INDIA TODAY    |  HOME

Cover Story | Nation | States | Columns | Newsnotes | From the Editor in Chief | Editorials | Eyecatchers | Voices  Sports | Religion | Cinema | Business | Crime | Defence | Offtrack | Books | Bodyline | Centrestage
     Issue Contents

By Arun Katiyar

Last week, a colleague specialising in multimedia had to unexpectedly resign and go back home to Assam. My immediate task was to find a replacement for him. A few calls to head hunters resulted in the most amazing and unusable resumes. Skill sets didn't match, fat cheques were expected and no one seemed particularly bright.

My guess is that recruitment agencies are snowed under resumes from poorly qualified or absolutely unqualified candidates. Unable to screen candidates effectively, these agencies are wasting the time of companies and HRD people they work with. And that's something which Internet companies can ill afford.

It's an identical story online. Some Indian sites charge up to $30 (Rs 1,300) to list your resume, and if you are like me, you may have to pay $1,000 a year to get access to their databases. Some sites that charge are Naukri and Career India; others, like Careers And Business or www.indianparttimejobs.com, don't charge to list your resume. By and large, as a job seeker, you either post into masses of online resumes (48,741 resumes posted on 3P Executive Search when last seen) or as an employer you dig in the dirt for days with mounting frustration. It is expected that worldwide, resumes posted online will increase from 4.9 million today to 16.35 million two years from now. As you can guess, the situation isn't getting any better. It's getting worse.

The answer to this growing mess and the increasing demand for talent at short notice lies with sites that "pre-screen" candidates. Candidates should not be allowed to simply cut-and-paste their resumes. Instead, they should be forced to answer a dozen or so questions related to their area of specialisation and some questions about themselves before they are allowed to submit a resume online. That way, sites will be able to offer screened, top-notch talent for which employers won't mind paying top dollar.

One of the most successful job sites today is Monster Talent Market and Indian sites should take a cue from it. Monster has a section where talent is auctioned. Some months ago, I got a call from a head hunter promising a vulgar number of ziphers as part of the compensation. Hadn't really realised my self worth until then; now, I'm thinking of going under the hammer at Monster. See ya there.

SPRUCE UP

Ever wondered why all computers -- besides the smashingly spiffy iMac -- are egg-grey? Ever wondered why all browser bars have dull, boring looks? Then visit www.hotbar.com to make life more interesting. Select from more than 3,500 skins to dress up your browser and reflect your interests. Now available: sports, art, kids, nature, lovers, photographs, psychedelic and educational themes. All it takes is a click and a 20-second download. While you are changing the look and feel of your browser, how about investing approximately $30 for a browser that recognises your voice? Visit http://orders.xoom.com/cnvswb/pxccnvswb1129 for details.

INSTANT REFERENCE

Imagine a word like "mer" suddenly turning up in a letter your cousin wrote after a trip on a luxury liner. You could find out its meaning in an instant, if you download a small .exe file from www.gurunet.com. After the download and installation, all you need to do is press the "Alt" key and click on the word. If you are connected to the Net, Gurunet will explain what the word means. It will then proceed to give you encyclopaedic knowledge on the word if you wish, list links to other sites that deal with the word, send you to sites that sell books to do with the word and so on. It's so good, it's quite possible to feel somewhat sick in the sea of knowledge Gurunet can throw up.

CAPITALISE

McKinsey & Company has a site, www.indiaventure2000.com, that lets you submit your Big Ideas for the Internet and helps you find venture capital. It works like this: you submit an idea, and a panel of experts -- some real gee-whiz names on the Indian tech scene -- will examine your plans to see how viable they are. If their answer is yes, your idea finds funding from McKinsey. The programme, which started this month and will end by June 2000, aims to bring 20 to 30 such ideas into existence. By which time, McKinsey would have also figured out that one of the people on their advisory board, Rajesh Jain, is not the CEO of www.indiaworld.com.

GO-GOA

If you're going to Goa this summer, you can check a number of sites offering information on hotels, sight-seeing, cuisine, culture and even business. Among them are www.goacom.com (where I got a recipe for prawn balchao), www.goaworld.com with links to Goan folk songs in MP3 and www.goa-interactive.com for Goan history and heritage. Www.goldengoa.itgo.com, has a nice section for football enthusiasts, and businessmen can look up the Goa software technology park site at www.softwarepark-goa.org. Even if you don't make it to the sun, sand and sea of Goa.

Arun Katiyar is chief operating officer of India Today Group Online. His e-mail address is akatiyar@india-today.com

Back | Next

© Living Media India Ltd