In the physical world, most people lock their doors, buy car insurance, and take other precautions to protect themselves from harm.

A lot of people are losing jobs. And as more people are losing jobs, there are others who are lining up to take advantage of these people by scamming them while offering "work from home" deals. All sorts of things are promised! From stuffing envelopes to mystery shopping etc. And these things are made to look exotic. Well, most of all this is just scam.

Wanted to share some important and salient points about COBRA Subsidy plan.

• Valid for people who were involuntarily terminated between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009
• To be eligible annual income cannot exceed $125,000 for a single person and $250,000 for a couples
• 65% of existing COBRA premiums will be subsidized by the U.S. Treasury Department
• Subsidies will be available for up to 9 months
• If you declined COBRA coverage after September 1, 2008 you will have the option to re-enroll into COBRA with the above subsides
• Notices of the COBRA subsidies and re-enrollment information will be sent from the COBRA administrator (usually your previous employer)
• Subsidies will be paid, via a refundable tax credit, directly to the COBRA administrators
• Subsidies will terminate if the enrollee acquires a new health insurance plan through another employer or is eligible for Medicare

Economy is really bad right now globally. However, even in this economy students can do certain courses that can help them get into useful and paying careers down the road. Here are a few courses that I found would be very useful to students in India who are looking for alternative career paths.

1. Post Graduation in Clinical Research and Clinical Data Management: Clinical Research Education and Management Academy (CREMA) offers three post graduate courses: Post Graduate Diploma in Clinical Research (PGDCR), Post Graduate Diploma in Clinical Data Management (PGDCDM), Post Graduate Diploma in Pharmacovigilance (PGDPhV). In an economy which is contracting but diseases are not, more and more pharma companies from US and Europe will outsource the Clinical Research and testing to countries like India. So, such a course will prepare the students for a good and paying career by the time they graduate.

Contact: 1800 209 3731 or email to mumenquiry@cremaindia.org
Eligibility: Graduate or postgraduate in Life Sceiences/ Microbiology/ Biotechnology/ Pharmacy/ Medicine/ Nursing/ Physiotherapy/ Dentistry/ Homeopathy/ Ayurvedic and Veterinary Science.

2. B.Tech. Bioinformatics: This is another interesting program that will equip the students with knowledge and career of the future. The program helps teach the students Computational methods to study, organise, analyse and interpret biological information at molecular, genetic and genomics levels. Genetic research and work specially with respect to its interface with IT and computation is going to be hot going forward. This course from VIT University, Vellore, India helps prepare the kids for that. Btw, the last date for issue and submission of application forms is February 28, 2009.

The University has some very interesting programmes other than this one in the broad area of Biotechnology:

These days when the unemployment is running real high, the anxiety in the population is going up as well! When anxiety rises, so do the searches for those areas.

Google has given the trends in search for "Unemployment" and how it has gone up almost 3 times this year! It clearly shows that people are looking for stuff that is linked to unemployment - benefits, coaching, ideas, thoughts, help etc. And these are not the times when one can easily move from one job to another and hope that things will be hunkry dory. It wont be! Things will take time to get better. When? is anybody's guess. I am predicting that this will go worse for next 1 year at least, before it has any hope of improving.

Here is another chart from Technorati - the aggregator for the blogs. As you can see, people are also blogging more on this topic!!

These are times when people are looking at their lives and the surrounding chaos and some are seeing their jobs disappear. It is not a good situation. If one is in that period of mid-life where one starts re-evaluating one's life that has been and that would be, the imperatives and benchmarks are often different. How does one look for a direction forward? I will share with you two "frameworks" that I have used previously in my life.

Economy and My Direction should Synergize

It is important that one does what one feels one enjoys doing. But we also have to be mindful of where the world is going to? We cannot simply enter a new field or plan our future direction along a direction which the world is moving away from. So, I have found that it helps to sit down and analyze the future "sun-rise" areas. These are areas that are growing and will keep growing on for some time. It will help if you can position yourself in those areas and enjoy the ride as it all grows on. Jumping on the bandwagon? Well, you can say.. but it is more than that.. it is anticipating and forecasting the "bandwagon" of the future!

For this one needs to carefully interact, listen, read up on, and think on areas totally unrelated to what one does. Because if all you know is your area, the chances are you wont know anything else! And that is the key here - to think outside of the box!

This has served me well. When I was starting out in my career and 3 - 5 years into, I realized that I was a strong generalist with strong skills in analysis, so I moved to consulting. And once in consulting, I realized that ERP and technology will grow rapidly and I entered those areas as I moved on. That has helped me a lot in shaping my career over the years. What will I do next in the coming future? Good question! That is what I am evaluating currently.

