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)
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