Right Questions to find a capable candidate!

Interviewers are looking for the person to answer their questions not for the one who is capable to handle the Job!

Being a Consultant! Attending Interviews will be a part of our profession, now a days I find interviewers from most of the Company are looking for a candidate who can answer to most of their questions irrespective of the fact (Answering questions will not make a person capable to handle a given task efficiently).

Why am I making this as a point here?

 I need interviewers to understand that most of the efficient guys who have real proven experience for more than three years will not have an attitude to prepare for an interview as they did on their initial days.  Instead they would have developed the skills required to tackle any kind of issues that they might face with the product or the client. Hence they don’t want to learn the product field by field to prove their ground - that they are capable. Instead they know the road map to follow when they hit an issue. This is what a consultant should have to perform in his job! Not the talent to answer all the interviewers’ question.

Of course consultant should answer for the interviewer’s question!

But most of the time I see interviewers ask the question that they have learnt in their resent past experience when they have encountered an issue. It doesn’t mean every single person working in that module should have encountered the same issue and should know the answer otherwise I see them asking the question what is the effect of this check box? Or this particular filed in this particular screen?

Or other funny question is!  They might have had a peculiar requirement with their present client, hence they might have provided a custom or standard solution after doing homework for weeks or days but they will ask the same scenario as a question and will expect the candidate to reply immediately or they will fell happy internally that they are the one who knows a solution.  (I call them Bolt Headed)

Then what has to be questioned?

If you really need to find a capable person, ask them to explain about the product and its functionalities, ask them how they will encounter a road block, ask them what is their day to day job and the issues they face and how they rectify the issues, ask them where are the areas they will look for a solution when they need the most. If the interviewer is an experienced guy, by asking all these questions he can easily find a capable candidate rather than irritating the candidates with client centric or interviewer’s knowledge centric questions.

   

Think Practical! Go Practical! to find Practical people!

Thanks & Regards,

S.Grace Paul Regan

00965 - 66382159

Sitting Job Makes You Stupid!

Sitting around all day isn't just making you unhealthy. It might also be making you dumber.Your desk, scientists reported recently, is trying to kill you.

According to the New York Times, scientists discovered that when we sit all day, "electrical activity in the muscles drops… leading to a cascade of harmful metabolic effects," and sadly even getting regular doses of exercise doesn't offset the damage. But now there's new evidence of the harm of sitting. Not only is it making you fatter, it might also be making you dumber.


Sabine Schaefer, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany, recently looked at the effect of walking on working memory. Your mother may have warned you not to walk and chew gum at the same time, but when Schaefer compared the performance of both children and young adults on a standard test of working memory when they were sitting with when they were walking, her results contradicted mom's advice. The British Psychological Society's Research Digest sums up the research results:


The headline finding was that the working memory performance of both age groups improved when walking at their chosen speed compared with when sitting or walking at a fixed speed set by the researchers. This was especially the case for more difficult versions of the working memory task, and was more pronounced among the children than the adults. So, this would appear to be clear case of mental performance actually being superior in a dual-task situation.

Or in other words, rather than assume that walking while thinking splits your mental and physical resources, leaving less to devote to each, the scientists actually found "an increase in arousal or activation associated with physical activity… which then can be invested into the cognition," according to the paper reporting the research. Walking increases your resources of energy, which you can then invest in thinking.

Why didn't walking at "fixed speed" have the same effect on working memory as walking at the subjects' preferred pace? The scientists speculate that, "walking at the fixed speed, which was considerably slower than the preferred speed in both age groups, might simply not have been fast enough to increase arousal sufficiently to achieve an effect," or that the need to "pay some attention to adjusting one's walking speed to the speed of the treadmill" interfered with the main memory task.

Of course, not every mental activity can or should be performed while walking, but this new research reinforces anecdotal evidence and other research findings that suggest being too tightly chained to our desks is bad for our minds as well as our physical health. Science shows we often have creative breakthrough when our minds are disengaged from the problem we're wrestling with, hence the common experience of getting great ideas while relaxing in the shower.

Getting up for a walk or a jog is another way to achieve this sort of head space--after all, it worked for Einstein and Charles Darwin. (Beer, apparently, also helps.) Other studies have demonstrated that even five minutes outside in nature can improve your mood and self-esteem.

End of the most relevant research we know for sure "Software Job is a white collared suicide" , you earn much between 25 to 40 years and from 40  till you die you have to spend all you have hard earned in your young energetic days. 

Hence dear friends even tough your job may require sitting most of the time tune your self to take regular breaks of short walks not inside the building just out side your building, it will be a wealthy investment for your healthy life. Realize whats required the most money or health. 

What you can do with the money alone if you cannot enjoy the money with sound health ?

Will your family be happy just only with the money you have earned without you ?

Staying live and healthy is the atmost requirement for all living beings hence take some positive steps to stay healthy. 

Content from: Silicon India 

Thanks & Regards,

S.Grace Paul Regan

Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week

You may think you're getting more accomplished by working longer hours. You're probably wrong.

There's been a flurry of recent coverage praising Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, for leaving the office every day at 5:30 p.m. to be with her kids. Apparently she's been doing this for years, but only recently "came out of the closet," as it were.
What's insane is that Sandberg felt the need to hide the fact, since there's a century of research establishing the undeniable fact that working more than 40 hours per week actually decreases productivity.
In the early 1900s, Ford Motor ran dozens of tests to discover the optimum work hours for worker productivity. They discovered that the "sweet spot" is 40 hours a week–and that, while adding another 20 hours provides a minor increase in productivity, that increase only lasts for three to four weeks, and then turns negative.
Anyone who's spent time in a corporate environment knows that what was true of factory workers a hundred years ago is true of office workers today. People who put in a solid 40 hours a week get more done than those who regularly work 60 or more hours.
The workaholics (and their profoundly misguided management) may think they're accomplishing more than the less fanatical worker, but in every case that I've personally observed, the long hours result in work that must be scrapped or redone.

Accounting for Burnout

What's more, people who consistently work long work weeks get burned out and inevitably start having personal problems that get in the way of getting things done.
I remember a guy in one company I worked for who used the number of divorces in his group as a measure of its productivity. Believe it or not, his top management reportedly considered this a valid metric. What's ironic (but not surprising) is that the group itself accomplished next to nothing.
In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably why he had to trot out such an absurd (and, let's face it, evil) metric.
Proponents of long work weeks often point to the even longer average work weeks in countries like Thailand, Korea, and Pakistan–with the implication that the longer work weeks are creating a competitive advantage.

Europe's Ban on 50-Hour Weeks

However, the facts don't bear this out. In six of the top 10 most competitive countries in the world (Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom), it's illegal to demand more than a 48-hour work week. You simply don't see the 50-, 60-, and 70-hour work weeks that have become de rigeur in some parts of the U.S. business world.
If U.S. managers were smart, they'd end this "if you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming to work on Sunday" idiocy. If you want employees (salaried or hourly) to get the most done–in the shortest amount of time and on a consistent basis–40 hours a week is just about right.
In other words, nobody should be apologizing for leaving at work at a reasonable hour like 5:30 p.m. In fact, people should be apologizing if they're working too long each week–because it's probably making the team less effective overall.

