the remaining fields / values (including the full text resume), and display the following message:

Dear [Name],

We believe we know who you are. We have filled in the rest of this form with data about you, which we have in our database.

But it is possible that some of it could be obsolete / outdated.

We would appreciate if you would edit / update your data before clicking:

[EXTRACT KNOWLEDGE OF PROFILES]

Believe it or not?

Believe it!

23/04/06

Field	Monster	IndiaRecruiter
Name	✓ (config. also)	✓ (First / Last)
Address	✓	✓
Email	✓	✓
Phone	✓	✓
Nearest City	✓	✓
Current Location	✓	✓
DOB	✓	✓
Gender	✓	✓
Nationality	✓	(Country)

Field	Monster	IndiaRecruiter
Work Experience (Yrs)	✓	✓ (location included)
Skills	✓	✓ (Glossary)
Industry	✓	✓
Category	✓	✓ (Function?)
Roles	✓	✓
Current Employer	✓	✓
Annual Salary (Rs. Lacs)	✓	✓
Previous Employer	✓	✗
Highest Qualification	✓	✓
Highest Degree Held	✓	✓
Text Resume	✓	✓

Rahul → Saurabh → Pranav
Image Builder

This refers to our discussion this morning.

To recapitulate:

We get only one chance to make a good first impression.
This impression should be so good that it sweeps the jobseekers off their feet.
The ImageBuilder must be something they have never seen before.

“There never alighted on this orb a vision more beautiful than that of Mary Antoinette.”

The sheer magic of beautiful graphs should mesmerize the jobseekers — love at first sight!

Would you like me to combine this comparison sheet and the opening “ImageBuilder” vision memo into a titled section:
“April 2006 – Resume Auto-Fill + ImageBuilder Launch Concept”,
and include a clean digital table format for the field comparison along with a stylized opening page quoting your “love at first sight” line?

ImageBuilder should arouse in jobseekers the emotions of:
• Hope
• Fear

Hope — that if they send ImageBuilder to an HR Manager, they will get noticed & called for interview.
Fear — that if they send plain/text resumes, these will get deleted even without a glance!

We want HR Managers to bring pressure on jobseekers to send ImageBuilders only.
An ImageBuilder should enable the HR Manager to grasp the essence/highlights of a candidate without having to read the text portion.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” – Confucius

An HR Manager is very hard-pressed for time.
ImageBuilder will enable him to spend less time reading/interpreting — but still take better decisions (e.g., calling for interviews).

If we succeed in getting HR Managers of a few big companies to start insisting on ImageBuilders, then this news will spread like wildfire — not only amongst the jobseekers but even amongst HR Managers of other companies!

ImageBuilder should be good enough to start such a “FIRE”!

To make it so good, from day one it should display:

Functional Competence Profile
Knowledge Profile
Tenure Profile
Salary Profile

Now you appreciate the significance of our logo:

(Hand-drawn bell curve labeled as the ImageBuilder logo illustration.)

More profiles will follow.

→ Salary Profile

In my notes of 17th & 18th, I had suggested that we introduce this profile after a few hundred jobseekers actually register and provide a “starting data-set” (of salaries of few hundred records).

I had also suggested:

“Functional” population-wise graphs
“Designation-level” wise graphs
(– really a combination of both)

But we have
→ 29 Functions
→ 5 Designation Levels

making a total of
29 × 5 = 145 combinations

We will need to create these 145 data-tables to store the “salaries” — which we must still do.

However, as discussed this morning, we should not wait for “actual / real data” (re: salaries) to accumulate before we can launch ImageBuilder.

Let us simply create some fictitious data to start with — and then “populate” the 145 data-tables with such fictitious data.

And using this starting / fictitious data, even display the SALARY GRAPH to the very first person registering!

— even superimposing his own current salary (vertical line “I am here”) on the relevant graph.

For sake of simplicity:

We will ignore “function” while displaying the graph, although we will display graph according to the Designation Level clicked by the jobseeker for his current job.