Jobfox did a study from Nov 2007 and July 2008 to find 20 professions where demand remained high over economically rough periods. The top five are:

1. Sales Representative
2. Software Design/Development
3. Nursing
4. Accounting & Finance Executive
5. Accounting Staff

The problem with this study is that it takes a period that is nowhere close to what is anticipated in the coming future! The future will be very grim from the way things are shaping up! Even the larger banking and financial institutions are falling down.. the oil prices are not giving any respite and the consumption seems to be still going up. In fact fall in consumption could accelerate the recession.. but consistent consumption could further worsen the oil prices and definitely hurt the deficits of US! So, its a situation of being between a rock and a hard place!

John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas discusses with Yahoo-Hotjobs the careers in certain industries which have the best chance of withstanding the recession.

All our lives we try to fight hard and study to get jobs and create a career.Save moneys - climb the ladder, kill our dreams just to feed our families. There is a certainty and a feeling of safety. Or is it? In these days? Outside of these jobs is fear of risk. To hide from that risk we keep running. Running from the joblessness and running from standing still. What if you just stand in one place and say. Enough is Enough! I will not go on with this.

What would happen then? Just try to stop running from your fears and stand up to meet with your dream.

Archimedes said - "Give me a place to stand on and I will move the earth". I am setting the lever.

Getting a job when you do not have the right experience or credentials is tough. But if one is smart, he/she can easily off-set that by sheer enthusiasm. It requires focus and targeting the interviewer/company that you are interviewing for.

I remember when I first came to US with an Indian company to be trained in an ERP package. The other folks in the team were all experienced in the in-house ERP package that my company sold back home. It wasn't the best ERP but it had most of the features. And out of 20 in our team, 18 had worked on it for years. So quite obviously they had stronger credentials than I had. But I was determined to grab the project. And coincidentally only one was on offer. I did not know which area it was in or which client of this Big 6 would it be for. However, this is how I went about the process:

1. I looked for the weaknesses of the home-grown ERP that my colleagues had worked on. And the strengths of the new product that we were trained on.
2. Then I looked for my strengths. It was finance and cost accounting.
3. My gap analysis in #1 suggested that the home-grown ERP did not have a cost accounting module which this new product had and was strong at. This, I knew instinctively, was my chance!
4. I sat down to tailor my resume (not fudge). I remembered and listed all the things I had done in accounting and cost accounting in particular from the fact that I was a Cost Accountant to the fact that one of my internship projects had indeed helped that organization save money (Rs I million). I mentioned all that upfront. Along with the other stuff on accounting of course.

The interviews happened and I did not over promise on my understanding of technology but stuck to my process side knowledge. Ultimately, out of the 20, I was the only one to get the project, because luckily for me the project that came up was miraculously in cost accounting. Bingo!

There are many ways social networks are used. For dating, friendships and not so legal activities to start with, and then for politics etc. Twitter - which doesnt do a whole lot for the owners (no revenue model really), but excellent viewership and interaction has been used the most innovatively!

The politicians are using it (John Edwards used it well). I use it to tweet drishtikone's blog feeds so everyone can follow them.

But this is one use that I could not have thought of - this guy Ryan Kuder of San Jose was laid off by Yahoo today.

Ever wonder why you are so unhappy in your job? Well, this Law Professor from University of Cincinnati has figured it out! The rules from "The Three Signs of a Miserable Job" ring true to him:

The first sign of a miserable job is anonymity, which is the feeling that employees get when they realize that their manager has little interest in them a human being and that they know little about their lives, their aspirations and their interests.

The second sign is irrelevance, which takes root when employees cannot see how their job makes a difference in the lives of others. Every employee needs to know that the work they do impacts someone’s life--a customer, a co-worker, even a supervisor--in one way or another.

In 1990, I went to Insitute of Rural Management, Anand. It was and remains one of the premier Business School that caters to Rural Management specifically. It was started with a dream that since Indian MBA students need to understand villages as much as the corporate intricacies! Well, we did learn a lot about rural life. Yet it was an elitist institution of sorts.

THAT was revolutionary in terms of business school education.

Now, a lady called Chetna Gala Sinha has taken that concept to its logical conclusion - an MBA school for the rural poor - Mann Deshi Udyogini Business school ! The students are semi-literate who need education in business subjects to start using funds loaned via the micro-finance lenders. This school - for rural women - also helps in spreading empowerment to women.