Content from: Linkedin
Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

The Perils of An Early Sign-Off

Show up at the morning meeting in jeans? No biggie.

Tweet about your nasty neighbor from your cubicle? Social networking is part of the job!

Get up to go home before it’s dark out? No way.
Last week Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg stunned the working world by saying she makes a point of leaving the office at 5:30 every day in order to eat dinner at home with her family.

As she told an interviewer on Makers.com: “I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I’m home for dinner with my kids at 6:00, and interestingly, I’ve been doing that since I had kids. I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it’s not until the last year, two years that I’m brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly wouldn’t lie, but I wasn’t running around giving speeches on it.”

It’s not surprising that Ms. Sandberg wanted to keep her secret under wraps. In an era of job uncertainty, when most people are too scared to be seen anywhere other than in their cubicles (even if they’re shopping on diapers.com), an early signoff is the ultimate corporate taboo. Leaving early signifies that you don’t care, that you’re not getting the job done—or that you don’t love your work.

Yet we all know that’s silly. When everybody has Blackberrys and cell phones and is essentially always on-call, is it really necessary to keep up appearances—and keep your chair warm for ten straight hours?

Most of us send and receive work emails from the moment we wake up until we can’t keep our eyes open at night. We can read and write and conduct phone calls anytime, anywhere. But it’s still seen as incredibly ballsy to stake a claim to evening family time.

Ever since returning from maternity leave, I’ve left the office at 5:10, so I can be home for my son’s dinner and put him to sleep.

The hour we spend together every evening keeps me going. My heart cramps up a little bit on the rare days when I’m not able to see him before his 7 o’clock bedtime. I am very fortunate to have a boss who understands that my babysitter needs to leave by 6:00 and I need to connect with my baby at the end of the day. I get my job done and I’m reachable should any last-minute questions arise. We both know I get just as much work done now as I did when I had unlimited time in the office.

But I’d be lying if I said that being the first person in my group to head home was entirely easy. There is always the lingering sense that I “should” remain seated, the urge to look at the carpet as I walk toward the elevator.

I’m thrilled that Ms. Sandberg opened up this discussion. But I have a feeling it’s a little bit easier to do things according to your own schedule when you are one of the highest paid executives in Silicon Valley than if you’re a mere mortal in the officeworld, and you’re hoping to get a raise or a promotion.

What is the atmosphere like at your office? What time do you go home? Do you find making it back in time for family dinner realistic or are the consequences too severe?

Content From: blogs.wsj.com
Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

Micromanaging

Is your boss a micromanager?

These are managers who want to be involved in every step of each assignment they give to their employees. They ask for more frequent reports than are needed, and generally want to exercise as much control as possible over what their subordinates do.

With few exceptions, micromanagement is terrible for the employees as well as the organization.

By controlling everything that an employee does, these managers sap away the confidence of younger employees, who may end up feeling that nothing they can do is right. Older employees may get frustrated if they find their style of working and ideas are not welcome.

While it’s important to guide your team, you should be wary of micromanagement.

“Creativity and discretionary contribution…goes out the window,” says Anuraag Maini, head of human resources and training at Delhi-based DLF Pramerica Life Insurance Co.

Ultimately, the output of the team suffers.

Here are a few tips from human resources experts on how employees can deal with their micromanagers, and a few words of advice for micromanagers.

If you are being micromanaged:

This is a frustrating place to be in, as micromanagers can stymie your growth. Address the reasons why your boss is micromanaging.

Typically, it’s because the manager is insecure or anxious about whether you can do the job right. Of course, he may just be a control freak.

To deal with this, you need to build confidence in your abilities. One approach is to initially give the manager what he or she wants – the control – but on your terms.

“Offer to be micromanaged and then negotiate from a position (where you can) minimize that,” says Manish Sinha, director of human resources at Becton Dickinson India Pvt., a medical technology company in Gurgaon.

For instance, when the manager assigns you a project, ask for a specific deadline and initiate a discussion about how the project will be monitored.

Offer to update the manager at specific intervals, say once a week, or when specific milestones are reached. Give the manager an outline of how you will proceed on the project. Let the manger know that you will come to him or her in case you hit any roadblocks or major problem.

All this will let the manager feel that he or she is very much in control, and thus hopefully get the manager off your back on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully, over time, as you deliver good results on project after project, the manager will trust your ability to do a good job.

“Once you build that confidence, then I think the micromanagement will come down,” says Mrityunjay Srivastava, head of management development group at Wipro Ltd.

Some experts suggest a different approach: Have a frank discussion with the manager explaining that his or her day-to-day interference is hurting your ability to deliver performance. This can be tricky, and may not work if your manager is not open to feedback or has a big ego.

If you decide to try this approach, instead of being angry or aggressive, give the manager a solution. For instance, tell the manager that you need a certain period of time to complete a project, and if the result is not up to the manager’s standards, then you are willing to be reviewed more frequently.

Also, prove to your manager that his or her growth is dependent on how well you do your job.

If you are a micromanager:

In general, you are hurting your team’s growth and ultimately your own career prospects.

To be sure, there are some cases where micromanagement may be warranted. If it’s a high-impact project or an ambiguous situation like crisis-management where the situation changes often, then perhaps you need to be more hands on. Or, if you are dealing with very young or inexperienced employees, they may need a lot of handholding.

Other than that, micromanaging can be suffocating for the employee.

“Suffocation leads to an employee feeling that I’m not trusted or that the manager doesn’t see my capability or my manager is very insecure,” says Mr. Maini of DLF Pramerica.

This affects team morale, output and innovation dries up. That’s a sure way to disaster. In addition, once you’ve built a reputation in the company of being a micromanager, smart employees will not want to work with you.

As soon as you realize that you have been micromanaging, stop. Step back and assess whether everyone in your team needs to be micromanaged. The answer is that they most likely don’t.

If there are employees in whom you don’t have total confidence, start by setting up more frequent progress-review sessions with them for their first few assignments. Maybe team up the inexperienced employee with one that you trust.

With more experienced employees who have done a good job in the past, it’s a good idea to let them know that you plan to be more hands-off. Ask them what resources and help they need from you.

Set up a review mechanism, but at “a frequency which the employee is very comfortable with,” says Mr. Maini of DLF Pramerica.

The review should be of the result or progress, not of each and every thing the employee did to get the results.

Old habits die hard, so watch out for your tendency to check in every so often. If needed, stick a large piece of paper on your notice board as a reminder on this.

Content from:blog.wsj.com
Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

Extraordinary Bosses

The best managers have a fundamentally different understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics. what they get right ?

"Best of the Best" bosses tend to share some common principles.

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.

Average bosses see business as a conflict between companies, departments and groups. They build huge armies of "troops" to order about, demonize competitors as "enemies," and treat customers as "territory" to be conquered.

Extraordinary bosses see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They naturally create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers ... and even competitors.

2. A company is a community, not a machine.

Average bosses consider their company to be a machine with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by "pulling levers" and "steering the ship."

Extraordinary bosses see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.

3. Management is service, not control.

Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they're told. They're hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments where individual initiative is squelched by the "wait and see what the boss says" mentality.

Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.

4. My employees are my peers, not my children.

Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can't be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude, expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.

Extraordinary bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.

5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.

Average bosses see fear--of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege--as a crucial way to motivate people.  As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions.

Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they'll be a part of it.  As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization's goals, truly enjoy what they're doing and (of course) know they'll share in the rewards.

6. Change equals growth, not pain.

Average bosses see change as both complicated and threatening, something to be endured only when a firm is in desperate shape. They subconsciously torpedo change ... until it's too late.

Extraordinary bosses see change as an inevitable part of life. While they don't value change for its own sake, they know that success is only possible if employees and organization embrace new ideas and new ways of doing business.

7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.

Average bosses adhere to the old IT-centric view that technology is primarily a way to strengthen management control and increase predictability. They install centralized computer systems that dehumanize and antagonize employees.

Extraordinary bosses see technology as a way to free human beings to be creative and to build better relationships. They adapt their back-office systems to the tools, like smartphones and tablets, that people actually want to use.

8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.

Average bosses buy into the notion that work is, at best, a necessary evil. They fully expect employees to resent having to work, and therefore tend to subconsciously define themselves as oppressors and their employees as victims. Everyone then behaves accordingly.

Extraordinary bosses see work as something that should be inherently enjoyable–and believe therefore that the most important job of manager is, as far as possible, to put people in jobs that can and will make them truly happy.

Content From : Inc.com
Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

Good Qualities of Remarkable Boss !

Remarkable bosses aren’t great on paper. Great bosses are remarkable based on their actions.

Results are everything—but not the results you might think.

Consistently do these five things and everything else follows. You and your business benefit greatly.

More importantly, so do your employees.

1. Develop every employee. Sure, you can put your primary focus on reaching targets, achieving results, and accomplishing concrete goals—but do that and you put your leadership cart before your achievement horse.

Without great employees, no amount of focus on goals and targets will ever pay off. Employees can only achieve what they are capable of achieving, so it’s your job to help all your employees be more capable so they—and your business—can achieve more.

It's your job to provide the training, mentoring, and opportunities your employees need and deserve. When you do, you transform the relatively boring process of reviewing results and tracking performance into something a lot more meaningful for your employees: Progress, improvement, and personal achievement.

So don’t worry about reaching performance goals. Spend the bulk of your time developing the skills of your employees and achieving goals will be a natural outcome.

Plus it’s a lot more fun.

2. Deal with problems immediately. Nothing kills team morale more quickly than problems that don't get addressed. Interpersonal squabbles, performance issues, feuds between departments... all negatively impact employee motivation and enthusiasm.

And they're distracting, because small problems never go away. Small problems always fester and grow into bigger problems. Plus, when you ignore a problem your employees immediately lose respect for you, and without respect, you can't lead.

Never hope a problem will magically go away, or that someone else will deal with it. Deal with every issue head-on, no matter how small.

3. Rescue your worst employee. Almost every business has at least one employee who has fallen out of grace: Publicly failed to complete a task, lost his cool in a meeting, or just can’t seem to keep up. Over time that employee comes to be seen by his peers—and by you—as a weak link.

While that employee may desperately want to “rehabilitate” himself, it's almost impossible. The weight of team disapproval is too heavy for one person to move.

But it’s not too heavy for you.

Before you remove your weak link from the chain, put your full effort into trying to rescue that person instead. Say, "John, I know you've been struggling but I also know you're trying. Let's find ways together that can get you where you need to be." Express confidence. Be reassuring. Most of all, tell him you'll be there every step of the way.

Don't relax your standards. Just step up the mentoring and coaching you provide.

If that seems like too much work for too little potential outcome, think of it this way. Your remarkable employees don’t need a lot of your time; they’re remarkable because they already have these qualities. If you’re lucky, you can get a few percentage points of extra performance from them. But a struggling employee has tons of upside; rescue him and you make a tremendous difference.

Granted, sometimes it won't work out. When it doesn't, don't worry about it. The effort is its own reward.

And occasionally an employee will succeed—and you will have made a tremendous difference in a person's professional and personal life.

Can’t beat that.

4. Serve others, not yourself. You can get away with being selfish or self-serving once or twice... but that's it.

Never say or do anything that in any way puts you in the spotlight, however briefly. Never congratulate employees and digress for a few moments to discuss what you did.

If it should go without saying, don't say it. Your glory should always be reflected, never direct.

When employees excel, you and your business excel. When your team succeeds, you and your business succeed. When you rescue a struggling employee and they become remarkable, remember they should be congratulated, not you.

You were just doing your job the way a remarkable boss should.

When you consistently act as if you are less important than your employees—and when you never ask employees to do something you don’t do—everyone knows how important you really are.

5. Always remember where you came from. See an autograph seeker blown off by a famous athlete and you might think, “If I was in a similar position I would never do that.”

Oops. Actually, you do. To some of your employees, especially new employees, you are at least slightly famous. You’re in charge. You’re the boss.

That's why an employee who wants to talk about something that seems inconsequential may just want to spend a few moments with you.

When that happens, you have a choice. You can blow the employee off... or you can see the moment for its true importance: A chance to inspire, reassure, motivate, and even give someone hope for greater things in their life. The higher you rise the greater the impact you can make—and the greater your responsibility to make that impact.

In the eyes of his or her employees, a remarkable boss is a star.

Remember where you came from, and be gracious with your stardom.

Post Shared from : Linked-in
Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

Criticism – can you do it politely?

At some point, as a manager you will have to tell someone that you don’t think they’ve done a good job – and it’s not always easy. Not only do you need to communicate your dissatisfaction with the way the job has been done, and require it to be improved, but you have to do this while making sure that the other person doesn’t feel personally attacked, embarrassed or humiliated. You need to be able to give effective, understandable criticism while staying polite and professional at all times.

Here are some tips to help:

1. Focus on the issue not the person

Always make your criticism constructive, focusing on the issue not the person, and where possible avoid negative formulae. Remember that you are both trying to achieve the best possible outcome, not exchange accusations or apportion blame. If you’re already feeling annoyed with the person’s attitude or there are other performance issues, try to separate them in your head: do you want to discuss this one unsatisfactory piece of work, or do you really want to have a broader discussion about the quality of their work in general? Whatever the answer, make sure you know what you want the outcome of this conversation to be, and don’t mix issues up. If necessary, schedule another time to have the bigger discussion, rather than confusing it with the work in hand.

2. Show appreciation

People are much more receptive to listening and acting on criticism if they feel you’re on their side. So first of all say something positive to the other person: for example, “Thank you so much for handing this piece of work in on time!” or: “Thanks very much for all your hard work in getting it done!” If they’ve done something you like, tell them so. Your aim is to communicate to them that the criticism you’re about to give relates to a specific issue and is not a criticism of them personally – you don’t want them to feel like a failure, or to get the impression you are angry (even if you are).

