H1-B Visa cap reached for 2011

Friday, 28 January 2011

Bad news for those aspiring to get an onsite job in the US in 2011. Applications for U.S. H-1B visas, , have reached the  cap of 65,000 for the current fiscal years with U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS)  receiving an unusually high number of petitions in the first four weeks of Jan 2011.

For those not familiar with the visa types of US,  the H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the U.S. which allows American companies to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. In 2009, the cap of 65,000 was reached on December 21. In 2008, the cap was reached on April 8 and the USCIS had to resort to computerised draw of lots to determine successful applicants.Till a couple of years ago, the cap in H-1B visas was reached in the first few days of USCIS starting to accept applications.

USCIS will reject cap-subject petitions for new H-1B specialty occupation workers seeking an employment start date in FY2011 that arrive after January 26, 2011. It will, however, continue to accept and process petitions that are otherwise exempt from the cap.

Indian Students in the US stuck due to Tri-Valley University Scam

I am sure most of you would have read the report on the scam involving Tri-Valley University of California, US and its impact on the Indian students. For those who missed it, here is the scary story, which should increase the caution level, multiple folds for the students seeking admissions to the lesser known US universities and colleges.

Hundreds of Indian students, mostly from Andhra Pradesh, could be deported from the US after authorities raided and shut down Tri-Valley University in the Silicon Valley on charges of a massive immigration fraud. According to a federal complaint filed in a California court last week, the university helped foreign nationals illegally acquire immigration status.

Investigations by ICE(Immigration and Custom Enforcement),  found that on paper, students were admitted to various residential and on-line courses of the university, and lived in California. However, in reality, they "illegally" worked in states Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Texas.For a student to maintain an active immigration status, they must show proof that they are making reasonable process toward completing coursework and physically attend classes.Unconfirmed reports said that nearly two dozen students have been arrested or detained so far in various parts of the country. There are also newspaper reports that about a dozen Indian students from amongst hundreds cammed by the dodgy university, were even radio tagged by ICE officials by shakling the ankles of these students with radio-tracking devices, fitted with GPS technology.

After their university was shut down on charges of a massive immigration scam, Indian students in California have met the Consul General in San Francisco for help."We are seeking factual position (from the US Government) on the status of these students and how these students can be helped in transfer to other colleges, so that they can complete their studies," Thomas told PTI.

Hitachi Consulting acquires Sierra Atlantic

Hitachi Consulting(www.hitachiconsulting.com), a recognized leader in delivering proven business and IT strategies and solutions, announced on Jan 4th, 2010 that it has acquired Sierra Atlantic(www.sierraatlantic.com), a leader in offshore enterprise applications and outsourced product development. The acquisition will significantly expand Hitachi Consulting’s footprint with the addition of offshore Global Development Centers in Hyderabad, India, and Guangzhou, China along with a best-in-class global delivery model. It will also bring expanded capabilities to Hitachi Consulting’s Oracle business.

Founded in 1993, Sierra Atlantic is a leader in offshore IT outsourcing with approximately 2400 employees worldwide. The company’s headquarters is located in Newark, California and it maintains operations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. With approximately 200 customers across the Fortune 1000 and Small Medium Enterprise (SME) segments, Sierra Atlantic specializes in providing a full portfolio of enterprise application implementation and management services to customers – using Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Microsoft and Agile – in the discrete and process manufacturing, life sciences, financial services and retail industries. It also provides software development, testing and support services to world-class software companies.

Both the companies will utilize their respective business process integration skills to work towards a smooth transition to maintain business momentum, retain personnel and continue the highest quality of client support.
For more information, call 1.877.664.0010 or visit www.hitachiconsulting.com

Mobile Application Development- A rising area of opportunities

According to some industry forecasts the number of annual mobile application downloads worldwide will grow from 10.9 billion in 2010 to 76.9 billion in 2014. The reports also anticipate mobile application revenues to surpass $35 billion in 2014. Having said that, the extension of mobile applications to every aspect of the personal and professional lives will be one of the key characteristics of today’s youth. In India, the roll-out of 3G spectrum, will also redefine the way we experience video, music, movies. 3G would be specifically significant, given the growth in numbers of mobile internet users in India, which stands at 10 percent of the total Internet users, and is expected to double in the next four years as per industry reports.