Sagar of "Development through enterprise" introduces Mann Deshi Udyogini Business school thus:

MDU was started in December 2006 by the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank (MDMSB), which is a co-operative society providing micro-credit to rural women entrepreneurs in Satara district of Maharashtra state in India. Chetna Gala Sinha, the founder-chairperson of MDU, is an Ashoka fellow and she started the MDMSB in 1998 in order to cater to the credit needs of rural women. According to Chetna, the idea of starting a business school came from an enthusiastic semi-literate woman, who kept pestering her for know-how about the wholesale vegetable business and other startegies to improve her own vegetable business. MDU was started in December 2006 with a Rs. 7 lakh (about $17500) grant from HSBC.

There seems to be a divide amongst the Bschool graduates in India. Those from metros and top-tier MBA schools are going for the corporate jobs, while those in the second tier cities are opting for the public sector.

Students from those business schools which are located in tier-II cities, such as Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Jaipur, Indore, Kochi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune, expressed eagerness to join `scheduled A' public sector units (PSUs) like ONGC, NTPC, IOC, GAIL, HPCL, BPCL, SAIL, MTNL, said the survey by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).

Here is another guest article from the authors of the book "Recruit or Die" - Chris Resto, Ian Ybarra, and Ramit Sethi

-----------------------

Diversity is one of the most difficult, and sometimes controversial, aspects of college recruiting. Competition is fierce, and the number of quality minority candidates is disproportionately low. Consider the plight of employers in the technology sector. Of all engineering students across the country, only 6.6 percent are African American, 7 percent are Hispanic, and less than 1 percent are Native American. One recruiting manager from a medium-sized software company said, "It makes me pull my hair out."

We are confident that you can improve your diversity recruiting results by using the strategy and tactics throughout this book, but here are some additional guidelines for approaching this unique front in the war for young talent.

Define the diversity you want
There are many reasons you may want to hire and retain a diverse workforce. Perhaps you want your team to reflect the diversity of your changing customer base. Many consumer products makers, for instance, seek to hire people of certain ethnicities specifically for their insights into the expanding Hispanic market in America. Or maybe you just want to ensure that your employees can offer different perspectives to help you better tackle complex problems.

Here is some excellent advise on how to manage one's career from TheLadders.com newsletter (William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson). I think everyone should print this and keep it up on his/her desk for life!!

• Document your accomplishments at the end of each week. This will ensure that you have an accurate record of the value you provide, making it easier to update your resume.

• Google yourself every Monday morning and ask yourself if the results truly reflect what makes you unique and compelling. Determine what you need to do to build a stellar online identity. Here's an assessment that will help you evaluate your current online profile: www.careerdistinction.com/onlineid

Rather surprising news but still interesting... India is creating FAR more jobs than any amongst the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China)!

A study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of rich countries, has brought out the pleasant fact that India has been generating more jobs than any other BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India, China - country.

OECD's Economic Outlook 2007, released on Tuesday, has revealed that India generated 11.3 million net new jobs annually between 2000 and 2005, which is over 60% more than the 7 million new jobs created in China every year.

The performance looks even more impressive when contrasted with another emerging giant, Brazil. The South American biggie clocked 2.7 million new jobs created annually over the five-year period, while Russia saw some 700,000 new jobs added every year.

India, in fact, generated half the jobs in BRIC nations: a performance which must be way better than any of the OECD countries growing at a much slower pace.

At 22 million new jobs every year in BRIC countries - which make for over 45% of the global labour supply and account for a quarter of the world's GDP - faster economic growth meant that employment gains were more than five times faster that the 3.7 million new jobs created in the 30 developed countries that are members of OECD.

But the smart figures can hardly mask some of the underlying worries: the figures underline once again the continued problem of low employment elasticity - potential to create fewer jobs with every 1% increase in GDP - which has remained constant at 0.3%.

In other words, a stark reminder of the need to grow faster in order to create more jobs. Again, while the four economies have made good gains during the five years, the report pointed out that a large section remained unemployed particularly in rural areas.

It estimated that there were 130 million surplus workers in rural India. Besides, finding jobs for women and youth in India still remained a problem.

There was some more bad news packed in, with the report saying that at 50.5% the employment to population ratio in India was the poorest, compared with at least 66% in the other BRIC countries.

Though India can draw some solace from the fact that the unemployment rate was the lowest at 6% in 2005, issues related to under-employment and the veracity of data spoil the show. Over 94% of the work force in India was employed in the informal sector, which was much higher than the other three BRIC countries.