3. Don’t give mixed messages

When you say something positive, be very careful not to make them think that this unsatisfactory piece of work is better than it is. Don’t wrap your criticism up in too much praise: it will give a mixed message which will only confuse and frustrate them. For example, don’t say, “This report’s great! There are just one or two small things I’d like to discuss,” if you really want them to do a lot of rewriting. Once you’ve made your positive opening comment, tell them quite directly that you would like to discuss this piece of work with them, as you think it still needs a lot more effort (or whatever is appropriate to the situation). You can say, “I think it’s good but there are a couple of things I’d like changed,” or: “It’s basically fine but it’s not quite there yet.” If you’re very unhappy with the quality of the work, you can say, “I’m afraid that this still needs a lot of work.” Make it clear that what you’d like is to discuss ways in which to improve the situation – so that you both end up pleased with the result.

4. Right time, right place

You need to keep the tone of the conversation polite and calm, and you need to find the right environment to have it. That doesn’t mean standing next to the person at their desk, in a room full of other people, or giving them your feedback five minutes before their lunch hour! Ask if they have some time now to discuss the points you want to make, or arrange to meet later when it’s convenient for both of you. Then find a room or a quiet place where you can sit together without being interrupted.

5. Stay calm, polite and objective throughout

While you’re giving your criticism, look at the other person. Don’t just look at the computer screen or the page in front of you, or their left shoulder; watch their face and keep eye contact, if possible, making sure they understand what you’re saying. Remember that sometimes mistakes are made because people haven’t understood what they were supposed to be doing: maybe the briefing wasn’t good enough. Speak slowly and calmly, and don’t rush the conversation: allow them time to ask questions and make their own points. Above all, don’t let this turn into a blame session, don’t make personal comments about their abilities, and don’t get angry. If you feel you’re losing your cool, remember that it will only make matters worse.

6. Use the word “I” and not “you”

Rather than saying, for example, “You made a lot of mistakes in this section,” say, “I found quite a lot of mistakes in this section. Could you please correct them?”, making it clear you’re criticising the piece of work and not the person. Or, “I found the overall tone of this report rather negative. Could you have another look at it and try to make it more upbeat?” (Again, if it’s really the person you want to criticise, keep that separate. This discussion is about this piece of work.)

7. Make your point and then stop

Once you’ve said what you want to say, stop! Ask if they have understood what you’ve said, and allow them time to answer. Agree that you’ll have a follow-up when the work has been done, and show confidence in their ability to make the improvements themselves. (If you really think they are incapable of producing satisfactory work, then it’s time to have that bigger discussion about the standard of their work in general.) Finally, before you leave the room, show appreciation again for their efforts and end the discussion with a smile.

Learning to give feedback and criticism is crucial to building an effective team. It needs careful thought and sensitivity in order to avoid hurt feelings and a build-up of resentment. But if it’s done right, it can be painless and ultimately lead to stronger teams and higher quality work.

Content from : HP Technology at work
Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

Yourself to be an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is not a rocket science and neither is it just luck. A proper approach, plenty of patience and a lot of search is required to build a great startup. Certain steps mentioned below can help you come up with great ideas and a strong business foundation.

Pre-Idea

Reading blogs and articles about startups and entrepreneurship is a must for you. Its better to learn from others mistake then to create one for own and incur a heavy loss. Learn the survival skills of such startup companies who faced crisis in their initial stage of operations. Join various blogs to ask questions to build knowledge and reputation. You can even start following people in the startup space through social media and engage in conversations with them. Try to attend startup events, keep networking and find a suitable co-founder to build a killer team.

Ideating

From the information collected from the previous step, build a list of the prospective ideas, which you feel, will work for you and brainstorm to finalize on the idea you are passionate about. Keep on enhancing your skill sets for the same. You can even leverage various startups events to get track of new and innovative ideas.



Before finalizing on any idea, keep track for the various government rules and regulations and the various licenses required to kick start your company and entrepreneurship. The name of the company is the first picture that you are going to present in the market. It should be unique and easy to pronounce. But before zeroing on the name, search of domain availability and google search results for the potential brand name.

Implementation

It is the time to get your hands dirty. Start on with the chapters as per your plan, but remember to be flexible to adapt changes as and when required. Sticking to a particular

theory may lead to various issues which might be dangerous for your brain child. Register your domain and create a webpage that will provide a better and detailed picture of you and your company.

Kick Start the Marketing Tool

To catch hold of more eyes, list your startup in free listing places with good and attractive logo for your company. The business card is one of the best way to m

arket you and your company. Get a creative business card and use the back of the card to make a creative two line pitch for your startup. Today social networking sites are one of the best marketing tools. Try to make the maximum use of it to expand your consumer base and fan following. Start blogging about your business and provide with the latest update and talks about your startup.

Expansion

Keep expanding your business as and when required. If you started as a sole proprietor and now your company needs a partner, don't hesitate to do so. This will bring an additional brain to tackle the pressure and will provide you with great, new and innovative ideas. Ya, you may need to part of from a portion of your profit, but never step back for this. May be his valuable ideas might work miracle. Keep on adding valuable employees for worth-full expansion.

Consumers are an integral part of your business. Don't forget to satisfy them and get a feed back for improvements. Come up with better loyalty programs. And last but not the least, make proper use of the free marketing tool for expansion, "Word of Mouth". It will pay you greater returns.

Never Never Never Ever Give-Up


Watch this video as many times as you want or when ever required.

Never Never Never Ever Give-Up

Content extracted from various web media network

Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

How to Deal with a Nasty Boss

Have you ever quit a job because of your boss? A good boss can play a very important role in an employee's life simultaneously a bad or nasty boss can leave a depressing impact. We all know that bosses have a huge responsibility towards his work and have to manage a huge empire of workforce. One can tackle pressure from boss to a certain extend but work pressure is a natural phenomena on every organization. But things become nasty to you only when your boss turns nasty to you.

They can change our work situation with their power. Because of various nasty, unhealthy behaviors from boss, many people end up with quitting the job. But that is not the solution. People do not want to quit the job but the boss. Sometimes we see that they try to adjust with the problem because of the fear of losing the job. However the only mantra in such a situation is to find some solution for it and not to quit and run away from your job. First of all we should know the type of the boss, and accordingly tackle them.

Limited conversation


Always limit your conversation with your boss so that there will be less chances to have any kind of argument. Talk only about your work or any office related issue and also wait for the right time to speak. Never give your boss to pinpoint any faults and make sure you never miss out any deadlines.

Speak to your colleagues


May be you are not the only target of your boss in the office. Talk to your colleagues and take their opinions too about your boss. Discuss with them about the problems and each of you can find solution from one another in this way you can get ways to deal with your boss.

Complain about your boss

Making a complaint about your boss is risky because unwarranted complaints can jeopardise your working life and even your career, but if your manager is behaving inappropriately then their actions must be confronted.

Reasons for complaint can take various forms from bad management and job ineptitude to more serious issues like discrimination and bullying.

If your boss is simply unfit for their position, such as through being unwilling to take responsibility, shunning new ideas, discouraging initiative or by just being incompetent and out of their depth, then it can be very difficult to justify raising a complaint. Is their incompetence worth the risk of jeopardising your position and being branded a troublemaker or a whinger?

If you are adamant that action is required then it is important to tread carefully and act with utmost sensitivity. After all, your boss may be unaware of their own limitations and be trying to do what they think is best. It is an unfortunate reality that many managers are not adequately skilled at managing people.