With the upsurge in the sales of the smart and high-end phones, the market for mobile applications will rise exponentially in the coming years. In addition to the booming adoption of smartphones in India, entry of new connected device categories such as media tablets and portable media players will also contribute to the enormous growth of mobile applications. Hence, mobile application developers will be an integral part of the mobile device eco-system and crucial to the company’s growth across all market


However, one often gets confused inn terms of choosing the development platform. Even if we limit the choices to smartphone platforms alone, mobile developers must choose between Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm webOS, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. And add to the complexity, each is incompatible with the others. Obviously, reaching the broadest possible audience is a top issue for mobile application developers, but there are other factors to weigh. Here are a few things to think about when choosing a smartphone platform of development, one would like to choose:

1. Popularity and the choices of hand-sets:The nature of the application you want to build may limit which devices it can support. If you need a touchscreen, an accelerometer, or a compass, for example, you've already ruled out the majority of the handsets on the market. You may prefer to stick with a more proven platform, such as BlackBerry or Windows Mobile, especially if you will be developing apps for enterprise customers. BlackBerry has long catered to the business audience, while Apple hasn't made enterprise readiness a priority.
2. Availability of the tools and support:Some platforms may offer multiple ways to develop applications -- for example, BlackBerry may offer too many. The critical issue is the amount of documentation and support available to developers. Apple, for example, based its iPhone SDK on familiar Cocoa APIs from Mac OS X, ensuring that iPhone developers would benefit from the wealth of existing information about the Mac OS X development platform. Other smartphone platforms have a fairly steep learning curve; be sure you know what you're getting into.
Here is a quick comparison of the available choices:

Outlook for the IT Companies, Jan 2011

There have been lot of speculations on the golden days of the IT sector being over. Lot of people have been cautioning the students in terms of blindly running behind IT as a career, but the IT sector keeps on providing good news for everyone including the prospective employees and the investors.  Here is a broad overview on the performance of the top companies in the IT sector:

• The demand for IT outsourcing remained intact for the top IT players during the December 2010 quarter.This was despite the concerns over economic recovery in the US and Europe.
• The largest IT exporter TCS and the fourth largest HCL Technologies reported better business volumes than Infosys and Wipro,which are the second and third-biggest IT exporters in that order.
• The overall sequential growth at the aggregate level for the top four IT companies was moderate during the December 2010 quarter compared with the previous quarter. Net profit grew by 6.8%,slower than 9.2% in the September quarter.The companies were able to retain their operating margins during the December 2010 quarter for the second consecutive period even though the rupees movement against the major currencies was unfavourable.
• With economic uncertainty again looming on the horizon,clients are once again looking at a short term execution time frame.Instead of engaging into long-term contracts,these are broken into either smaller projects or the duration of contracts is divided into smaller periods.
• The rupee has gradually appreciated against the dollar for the past three quarters.An appreciating rupee hampers the realisations of exporting sectors.But this so far has not affected the performance of the top tier IT firms since many of them had booked forex hedges at higher rupee rates against the dollar in the past.These hedges are almost a year old now and most of them would expire in another couple of quarters.This may expose the net profitability of these companies to the forex fluctuations.
• On the positive side,top companies are still in a hiring mode.Companies,including TCS and Infosys,are expected to add more lateral or experience employees in the coming quarters.This serves as a leading indicator of the future demand.

 

What lies next after this honeymoon?

Freshers are having nice time during this part of the year,Every organization is hiring and some of the key ones are hiring in huge numbers, everyone is happy, the Training and Placement officers of the colleges, the students, the directors, the recruitment managers etc. While all this wide spread happiness is good news, what lies ahead is also important to understand. While the reason for campus hiring for most of the organization is to bring the costs down, but, the rising trend of unrest and impatience in the young work force defeats the purpose with majority of them looking out for a change within the first 24 months of their career. While the reasons could be many, but, one of the area often neglected by the big organization is career pathing. Most of the organizations do promote these people in the around the completion of 2 yrs, however the job content remains the same.

Career Pathing during the initial phases of the career is very important for the organizations to ensure that the young and inexperienced work-force doesn't leave them, before even settling down well in the organization. What is important for the organizations to have a short- medium term career path specifying the following content of the career path:

1) Job Enlargement:
Job enlargement expands a job horizontally. It increases job scope; that is, it increases the number of different operations required in a job and the frequency with which the job cycle is repeated. By increasing the number of tasks an individual performs, job enlargement increases the job scope, or job diversity. Instead of only working on the individual code, job could be enhanced for peer-review of the other person's code, as a very basic example.
Sometimes, efforts for Job enlargement have met with less than enthusiasm results. As one employee who experienced such a redesign on his job remarked ‘before I had one lousy job, now, through enlargement I have three’. So while job enlargement attacks the lack of diversity in overspecialized jobs, it has done little to provide challenge or meaningfulness to a worker’s activities.
2) Short-Term Job Rotation:
Here employees' main job is not changed, however the employees are given opportunities for short term to do additional activities or sent to outside countries etc. This measure relieves the employee from the boredom and monotony, improves the employee’s skills regarding various jobs and prepare worker’s self image and provides personal growth. However, frequent job rotations are not advisable in view of their negative impact on the organization and the employee.
3) Job enrichment:
Job enrichment as currently practiced in industry is a direct outgrowth of Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory of motivation. It is, therefore based on the assumption that in order to motivate personnel the job itself must provide opportunities for achievement recognition.
Responsibility, advancement and growth: The basic idea is to restore to jobs the elements of interest that were taken away under intensive specialization. Job enrichment tries to embellish the job with factors that Herzberg characterized as motivators: achievement, recognition, increased responsibilities, opportunities for growth, advancement and increased competence. There is an attempt to build into jobs a higher sense of challenge and achievement though vertical job loading.
Most of the well-trained HR population is aware of all above, however, where most of them fail is in effective execution of the same, specially with the kind of overload everyone including HR, goes through in the growth phase. If you are from HR and next time you are reviewing the attrition trends for your organization, kindly pay special attention to the execution details for the career pathing exercise. If you are an employee, please ensure that your manager or HR do prepare a detailed career path for you. Also make sure to pay special attention that the career path has a good balance of Job Enlargement, Job Rotation and Job Enrichment.

 

Single Entrance Test for all Management Studies

All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) is planning to hold a single entrance exam for all management studies. Current entrance exams like the Common Admission Test (CAT), Management Aptitude Test (MAT) and other entrance exams, conducted by various state governments, may soon be history.

At present, there are 3,800 AICTE-approved management institutes that have almost 4 lakh students. Every year, around 60-70 institutes get added to the list.Almost 1.8 lakh candidates took CAT in 2010 while more than 2 lakh candidates registered for it. On the other hand, 2.5 lakh students wrote MAT in 2010. Experts say there was an anomaly in the proposal as earlier the AICTE norm was that admissions could be through one of the five all-India entrance testes' CAT, JMET, MAT (conducted by All India Management Association), ATMA and XAT (conducted by XLRI). All institutions admitting students on an all-India basis then had to opt for one of these all-India entrance tests.

Managing Temper at work

I have seen lot f people in my professional life, who took pride in loosing their cool. Their reasoning was that they were passionate people with zero level of tolerance. Not that some of them were not successful, but definitely not effective and were seen hopping jobs or at least roles pretty frequently. It is very important to understand once temper and manage it at the work place because if not controlled well, a bad temper could easily lead to sharp decline in performance and high level of stress for the people around leading to high turn over of the team.

There can be numerous causes for loosing the at the temper, from small petty instances of bad comments to the exposure of work related issues. So, how can one control.There is a small story, someone sent to me a few months ago on email on controlling the anger. Lets first read that:

There was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won't matter how many times you say "I'm sorry," the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one

So, In short, realizing the ill effects of the bad temper is important first step in our effort to manage temper.Some other tips, which one can keep in mind are:
1. Politely walk out of a discussions/situations, which are getting heated up-  It is always better to have discussions and confrontations when you are not in an agitated frame of mind.
2. Take two three deep breadths, tell yourself that you want to be a good professional, whenever you are about to raise your temper.
3. Set clear expectations, communicate and over communicate: Most of the time, the issues arise due to communication gaps. Minimize the reasons by over communication and more so in the written form
4.Proper work life balance- If you are compromising a lot on your personal life due to work, stop doing that, because, it can create a bad attitude at work, which will impact temper and performance. Have meals at the proper time, give time for your personal fitness etc.
5.Praise in Public and Preach in Private- Never put your team members and peers down in public. They will hate you and will create reasons for your stress. If your boss is pulling you down in public, you might have to raise that first with the boss and if that doesn't help, you might have to have HR involved

There are many other things one can do, what's important is to realize that in order to be successful in the professional world, one has to be happy and smiling most of the times.

SEMINAR: ENHANCING ENERGY EFFICIENCY & HEADING TOWARDS GREENER ECONOMY

SEMINAR

ENHANCING ENERGY EFFICIENCY & HEADING TOWARDS GREENER ECONOMY

The Society of Energy Engineers and Energy Managers (SEEM), the professional body of energy auditors and energy managers in association with ABES IT Group of Institutions is organising a Seminar at ABES IT (Campus-2) Ghaziabad on 22^nd Jan 2011.  

The theme of the Seminar is to encourage more and more use of Renewable Energy Sources for long term sustainability of globe and our future generations focusing on “Renewable Energy Certificate concept”. In future the use of renewable Energy sources will be additional revenue stream for industries (By trading of RECs) and it’ll contribute to reduction of carbon emissions also.