So many Indian recruiters are simply adding other desis to their yahoo messengers... and keep sending the jobs in all sorts of areas. However, today I just got a message from this recruiter that simply made me marvel at the highly creative marketing techniques that these folks can come up... this one definitely did! Here is the message:

...anyone wants to make a deal....I will send ur id to my frnds...You send my id to yours

So, she wants me (and others) to send her id to others and she will send mine (and others) to all her friends!! She promises spamming for spamming! Now, is that a joke or charity? It did make me smile though

I knew that when my boss, the Chairman and the CEO told me in my third week of joining on Monday morning - "Your job is 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.... I did not see you here yesterday!!" Plus we did not have any Saturdays off.. forget about lean Fridays!!

Business leaders in India and Argentina work the longest hours, up to 57 hours a week, according to a new survey by London-based consulting firm Grant Thornton International. The survey involved 7,200 respondents in 32 countries.

The report said that the business people in Mainland China, Taiwan and India experienced more stress at work this year than in the previous year. "With strong economic growth across Asia, more business people in the region reported an increase in stress levels," says Grant Thornton.

By Vince Thompson; Author of Ignited

If you’re starting to feel the pinch of the so-called "talent shortage," you’re not alone. Consider these facts:

* 40 percent of employers worldwide are having difficulty filling positions due to the lack of suitable talent available in their markets

* According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the shortage of skilled workers will exceed 10 million by 2010

* 45 percent of workers say they want to change jobs every three to five years

In light of these facts, smart managers realize they need to retain people on staff in order to keep the company running. So while under better circumstances they might move along those "less spectacular" performers, they know that in a tight talent market, the key is to effectively work with what you have.

Fortunately, you can take steps to help the people on your team do better and perform to expectations. After all, hiring someone is costly (both in time and money), and any turnover has a potentially negative impact on the company. Following is a process that will help you work with your current staff and gain the competitive advantage in doing so.

Step One: Take a look at yourself

Look at how you’re evaluating your team. Many managers who work under, or who have been influenced by, command and control hierarchies live with the belief that you should rank your employees and cut those at the bottom. Ranking may be valuable when people do identical jobs in an identical environment, such as in call centers or sales organizations with territories that have no uniqueness, but the fact is that such environments count for only a minority of the workplace population. Most people work in organizations where teams tackle diverse challenges with diverse solutions. Therefore, when managers rank people, their perception of each individual is often blurred by a lack of clear criteria or the potential to play favorites.

Has the charm of IITs gone away? Maybe its the quota controversy or the dilution of standards.. or something else.. but this year 53000 fewer students will sit for the JEE. The Student/Seat ration for JEE this year by a whopping 26%!! What are we missing??? The companies in India cannot find enough qualified folks these days.. the standards in Indian talent have decidedly dropped.. and tremendously!! On top of that, the competition goes down too...huh!

Or is it that the youth of today is chickening out of competition now?

While the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are gearing up for expansion, the number of students aspiring to get into these hallowed institutions has dropped dramatically this year.

There is a drop of almost 50,000 applications for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) this year as against the nearly three lakh students who competed for 4,078 seats last year. According to data from IIT-Bombay, the nodal IIT co-ordinating JEE 2007, this year, 2.52 lakh students will take the entrance exam across seven centres in the country on April 8. This includes 120 foreign students. With the fall in applicants this year, 55 students will vie for every precious IIT seat, a slump from last year when 74 students battled it out for every slot.

Video Resumes seem to be growing around the world. As they say seeing is believing.. so the recruiting managers can now "see" the person - albeit in doctored scenario - and check him/her out for herself! This is what Sunday's Hindustan Times says about this trend.

Well.. it should work as a no-brainer.. right? well not so quickly can you say yes on this! Like this guy from Yale came to know to his chagrin. Aleksey Vayner is a Yale senior who aspired to be an Investment Banker. He sent a video titled "Impossible is Nothing" (wrong grammar?) with his 11 page resume.. only to become the joke of Wall-Street!

Despite having a circulation of more than top 100 US newspapers together, Yahoo still looks outside when it has to fill its own ranks!

So, when Yahoo wanted to get people to join them in their Sales Department, where do they post their ads? Yahoo Hotjobs.. right? WRONG! They have it on: CRAIGSLIST!! Any reason why others shouldn't follow their direction... after all these very folks have made Yahoo "successful"!! ;-)

Story Link

Highly Educated and successful women have been long rumored to have a tough time marrying... either they married less or never married. But in a turn of events, the reverse now may be happening in the US.. and even in India! Now, it may be tough for those not well educated to find a good guy! Here is some evidence from the US.. I am sure if such studies could be done in India.. the results would be even more dramatic!