One course of action is to speak to their superior. Rather than demand a formal meeting to vent your complaint, it is wiser to suggest a casual chat where you can calmly explain that you are not being allowed to perform at the best of your abilities in your current role. Rather than blame your boss, explain how your relationship with them is proving frustrating and restrictive. It may also be worth commenting that their behaviour is not only undermining your own performance but also that of the team.

Stand for yourself

Always think about your self-respect. If you are wrong, rectify yourself and do your work properly on time. But if you feel that you are right and just because you have a nasty boss you are suffering his tantrums then do not. Stand for yourself and speak to him about your problem. Some bosses have no idea what actually the problem the employee is facing and they just end up yelling at them. Even some bosses have no idea how they have been treating their employees until employees speak up.
Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

Great Ideas! Passion! Tenacious! Irrepressible!

"Number one, great ideas matter. Number two, find passion and, number three be tenacious, be irrepressible" preached Ballmer to the students. He said these were three keys things that he learnt in Micorsoft.

Ballmer made the parents of the students to walk down the memory lane, to remind them of their college days. He explained how difficult it was to write a term paper without a word processor and without the Internet. And now Information technology has shaped the world in such a way like none other in the human history.

Steven Anthony "Steve" Ballmer was born on March 24, 1956. He was born in Detroit, Michigan. In 1973, he graduated from Detroit Country Day School, a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan, and now sits on its board of directors. In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in mathematics and economics. At college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who later became CEO of General Electric. In 1980, he dropped out of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft.

Ballmer's entry into Microsoft was during those days when Ballmer was doing an MBA program. A friend of his who he had gone to college with Bill Gates, offered him to drop out of school and join him for his venture. When Ballmer explained this to his father, his father had no clue of what a software was neither was his mother, who ended up asking him why would a person ever need a computer?

As Albert Einstein once said "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination," Microsoft proved the statement with two people's daring imagination, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Microsoft was the result of one single good idea that was never thought before. Ballmer explains that it was one fundamental idea by two individuals, which has ended up with every home having a computer. He said that a microprocessor is some form of free intelligence which when combined with right software will form a computer for every home.

Another way to sort of grab this idea about ideas and direction, Ballmer quoted Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky said "good hockey players skate to where the puck is; great hockey players will skate to where the puck is going to be."

Ballmer went on to speak about the second key thing: Passion. He said "This is not an easy one. People think passion is something you either have or you don't. People think passion is something that has to manifest itself in some kind of explosive and emotional format. It's not. It's the thing that you find in your life that you can care about, that you can cling to, that you can invest yourself in, heart, body, and soul. Finding passion is kind of your job now."

Speaking about his passion, Ballmer said he was under a lot confusion to find out what he truly liked to do. He tested his likes and dislike when he was in the ninth grade and he had to write a computer program. He hated it and though he was never qualified for computer programming. When went on to do his college he thought he would be a physicist or a mathematician, but at the end of his freshmen year he had realized that he had too little patience for those.

The one thing that Ballmer enjoyed doing was being the football manager for the college football team. Organizing things was what the job demanded and that is where Ballmer realized that he passionately liked his job. When Ballmer was looking out for a change in his career, jobs from movie business came knocking at his door. Then by luck, Bill Gates asked him to join his 30 member team and since then there has been looking back.

And last but not least, Ballmer said "be tenacious. I actually prefer the word irrepressible.Irrepressible is kind of tenacious, but with optimism. You keep going and going. You could say, isn't that the same as passion. It's not. Passion is the ability to get excited about something. Irrepressibility and tenacity is about the ability to stay with it. If you take a look at all of the companies that have been started in our business, most of them fail. If you take even a look at the companies that have succeeded, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, you name it, all of these companies went through times of hardship. You get some success. You run into some walls. You try a formula for a new idea, a new innovation, it doesn't work. And it's how tenacious you are, how irrepressible, how ultimately optimistic and tenacious you are about it that will determine your success."

Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, and became Microsoft's 30th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates. Ballmer loved working at Microsoft.He was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8 percent of the company. He has headed several divisions within Microsoft including "Operating Systems Development", "Operations", and "Sales and Support." In January 2000, he was officially named Chief Executive Officer.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave the commencement speech at the University of Southern California.

Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

10 things end users do that drive a consultant crazy !

As a consultant, my primary jobs are remote support and Onsite client side support. Because of this, I deal directly with our clients a lot. Although I am fond of many of those clients, most of them still display behaviors that drive me, as a consultant, crazy. And maybe it’s the excessive rain and storms we’ve been having, but these behaviors have escalated lately. So I thought I would share some of these things with you to see whether you’ve run into them —and whether you’ve encountered other behaviors you want to share with your fellow readers.

Please understand, I do this to lay down a bit of humor so we can all commiserate, cope, and (I hope) laugh at the follies we deal with day in and day out. I do not, in any way, mean to suggest that I think people are horrible or that I don’t like to deal with them.

1: Take control of remote sessions
I do a lot of remote support with the supplier related isssues. For that support, I use either LogMeIn or Team Viewer. Inevitably, I run into clients who constantly want to “show me” what’s going on, take over the mouse to point out something different, or even use their machine for something else (like replying to an email that should be able to wait or they simply get excited to some friends popped a message online and they start to reply them just by forgetting their screens are shared). Outside of annoying any support tech, this does one thing — extends the length of time needed to do a job.

Sometimes, it seems clients/suppliers don’t realize that other clients/Suppliers are actually waiting for my help, so they think they can take up as much of my time as they want. But beyond taking up time, this type of behavior often can lead to an environment of mistrust, where techs feel the client does not trust their work. No one wants to work under these circumstances.

2: Give too much irrelevant information about an issue
What I really want to know is that you clicked on an attachment that was in an email. I don’t care to know the email was originated by your grandmother on your father’s side and the email had the most darling picture of kittens and puppies playing together in a field of daisies. I also don’t care that you were sitting at your desk, having your usual lunch of yogurt and sliced apples dipped in caramel when everything started to go down the drain. Get to the point, give me the facts, and I will do my job to the best of my ability.


3: Blame the issue on something I (or another tech) did previously
Yes, I’ve worked on PO output issue before. No, what I did last time to change the terms & condition pages that goes with the PO’s to all suppliers and that has zero effect on the fact that now you can’t get a PO print. Although they may be related, they are not directly cause and effect. Trust me on this. I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you, and I am 100 percent sure that the PO Output for communication issue is not related. But on the off chance that you simply will not believe me, I will do everything I can to show you the two are not related in any way. If you still don’t believe me, I have no other consultants who will be happy to have your work — until they’re no longer happy to have your work it’s going to be only me again and again.

4: Lie
This one should not need any explanation. But for those who have yet to experience the liar, let me set the stage. There are times when you log into a user’s machine and discover that something obviously has been done —most of the time not following the do’s and don’ts document guide lines and land in a problem— that can be done only by an end user/supplier. When an end user has made such a mistake, he or she will sometimes try to deny doing anything to cause the problem. That’s fine. But most of the consultants can see through the thinly veiled lie. We know the truth… so it’s okay to admit, rather than to bluff saying I did not do anything wrong that was mentioned in do’s and don’ts document even tough your system shows an error.