To further simplify matters, we will generate & display salary graphs for only the following designation levels to start with, viz.:

Middle Level
Manager Level
Senior Management Level

We do not expect many jobseekers at the

Entry Level, and
Top Management Level

to be registering on our site (at least in the beginning). Hence, we will not generate these graphs in the beginning — even for those few who might register.

But we will capture their data.

And when, in case of these 2 levels, we accumulate sufficient “real / actual” data (from registrations), then we will generate/display their graphs.

Same argument will hold for “Function-wise / Level-wise” graphs.

(Table drawn)

Function	Level
Sales	✓
Mktg	○
R&D	○
…	…

Only when (actual) data records in each cell exceed 1,000 (?), we will start plotting graphs for that particular combination of Function × Level.

Till such time, we will continue to club together all 29 functions and restrict ourselves to only 3 design levels.

See enclosed tabulations / graphs for the 3 levels.
I have assumed certain values (starting / fictitious values).

You will further notice that I have assumed same/identical values for all 3 levels (to simplify populating the data tables).

Of course, identical values will generate identical graphs!
But this is not a problem, because each visitor will only see one graph — his own (i.e., for his current design level).
He cannot see any other graphs — so there is no way he can compare!

Besides, his focus/attention will be:

“Where is the vertical line (of his current salary) placed in relation to the profile?”

The only person who can make such a comparison is an HR manager who receives ImageBuilders of:
→ a Middle-level executive
→ a Manager
→ a Senior Manager

He may discover that all 3 profiles look (uncannily) identical!

Even in this case/instance, the X-axis on all 3 graphs are different — also vertical lines are at different “salary-intervals.”

But, by the time an HR manager gets to see 3 different level graphs at the same time, I expect a few weeks would have passed — and by that time, the “Real Values” would outnumber the “Fake Values” 10:1!

So by that time, all 3 (level) graphs would look very different, and therefore, not comparable!

→ See “Salary Interval Overlap Situation” (enclosed)

In real life, we can expect such an overlap.

But once we have accumulated 10,000 salary values for each “Level” (real data), then we may discover that the real overlap is more or less as compared to what I have provided in the beginning.

So, you will need to keep your X-axis flexible / expandable.

For Middle Level, it will be expandable only on the right side (i.e., salary values exceeding Rs. 10–11 Lakhs). It cannot go below Rs. 0–1.0 L!

But for the other two levels (i.e., Manager & Senior Management Level), the actual values may
→ fall below the lowest point provided by me,
→ or go above the highest.

So your data tables must have provisions for accepting such extreme values.

As mentioned in my note (17th/18th), Salary Profile is our Holy Grail! Neither jobseekers nor HR managers have even imagined such a graphical comparison (of an individual vis-à-vis aggregated).

What is more, Monster/Naukri/TimesJobs cannot offer this profile unless they completely redesign their site/database — if at all they try to imitate.

If they do, imitation is the best form of flattery!
But I doubt if their EGO will allow them to copy us!

Salary Interval (Rs. Lakh)	%	No. of Instances
0 – 1	5	50
1.01 – 2	15	150
2.01 – 3	22	220
3.01 – 4	30	300
4.01 – 5	12	120
5.01 – 6	8	80
6.01 – 7	4	40
7.01 – 8	2	20
8.01 – 9	2	20
9.01 – 10	—	—
10.01 – 11	—	—
TOTAL	100%	1000

Level = MANAGER

Salary Interval (Rs. Lakh)	%	No. of Instances
5.01 – 6	5	50
6.01 – 7	15	150
7.01 – 8	22	220
8.01 – 9	30	300
9.01 – 10	12	120
10.01 – 11	8	80
11.01 – 12	4	40
12.01 – 13	2	20
13.01 – 14	2	20
14.01 – 15	—	—
15.01 – 16	—	—
TOTAL	100%	1000

Level = SENIOR MANAGEMENT

Salary Interval (Rs. Lakh)	%	No. of Instances
9.01 – 10	5	50
10.01 – 11	15	150
11.01 – 12	22	220
12.01 – 13	30	300
13.01 – 14	12	120
14.01 – 15	8	80
15.01 – 16	4	40
16.01 – 17	2	20
17.01 – 18	2	20
18.01 – 19	—	—
19.01 – 20	—	—
TOTAL	100%	1000

The nᵗʰ Richest Man

(Dated 17 April 2006 — by Hemen Parekh)

To: Rahul

CC: Saurabh, Pranav, Vikram, Rajeev

1. What Beauty is to Women, Salary (Wealth) is to Men.

A person is neither beautiful nor rich in absolute terms.