The main attraction of the program will be the presentation of NEC award winning case studies and felicitation of National Energy Conservation Award 2010 Winners of UP and Uttrakhand as mentioned below:

1. Tata Motors Ltd CVBU, Lucknow

2. Tata Motors, Pant Nagar

3. LG Electronics Pvt Ltd. Greater Noida

4. IFFCO, Phulpur unit, Allahabad

5. Samsung India, Greater Noida

6. Continental Carbon Ltd., Ghaziabad

7. Havells India Ltd., Haridwar

Industries may replicate the similar measures in their organization to reduce their energy expenditure in their interest, import of petroleum products for national interest and reduction of Green House Gases for global interest.

Sh. Vasudev Sharma heading Energy Management Cell at M/S Supreme Plastics and Two times Recipient of NEC Award will also be felicitated in the same function for outstanding contribution to the field of Energy Conservation in Uttar Pradesh.

Date        :               22^nd January 2011

Time       :               2:30 PM to 6:40 PM

Venue     :               ABES IT group of Institutions

Campus - 2, 19th km stone, NH - 24, Vijay Nagar, Ghaziabad - 201009 (UP)

Ph - 0091-120-2842000, Fax - 0091-120-2840600, web - www.abes.in ,

You or your nominees are welcome to attend this seminar and reap the benefits (No fee is applicable). Entry is by prior registration on first cum first served basis (Latest by 19^th Jan).

 

Pl. confirm at your earliest to the e-mail vikrant@abes.in

                                                            

Best Regards

 C S Azad

Hony. Secretary, Uttar Pradesh /Uttrakahand Chapter,

 Society of Energy Engineers and Energy Managers (SEEM)

MAST from AIMA: The way to go for the Management Students and Organizations

INTRODUCTION

Founded in the year 1957, All India Management Association (AIMA) is an apex body of management with over 30,000 individual members, 3000 institutional members and 60 Local Management Association across India and overseas.  AIMA undertakes a host of management related activities and initiatives such as Distance Management Education, Management Development Programmes, Special Conferences, Research & Publications, Testing Services and Competitions.

Management Aptitude and Skills Test - MAST is the latest offering from AIMA for the benefit of both recruiters and fresh management pass outs alike.

 ADVANTAGE STUDENTS The two thousand plus B-Schools in India are churning out more than 3 Lakhs students every year. All B Schools do not necessarily have the bandwidth and access to attract pan India recruiters to screen their students. Placement is a challenge for many B-Schools today and finding the right fit for students has become a daunting task. Through this test, management students will understand their requisite managerial skill set and use the score as a proof point of their skills.

ADVANTAGE RECRUITERS Leading organisations end up spending a lot of time and incur huge costs visiting B-School campuses to hire fresh talent. MAST is developed to assist this recruitment process and make it smooth and efficient as the organizations get ready access to the database and a standard measure to shortlist the candidates whom they would like to meet for the interviews.

MAST FORMAT

Its an Computer based, objective type test for  2 hours 30 minutes duration

Test is divided in three main sections
1. Psychometric Test
2. General Ability Test
3. Domain Knowledge Test

1. Psychometric Test : Personality traits commonly held in high demand by recruiters stated below will be tested
• Leadership
• Decision Making Ability
• Team Work
• Adaptability
• Stress Management
• Initiator
• Ethical Values
• Negotiation skills
• Stability

2. General Ability Test will assess logical reasoning or thinking performance and will evaluate the following

• Numerical Ability
• Managerial Ability
• Reasoning
• English Language

3. Domain Knowledge Test will include multiple choice questions as well as case study based multiple choice questions in the following areas:
• Finance
• HR
• Information Technology (IT)
• International Business
• Marketing
• Operations
SCHEDULE FOR THE TEST

Will be held twice a year. For 2011, the first  test is on 20th Jan 2011 onwards. For more details, kindly visit

http://202.138.125.132/aima/Home/Schedule.aspx

Campus Hiring: Are you hiring or just filling positions?

Just staffing, not hiring

In my long career in the corporate world, one thing, I had seen time and again that if that we were always better of having a position vacant than staffing it with a mismatch profile. One wrong choice meant, some others taking up his/her load, negative vibes creeping up,some of the best performers turning into mediocre etc.. Also, since most of such people landed up being taken out of the assignments soon, if not out of the organization, we always had to start fresh. Despite that, the defect ratio were pretty high, even in the best of the organization. More often than not, the campus hiring team always knew, which was a good batch and which wasn't a good batch, but then, as with the other people in the organizations, they were trying and meet their numbers.