5: Take control of conversations
When I’m trying to explain an issue to an end user, it really bugs me when that user takes over the conversation, preventing me from being able to effectively communicate either the problem or the solution. Generally, these people tend to have more to say on the issue than necessary and assume what they have to add to the situation is far more important than what they have to learn. If those end users would stop and listen for once, the reoccurring issue I am trying to help them with might not reoccur. No one is ready to listen.


6: Ask the “quick question”
This one really bothers me. Without fail, a client will call me with a “quick question” that inevitably winds up being a 30-minute phone conversation. My time is valuable through the workday and those quick questions add up. Not only that, but many clients use the quick question to avoid having to pay for support on the real issue. Most often they start with the quick question to find a place where they can point their hand safely to push on their issue. They call us to get a confirmation of their blame is technically right.


7: Chat while I’m concentrating
This goes along with dominating the conversation. Many users, while in the middle of a remote session, want to chat. Sometimes that’s okay, as we are simply waiting for a download or waiting on the progress of a service or application. But when I’m elbows deep in the dirt and grit of trying to resolve a crucial issue, don’t try to chat me up about the weather, the royal wedding, or the price of gas. Please let me resolve the issue at hand (especially one that requires my concentration) and then I will happily chat about whatever (so long as I don’t have a pressing appointment after yours).

Sometimes they chat to deviate your attention not to find the issue was created due to lack of his concentration or ignorance.


8: Insist what their “cousin” or “geek friend” told them was true
I get it. Some companies enlist the help of “Cousin Joe,” or armature “geek friend” who happens to owe the secretary a favor and “knows a thing or two” about computers or the application a specific business uses. Well, “cousin” or “geek friend” didn’t do you any favors when he caused even more problems doing what he did. Not that I am going to slam your cousin and kick your geek friend. But when I say that although cousins and friends intentions were good, what he did was counterproductive to solving the issue at hand, please don’t insist that the cousin was in the right and that I am only trying to bilk you out of more money. Of course, if it ever comes to those kinds of words, you will most certainly be looking for a new support specialist.

9: Undo my work
Raise your hand if you’re guilty of undoing all that work the consultants did with the help of support techs the very second they left. I’ve seen this happen plenty of times. I’ve had clients actually confess to doing this. What those clients don’t realize is that I will more than likely have to come back and redo what I did prior to this visit (I have installed a old java version to test a special type of customization on the client PC which will be required by him and recommended by oracle to do so but the client called support guys for a different issue and on the way they found his java version to be old and would have changed it favoring the client. Then the application forms screen will not open with my clients work PC) — and I’ll also have to fix problems they caused by undoing my work. Do us both a favor and don’t undo my work. This is rarely going to be a smart choice, and the possibility that you’ll be able to resolve the issues created by your tampering are nil.

10: Lack the necessary information
Most of the time it’s like this – “I have an issue in submitting the Quotation through your company’s Oracle web portal” , just like that nothing more. You will not get any information (screen shot of the error page, what they were trying to do at the time when they got the error, how long they are facing the problem, Is this happening with only a particular document/Particular user)
When end users or suppliers call for a help, 10 percent of the time they have all of the information necessary for a successful appointment. The other 90 percent? Not much. In fact, a large portion of that 90 percent require nearly double the normal job time just for fact gathering. So… when you call, please make sure you have all the information needed to complete the appointment. Otherwise, you are wasting my time and running up your bill.

Other peeves?
Do these users sound like some of your clients? If not, you are one lucky consultant/support specialist. If these clients do sound familiar, you have my sympathy. What other user behaviors do you run into that annoy you or impede your work?


Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan

10 easy ways to get your life back and still excel at work !

You love your job but loving it too much could be dangerous to your health. The more often you stay late in the office or clock in extra hours over the weekend, the more stress you are adding to your life. When was the last time you went on leave - and left your notebook and phone at home?

A survey of British workers by the Mental Health Foundation found more than 40 percent of respondents are neglecting other aspects of their life because of work. When working long hours, respondents reported feeling depressed or anxious. Nearly two-third of employees have experienced a negative effect on their personal life. This ranged from lack of personal development, physical and mental health problems, and poor relationships and poor home life.

With IT playing a crucial role in organisations, it's easy for IT pros to become overworked. Responsible employers and employees understand though that a healthy work-life balance goes a long way to maintaining a happy and productive workforce. Here are 10 ways you can tip your work-life balance to your health’s favour.

1. Do what you enjoy best
Don't you find that it takes twice as long to complete uninteresting tasks than it does to do something you love?

Nick Woodeson, a former IT director and now owner of Essential Business Skills Consulting in his work-life balance blog writes: "The secret to a better work-life balance might well be not in managing your time and reducing your overall time in work, but increasing the time you spend in the aspects of your job that you find most absorbing and fulfilling. Remember - if the time just passes without you taking account of it, you’re doing the right thing!"

Clifton StrengthsFinder, a management philosophy believes that employers benefit if they encourage employees to play to their individual strengths. Let your boss know the aspects of your work you like best and suggest alternatives to completing the tasks that don’t play well to your strengths. Find out who in your group possesses the strength you lack and let them enjoy those tasks.

2. Be prepared for the unexpected
If you already have excessive stress in your life you'd be less able to handle a crisis, says Woodeson. Stress depletes energy, something that’s required in abundance to navigate sudden unforeseen emergencies.

Woodeson writes: "... most people would struggle if they lost all the contact details of people stored in their mobile phone or if they had their notebook stolen, but relatively few people take the trouble to learn how to back up their important data and to then do so on a regular basis."

Aside from backing up your data, begin to document your work so you can easily hand over the tasks to a colleague if you need to take a few days out in an emergency. This could be storing files in a public folder or creating a spreadsheet with project milestones, contact details and file names and locations.

3. Save time for yourself
If your work environment allows others to access your calendar to schedule meetings, be sure to block off some time for yourself. This could be two or four hours each week. Use this time as a buffer in case you need extra time to complete a task, run errands or catch up with colleagues.

4. Schedule your day's deadlines around your body clock
Studies by human biology professionals show that our bodies have various internal clocks but society forces us to ignore those signs. Perhaps you feel sleepy after lunch or are more energised for work early evening. Everyone is different.

Blogger Woodeson says the best way to discover your own cycles is to work from home for a period. You'll then recognise the times you are most energised. Use those times to schedule your most pressing deadlines.

5. Reconsider your philosophy of working late
Harvard Business Review blogger Ron Ashkenas studied successful medical professors for his doctoral research on the balance between professional achievement and successful family life. He found that the most successful professors in his sample group also tended to have the most instances of divorce and estrangement from children.

"Naturally, none of these highly successful people had consciously chosen to sacrifice their families in order to advance their careers. Instead, they had made hundreds of small tradeoffs over the years - such as staying in the lab instead of attending a child's school concert. It was the accumulation of these small choices that seemed to gradually tip their lives one way or the other," Ashkenas writes.

He suggests pros think about the following philosophical questions:

What's the balance that you want to strike between personal and professional success?
If you had to honestly choose, is one more important than the other?
What are your goals in each of these spheres and what can you do to optimize both?