It is always relative to some other person or group of persons.

But mankind has an obsession with such relative comparisons.

It is human nature to compare oneself with others — especially with comparable or similar others (not just anybody).

2. This Obsession Manifests Itself In:

→ Beauty Contests (for Women), e.g.:

Miss India
Miss World
Miss Universe

This, despite the fact that there are no objective, quantitative, or scientific measures (units of measurement) for “beauty.”

A woman may appear extraordinarily beautiful to one man and merely ordinary to another!

As they say,

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Despite such enormous subjectivity, millions allow themselves to get swayed by the announcements or proclamations of a few well-known or eminent critics/judges.

3. The Male Equivalent:

→ “Rich Man / Wealthy Man” Rankings (for Men)

These “rankings” are somewhat more objective, being based on measurable criteria.

Of course, there are no “contests” — at least, not visible ones.

But you bet that Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy, Anil Ambani, etc. are all anxiously scanning newspapers or magazines every morning to see if Business Week or Financial Express has just published their (respective) lists of India’s Richest Men!

It is quite likely that BW and FE may be using somewhat slightly different criteria — but that difference is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that both use objective / measurable and often even transparent criteria. And what is more, they use the same criteria consistently, year after year. So even if Azim Premji may disagree with Business Week’s definition of “wealth,” he knows that

The same definition is applied to all others, and
The same definition will be used next year.

What then matters is the relative rank.

Is he moving up or down?

By how much?

Who is overtaking him? etc.

No industrialist / businessman has ever challenged these rankings — even if he believes the method is somewhat defective from his point of view!

Why?
All those being “ranked” trust the –

objectivity
fairness
consistency
transparency

of the method.

And it is precisely because of absolute “lack of bias” on the part of the ranking organisation / institution / agency that the organisation has great

CREDIBILITY.

And that organisation’s credibility goes up when it compares “like / similar people”, all of whom have similar handicaps — e.g.:

→ Richest Men of India

→ of Asia etc.

Even companies get ranked / rated (e.g. CRISIL ratings) and even countries get rated / ranked (e.g. S&P / Moody etc.).

What has all of these to do with India Recruiter / Global Recruiter?

Quite a lot.

GR/IR must become such a rating / ranking agency when it comes to jobseekers.

We are about to make a beginning in this direction by incorporating into our ImageBuilder the module:

FUNCTION PROFILES

(I am tempted to call it “Functional Competence Profile”)

This concept itself is very new / arguable / controversial.

On top of that, our methodology (of assigning rank scores) is not transparent — although it is quite objective.

Hence, there is bound to be a lot of discomfort / reluctance on the part of both the jobseekers and the HR managers to

The Nth Richest Man (continued)

“ACCEPT” our ratings/rankings — if only for the reason that they do not understand how you are arriving at those scores/percentiles!

This resistance (to acceptance) will be especially true amongst those jobseekers who end up scoring low!
They will blame the method.

Of course, we cannot help.

We only hope that, since HR managers will find these ratings/rankings reasonably reflecting their own assessment of the candidates, they will bring pressure on the candidates to stop sending plain text resumes and send only the ImageBuilders.

Next, we want to get onto Salary Ranking (really speaking, “Salary Comparison”).

And, in India Recruiter, we are capturing all the required data, viz.:

Function of each jobseeker (first priority)
Design level
Annual salary (current job) / experience block

With these data, we need only 2–3 simple steps to draw a graph (as shown in Annex B).

And since the data has been supplied by the candidate himself, he cannot “discount” it!

Again, X–Y axes are easily understandable.

You cannot find fault!

In Annex (A), tabulation at the top contains figures (numbers) representing the number of registered executives belonging to that cell.