How to drive the right behaviour

In order to avoid such mishaps, it becomes imperative for organisations to have corrective measures in place to deal with such undesirable situations. So how can an organisation prevent recruiting such bad hires?  A few things, which I have seen working:

A) One has to ensure that there are the right measurement systems in place so that the effectiveness of the hiring team and channel is not based purely on the fulfillment ratio, but also on other metrics like, performance issues and attrition percent in the first six months.

B) Attracting the right candidates by proper recruitment branding and choosing the right recruitment channels helps prevent bad hires from coming on board. A thorough reference check of the candidate does play an important part in the hiring process. The ideal scenario to eliminate bad hires is to have a robust, scalable and seamless recruitment system in place.The system has to be a mix of processes of skill evaluation, psychometric evaluation and background/reference checks. Generally, the HR or consultants carry out the reference check with the two referees whose names are provided by the candidates themselves, this is not the right approach, simply because the candidate, more often than not, has already taken these two people in confidence before providing their names. Hence, it is important to do independent checks

C) Each role in the organisation should have a competency matrix associated with it. Competency mapping can be done with the help of behavioural event-based interviews and competency questionnaires. More and more open ended questions should be put forth to candidates so that it becomes a lot easier for recruiters to gauge his/her strengths and weaknesses.

D) If one would see on the surface, almost all good companies are very rigorous about evaluating candidates, however, one a deeper look, the robustly designed  hiring processes are poorly executed. Hence, HR education and familiarity with some of the cost elements, like annual cost of bad hires etc. is as important as their linkages to the performance bonuses.

Leadership Tip for the young professionals- Adapt

Most of the young professionals get into the trap of "I know it all" attitude within the span of the fist five years of their career. I have seen so many young folks who started very well in the first few years, but turned out to be mediocre pretty soon. Most of them landed up changing multiple jobs in an effort to fix the problem with their careers, but, that didn't help them much in the long run.

I have had the privilege of closely mentoring 100+ professionals and what I realized is that the ones who made it to the top were the ones who constantly updated their knowledge base and kept themselves current with the changing business environment. As a matter of fact, this is easier said than done. I have seen the entire leadership brass struggle with this. One of the large organizations, I worked for, was started as a captive consulting firm for the parent firm which was a global giant. Post the divestation from the parent firm and having the mandate to serve the other clients, most of the sales and the operations leadership which was so used to providing services to the parent firm, refused to adapt to the changed environment. Moreover, the were completely blind sided in hiring the right folks even from outside. As a result, the organization became stagnant at the time others in the industry were growing rapidly. The leaders refused to learn the outsiders perspective and wanted to play on their strengths. As Warren Buffet once said, "In the business world, the rear view is always clearer than the windshield", most of the leaders chose to look at clearer rear mirror and refused to look at the hazy windshield and the results obviously were pathetic.

As a young professional, one should know that the old adage, "leaders are born and not made", doesn't ring true in today's business environment. The leaders are not made without training. To scale the corporate ladder and also to help the organization scale heights, managers and leaders need to constantly horne their skills to adapt better to the dynamic business environment. One has to pay attention to constant unlearning and re-learning.

Leadership Tip for Young Professionals: Cross Functional Skills

In present scenario, the definition of long term seems to be constantly shrinking, one frequently comes across organizations redefining themselves every decade and in many cases even faster. These changes are either driven by the change in the ownership structure or due to the change in the business environment. This has a major influence on the way organizations look at their leadership team. When the market expects the organizations to be lean and adaptive, the same expectations translates to the expectations from the leadership. Being a cross functional has become a major prerequisite for the top leadership positions. Cross functional career paths are provided as part of leadership grooming so that leaders are well versed with the nuances of various functions. It is expected that they will better understand the impact of driving any change within the organization after being practically exposed to various functions.
This gives excellent opportunity for senior managers to pick up functions, which they normally wouldn't get opportunity for. One however, has to learn to make the best use of such opportunity and not make a mess out of the same. One of the senior IT Program managers, I knew very closely, in one of the most dynamic organizations I worked for, got chance to move to the Quality Head role and later to the HR head role. In this particular case, the person landed up creating lot of chaos and employee frustration in both the departments, just because of the level of complacency he carried from his operational role.

The important learning is that while the current organizations provide a great platform to develop cross functional skills, most of them lack sufficient trainings for smooth transitioning and control points to catch the issues earlier leading to a loss-loss situation, both for the employee and the organization. As a growing ip leader, one would need to have a much higher self-discipline and desire to learn to make it a win-win situation for everyone.