6. Prioritise your commitments
A work-life balance article in Forbes advises readers to: "Consider all the things competing for your time and decide what will stay and what will go ... What about the three nonprofit organisations you belong to?"

Decide on what’s important to you in your life right now. If you’re an IT pro wanting to hone your soft skills, perhaps the volunteer work you do for nonprofits is helping your personal development. Perhaps your weekly task of clearing the yard of your elderly neighbor could change to a monthly commitment.

7. Use technology wisely
Technology has done so much to improve the quality of our lives. Think of the time and energy we save by shopping online instead of driving to the store. Even GPS navigators save precious minutes by speaking the directions so we don't have to make frequent stops to check a printed map.

However,don't let technology run your life. Make it a philosophy to switch off your phone during dinner with the family. Leave your phone at the office at lunch and go for a walk or read a chapter of a novel. Perhaps even try spending one weekend a month without computers.

8. Make the most of your employer's wellness programs
Employers spent 35 percent more - about $220 - on each employee who participated in a wellness program in 2010 compared to 2009. According to "Working Well: A Global Survey of Health Promotion and Workplace Wellness Strategies," by Buck Consultants employers offer wellness programs to reduce workplace stress and improve workforce morale and engagement.

Another study, this time in the US, by Fidelity Investments and the National Business Group on Health found that employers are offering several types of incentives to encourage employees to participate in health improvement programs. Such incentives include cash, gift cards or offers to make additional contributions to health savings accounts. So go on, sign up for a wellness activity today. What do you have to lose (aside from stress)?

9. Consider a results-only work environment
The latest work philosophy making headlines is Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). Developed by two former HR managers at U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy, ROWE allows employees to establish their own work schedule as long as the work gets done on time.

ROWE companies don't track workers' time on the job (vacation, sick days or if they’re prompt into the office); employees are measured on whether they achieve their goals. There are formal steps that organisations must take to become "ROWE Approved." Even if your employer is not ROWE Approved you can incorporate some of the ROWE philosophy to your team. This could include allowing team members to work from home or take "unofficial" time off when needed, as long as it’s clear that you expect them to get the work done.

10. Lead by example
Your management philosophy dictates how employees work. Encourage employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance by leading by example.

Create a supportive team where members help each other out to meet tight deadlines.
Speak up against impossible deadlines, no matter whether they’re imposed by stakeholders or by the employees themselves.
Involve and communicate with your stakeholders. Let them know if there are problems along the way that could affect deadlines. Instill ownership in everyone. That way, both stakeholders and project members will work together to solve problems.
Add buffer of time to the project schedule. It’s better to overestimate the time you think it will take your team to do something than to underestimate. Some project practitioners advise adding 25 percent buffer time to a project. That will give you some breathing space if something crops up.

We hope some of these tips will help encourage you to take some time out of your crazy work schedule to find ways to restore your work-life balance.



Edited and Extracted from various sources and posted by..
S.Grace Paul Regan

10 dirty little secrets you should know about working in IT

10.) The pay in IT is good compared to many other professions, but since they pay you well, they often think they own you

Although the pay for IT professionals is not as great as it was before the dot-com flameout and the IT backlash in 2001-2002, IT workers still make very good money compared to many other professions (at least the ones that require only an associate’s or bachelor’s degree). And there is every reason to believe that IT pros will continue to be in demand in the coming decades, as technology continues to play a growing role in business and society. However, because IT professionals can be so expensive, some companies treat IT pros like they own them. If you have to answer a tech call at 9:00 PM because someone is working late, you hear, “That’s just part of the job.” If you need to work six hours on a Saturday to deploy a software update to avoid downtime during business hours, you get, “There’s no comp time for that since you’re on salary. That’s why we pay you the big bucks!”

9.) It will be your fault when users make silly errors

Some users will angrily snap at you when they are frustrated. They will yell, “What’s wrong with this thing?” or “This computer is NOT working!” or (my personal favorite), “What did you do to the computers?” In fact, the problem is that they accidentally deleted the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, or unplugged the mouse from the back of the computer with their foot, or spilled their coffee on the keyboard.

8.) You will go from goat to hero and back again multiple times within any given day

When you miraculously fix something that had been keeping multiple employees from being able to work for the past 10 minutes — and they don’t realize how simple the fix really was — you will become the hero of the moment and everyone’s favorite employee. But they will conveniently forget about your hero anointment a few hours later when they have trouble printing because of a network slowdown — you will be enemy No. 1 at that moment. But if you show users a handy little Microsoft Outlook trick before the end of the day, you’ll soon return to hero status.

7.) Certifications won’t always help you become a better technologist, but they can help you land a better job or a pay raise

Headhunters and human resources departments love IT certifications. They make it easy to match up job candidates with job openings. They also make it easy for HR to screen candidates. You’ll hear a lot of veteran IT pros whine about techies who were hired based on certifications but who don’t have the experience to effectively do the job. They are often right. That has happened in plenty of places. But the fact is that certifications open up your career options. They show that you are organized and ambitious and have a desire to educate yourself and expand your skills. If you are an experienced IT pro and have certifications to match your experience, you will find yourself to be extremely marketable. Tech certifications are simply a way to prove your baseline knowledge and to market yourself as a professional. However, most of them are not a good indicator of how good you will be at the job.

6.) Your nontechnical co-workers will use you as personal tech support for their home PCs

Your co-workers (in addition to your friends, family, and neighbors) will view you as their personal tech support department for their home PCs and home networks. They will e-mail you, call you, and/or stop by your office to talk about how to deal with the virus that took over their home PC or the wireless router that stopped working after the last power outage and to ask you how to put their photos and videos on the Web so their grandparents in Iowa can view them. Some of them might even ask you if they can bring their home PC to the office for you to fix it. The polite ones will offer to pay you, but some of them will just hope or expect you can help them for free. Helping these folks can be very rewarding, but you have to be careful about where to draw the line and know when to decline. For help, take a look at TechRepublic’s free download “Ten ways to decline a request for free tech support.”

5.) Vendors and consultants will take all the credit when things work well and will blame you when things go wrong

Working with IT consultants is an important part of the job and can be one of the more challenging things to manage. Consultants bring niche expertise to help you deploy specialized systems, and when everything works right, it’s a great partnership. But you have to be careful. When things go wrong, some consultants will try to push the blame off on you by arguing that their solution works great everywhere else so it must be a problem with the local IT infrastructure. Conversely, when a project is wildly successful, there are consultants who will try to take all of the credit and ignore the substantial work you did to customize and implement the solution for your company.

4.) You’ll spend far more time babysitting old technologies than implementing new ones

One of the most attractive things about working in IT is the idea that we’ll get to play with the latest cutting edge technologies. However, that’s not usually the case in most IT jobs. The truth is that IT professionals typically spend far more time maintaining, babysitting, and nursing established technologies than implementing new ones. Even IT consultants, who work with more of the latest and greatest technologies, still tend to work primarily with established, proven solutions rather than the real cutting edge stuff.

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.