Now, all cells will contain different numbers, which keep changing every minute, as more and more jobseekers register.

I feel, if any cell contains a number smaller than 100, we do not draw any graph for that cell — we start plotting only when the number in any cell exceeds 100.

Display the “Population = 138” data.

Let us start displaying this only when the number (in the cell) reaches a respectable 1000.

At this stage, you may wonder:

In “Function Competence Profile,” the X-axis is percentile,
whereas
In “Salary Profile,” I am showing actual annual salary (class intervals of 0–1 / 1.01–2 / 2.01–3 etc.) on the X-axis.

Why? Because —

#1 →

Of course, it is easy to understand an actual number (i.e., lakhs) as compared to a conceptual number (i.e., percentile).

“Relative standing” gets established much more easily in the mind of the jobseeker as well as the HR manager.

#2 →

While selecting / appointing a candidate, the HR manager has limitations / constraints in the best / max salary that he can offer to any given candidate (no matter how brilliant he is — say, with a percentile of 95%).

The actual salary of the candidate, superimposed on the Salary Profile graph, helps the HR manager to conclude the best salary that he should offer, with full knowledge as to what is the “market value” of such a person —

— what kind of salaries similar professionals are drawing, quite possibly even in competing companies.

If, by looking at this graph, the HR manager discovers that what he is prepared to offer (by way of salary) is absolutely rock bottom by industry standards, then he knows that he just cannot attract candidates — even those with percentile of 30% — the duds!

Most HR managers know that they have to offer 25%–35% more than what a candidate is already getting in his current company before he will consider making a change.

With such a “Salary Profile” graph, an HR manager would be able to make a rational / reasonable salary offer to a candidate, which —

he is convinced is fair by industry standard,
he believes will attract the candidate,
he knows will not upset his own existing, similar employees,
he can defend with his bosses, and
will not skew the industry norm or lead to unhealthy competition for talent (especially scarce talent) amongst competing companies.

I strongly feel that since Salary Profile will be greatly appreciated by HR managers, for the first time instead of relying on hunch or feeling, they will have statistical analytics to arrive at a rational decision.

This graph will be such a powerful decision-making tool that I believe HR managers will refuse to look at any other type of resume from any candidate!

They will insist on ImageBuilder only!

We can expect ImageBuilder to become a true industry standard only if and when we can get all HR managers to bring pressure on jobseekers.

We must make every HR manager our ImageBuilder’s Brand Ambassador — (of course, for free!)

As soon as we have launched India Recruiter (Jobseeker side), let us work on this and implement it as fast as we can.

We must do this even before we launch the Employer side.

And Salary Profile has important implications / ramifications from a jobseeker’s viewpoint as well.

Now, for the first time, he knows what kind of salaries his co-professionals

Drawing! “Theory of Relativity” kicks in!

Is he ahead of the pack or trailing the pack?

Such a “revelation” — that too, graphically plotted — could be exhilarating (if he is leading the pack) or it could be devastatingly, mentally shattering, if he is trailing almost all his co-professionals!

If he knows he is underpaid, he is quite likely to show this “authentic” graph to his boss / his personnel manager and ask for a raise — or threaten to quit!

(Don’t try this on me!)

Now, what would happen if 6/8 (or 25% of employees) professionals go to their boss flaunting this graph — and asking for raises?

Would we have created a mini-revolt in an organisation?

Maybe.

Maybe “Salary Profiles” may end up increasing the churn in industries — but it will certainly bring in a lot of transparency.

And, of one thing you can be rest assured —

Every jobseeker who registers on India Recruiter will come back and edit his resume once every year, immediately after the annual increments get announced!

He would want to make sure that:

his own ImageBuilder contains his new/revised salary, and
he is holding (or improving) his relative position amongst his co-professionals (— because if he is falling behind / losing his rank, then it is a cause for worry).

And of course, every time he changes his job, he will come back and edit because his salary would have gone up!

And most certainly, he would encourage his colleagues (within his own company) to register — so that they can compare their graphs!

We may have found our HOLY GRAIL!

(Signed – 17.04.06)