The median age for a first marriage nationally is now 25.5 for women and 27 for men. It is even higher for those with graduate degrees. In Massachusetts, the median age at first marriage is 27.2 for women and 29.2 for men. The state's high proportion of never-married individuals (the country's third highest) primarily reflects the fact that Massachusetts residents marry at an older age - not that they will never marry.

For all the growth in the Indian IT sector, we really do face a tremendous shortage of good and abundant manpower. And then we have jokers like Arjun Singh and Manmohan Singh who would rather have quotas and reduce the meritocracy (as opposed to give more subsidies to poor students) and then increase the seats to further reduce the standard and quality of teaching in the name of equity!

However, I have one serious issue with this study.. they take the future path to be linear.. which I think is not a correct way to do. At the very least, such studies do not include all the factors that may play into the whole game. One thing that we have not realized is that it is far easier to increase capacities by using the market forces as opposed to Government sanction. The more need the top Universities elsewhere see of educating the Indians.. the faster they will move in. Also, a very large pool of talent is being educated and trained outside India of Indians... who do have it in their hearts to move back. Given the growth that one is seeing in India.. it can be a feasible option for many. In the many technology companies that I have worked in - consulting ones though - the number of Indians far outweighs the Far Eastern Asians combined! Nevertheless, the numbers within the Indian borders IS a very serious issue for the long term competitive success of Indian IT sector!

The jobs in the accounting and finance most in demand are: internal auditor, compliance executive, financial analyst, staff accountant, and external auditor. What about the skills? This is what Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of the accounting and finance staffing services firm Robert Half International, says:

“Those who combine functional expertise with strong strategic decision-making, communication and technology skills are in the greatest demand and often can command higher compensation.”

Again, some words of wisdom from theladder newsletter. I usually, take a stock of my career every three years - putting some thought on: Where I am, Where I need to go, my strengths and my weaknesses. However, these questions below that Marc gave in his newsletter could be used very profitably to do an honest analysis in detail!

Titles:
Does my current title reflect my current duties?
If not, what can I do to change it?

Resume:
Is my resume current?
When was the last time it was updated?
Is it still focused for the type of work I want to do in the future?

Below* is an ad for a Regional Vice President I saw in my email from my alma mater's alumni yahoo group. Below is the profile.

... and the salary? Rs. 50,00,000 - USD 113k. Man, the things have changed! While Narayana Murthy in his address at a CII session talks about how the salaries of the CEOs in India have changed.. just look at the enormity of change!

On the Indian side, if you have analysed how salaries of CEOs have increased in 15 years, they have gone up from Rs 7,000 and Rs 10,000 to Rs 70 lakh (Rs 7 million) on an average. I am one of those who fought for this. When on board of a company, I saw to it that the CEO had a variable linked to output.

Here are some good tips from TheLadders newsletter on how to get yourself noticed "out there" by potential employers and recruiters. (adjusted for making it more generic)

1. Reach out to an old contact. Send them a link to a great article, let them know how your 2007 is going, or just say "Hi!" Get that network going!
2. Join a professional organization, or reconnect with one you're already familiar with. Keeping up-to-date with your industry, and your fellow members, is a great way to make sure you are staying current.
3. Be an archaeologist. Dig through your old files and pull out anything that signals your great past accomplishments. These can be commendations from your boss or colleagues, past performance reviews, or presentations and projects you're most proud of. This is the best material for a winning resume.

It is finally out! The reason why companies are outsourcing is more because of Growth, Increasing Speed to Market and Improving Productivity. These are the replies of the 114 American software companies.

Offshoring of software development by software companies is not costing Americans jobs, according to a report being announced Thursday by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

The association is releasing its Global Software Development Survey Report, which surveyed 114 American-based software companies last year. In a conclusion that stateside developers probably would not find surprising, SIIA found that software companies are increasing offshore software development efforts. However, companies are not looking to displace American workers, said David Thomas, executive director of SIIA.

This is a very familiar rant from the Indian companies - that the demand for the talented people in IT is so high that (1) they cannot retain them and (2) the cost of delivery is going high. So what do they do? They go and start hiring folks from non-engineering side and freshers by truck loads! Is that smart?

The productivity in the Indian IT sector is abyssmal by International standards! So, first, before they start blaming the rising salaries for the higher cost and begin to lower their hiring standards.. the managements ought to RAISE their OWN standards! They have to increase productivity so the overall costs of the operations despite the rise in salaries remains low!