2.) Some IT professionals deploy technologies that do more to consolidate their own power than to help the business

Another subtle but blameworthy thing that some IT professionals do is select and implement technologies based on how well those technologies make the business dependent on the IT pros to run them, rather than which ones are truly best for the business itself. For example, IT pros might select a solution that requires specialized skills to maintain instead of a more turnkey solution. Or an IT manager might have more of a Linux/UNIX background and so chooses a Linux-based solution over a Windows solution, even though the Windows solution is a better business decision (or, vice versa, a Windows admin might bypass a Linux-based appliance, for example). There are often excuses and justifications given for this type of behavior, but most of them are disingenuous.

1.) IT pros frequently use jargon to confuse nontechnical business managers and hide the fact that they screwed up

All IT pros — even the very best — screw things up once in a while. This is a profession where a lot is at stake and the systems that are being managed are complex and often difficult to integrate. However, not all IT pros are good at admitting when they make a mistake. Many of them take advantage of the fact that business managers (and even some high-level technical managers) don’t have a good understanding of technology, and so the techies will use jargon to confuse them (and cover up the truth) when explaining why a problem or an outage occurred. For example, to tell a business manager why a financial application went down for three hours, the techie might say, “We had a blue screen of death on the SQL Server that runs that app. Damn Microsoft!” What the techie would fail to mention was that the BSOD was caused by a driver update he applied to the server without first testing it on a staging machine

Content from : http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=546&tag=content;leftCol

Posted By
S.Grace Paul Regan

10 legal issues that consultants should know about !

As a consultant, you face more than technical challenges. You face legal ones as well. For this reason, the more you know about these legal matters, the less chance you have of getting into trouble. Although this article is not meant as legal advice, it can help you be aware of some issues that concern you. At the very least, it will alert you to questions and issues you might need to raise with your own attorney.

1: Status — consultant or employee?

Make sure of your legal relationship to your client. Are you really an independent contractor, so you should receive a form 1099 at the end of the year reflecting your billings? Or could you actually be considered an employee, who should receive a form W-2?

The company using your services most likely prefers the former, and you might also. The Internal Revenue Service in the past used a series of 20 questions to determine whether a person was a contractor or an employee. However, the IRS recently streamlined those questions into a three general categories:

Behavioral control (i.e., how much direction and control the business has over the individual, in terms of working hours, sequence of actions, and tools and equipment to be used)
Financial control (i.e., how the individual is paid, e.g., weekly or hourly vs. a flat fee)
Type of relationship (i.e., how permanent it is and how the parties view the relationship)
Generally speaking, the greater the behavioral control, and the greater the financial control, and the more permanent the relationship is, the greater the chance that the IRS will view you as an employee rather than as an independent contractor.

2: Income and self employment taxes

The distinction between employee and independent contractor will affect the way you handle your taxes. As an employee, your employer is responsible for withholding income taxes from your paycheck. In addition, you and your employer each contributes half to Social Security payments.

If, however, you are an independent contractor, you are responsible for your own taxes because the organization that pays you generally will not withhold anything. You’re also responsible, depending on how you’re organized legally, for completing appropriate business tax returns, such as a Schedule C , if you’re a sole proprietor.

3: Sales tax on your fees?

Check with your state’s department of revenue to see whether the fees you charge clients are subject to tax. If they are, and you are not collecting and remitting such taxes, you could have a problem.

4: Intellectual property / “work made for hire”

In the course of your consulting work, you may create intellectual property for use by your clients. Such work might be entitled to copyright protection. In this case, be clear with your client about such copyright ownership. You do not want your work to be considered a “work made for hire.” The copyright for such a work would reside with your client, even though you were the one to create the work.

The client has high hurdles to overcome to claim work made for hire status — but be safe and avoid misunderstanding. In your statement of work or in your contract, consider including a clause that expressly excludes your work product from being classified as a work made for hire.

5: Nonexclusive vs. exclusive license

If you are the copyright holder of intellectual property, you can permit others to use that property via a license. In return, of course, you probably would charge the other party a fee, or royalty, for the privilege of holding this license.

When you grant licensing rights, you can do so exclusively (to only one license holder) or nonexclusively (to more than one license holder). You would do an exclusive license, in most cases, because your client asked or demanded it. In such a situation, obviously, you would probably want to charge a higher royalty for an exclusive license than a nonexclusive license.

6: Professional liability vs. general liability insurance

You should consider at least two types of insurance: professional liability and general liability insurance. While both protect you from things you do or fail to do, the specific focus of each is different. Professional liability insurance (also known as errors and omissions insurance) protects you from the consequences of bad decisions and actions with respect to your consulting. For example, if your improper systems implementation caused the client’s business to shut down, resulting in loss of revenue, your professional liability policy might protect you from a client lawsuit.

General liability insurance protects you from other liability. For example, such a policy might protect you in the event that your client falls within your office or you accidentally spill hot coffee over an audience member at one of your presentations.

7: “Claims made” vs. “occurrence” insurance coverage

Liability insurance usually differs from other insurance, such as automobile, in one important respect: Policies of the former are generally based on “claims made,” while those of the latter are based on “occurrence.”

Suppose you are involved in an incident on June 1, while you hold an insurance policy with company A. On July 1, you change from insurance company A to insurance company B. Then, on August 1, the other person files a claim regarding the incident. If both policies were “occurrence” policies, company A would be responsible for this claim, even though it no longer carries your insurance. However, if both policies were “claims made” policies, company B would be responsible, even though the incident occurred prior to your becoming their policyholder.

8: Business organization option — the sole proprietorship

The way you organize your business determines the amount of reporting you do as well as the amount of legal protection you have. If you are in business by yourself, the simplest form of organization is the sole proprietorship. In Pennsylvania, in fact, if you include your name as part of your business name (e.g., you are John Smith and your business is John Smith Consulting), you don’t even need to register with the state. But if the sole proprietorship business name does not include your name, you would need to file a “fictitious name registration.” Such a filing is designed to protect the public so that they know who is involved with a particular business.

While a sole proprietor provides for ease of tax reporting, it involves legal risk. If you are sued because of your business, you have no legal way to shield your personal assets — they can be used to satisfy a judgment against you. Consider this fact carefully if you choose a sole proprietorship.

9: Business organization option — the corporation

A corporation offers significantly more legal protection. If you are sued over acts of your corporation, generally only the assets of that corporation can be used in a judgment. Your own personal assets, if separate from the corporation, usually can’t be used. However, a corporation requires its own set of tax returns and typically requires formal meetings and documentation of those meetings.

To form a corporation, you’ll probably need to file articles of incorporation with your state and you’ll likely need officers, a board of directors, and bylaws. For further information, check with your state’s Department of State (not to be confused with the U.S. Department of State).

10: Business organization option — the limited liability company (LLC)

A third form of organization, available in many states, is that of a limited liability company (LLC). Think of an LLC as combining the best features of a sole proprietorship and a corporation. On the one hand, the LLC does not file its own returns — you include income on your own Schedule C, just as for a sole proprietorship. On the other hand, if you’re sued, only the assets of the LLC are generally at risk — not your own personal assets. For this reason, many consultants use an LLC form of organizat

Edited from : Tech Republic
Poosted By : Grace Paul Regan