Certifications - Great Opportunity to add a few to your CV today ...

One typical feedback I give most of my clients (especially freshers and young professionals) who come to me for Resume Improvement - Try and Add one or more Certifications relevant to your Profile to your CV. This will help prove yourself to potential employers (especially when you don't have relevant experience in the field/tool). The obvious question is which ones, how much to pay for it and aren't there free certifications that are worth going for to prove ourselves. While most certifications worth the paper they are printed on cost Rs. 5000 upwards, over the next two days, you and I have an opportunity to get certified in a few relevant courses from Brainbench.

This is what I got in the e-mail from Brainbench today or within the next two days (when it is free). Go ahead and register on Brainbench and get certified. In fact, do your bit for your country and get India to the top of the leader-board (as on today - 3/7 as I post this, India is at No. 3 behind US and Ukraine in terms of Most Certified and No. 5 in terms of those certified with a 4+ score).

If possible, please let me know which ones you got certified as well.

Brainbench would like to invite you to participate in our online worldwide certification competition -Bench Games!

Throughout this event we are making ALL of our 600+ certification tests free -- YES FREE -- fromMarch 5, 2012 through March 9th, 2012.
Learn more about Bench Games: Click Here

The Bench Games leader board will be available starting March 6th. Find out which:

• Country has the most certified citizens
• Person received the highest score on a given test
• Country has the most MASTER level certified citizens

Support your country and get a chance to win free Brainbench annual subscriptions, all while enhancing your resume/CV and online transcript.

To take advantage of this great event, simply log-in to your Brainbench account during March 5th - 9th and start your testing!

The Brainbench Team

Mysore Calling ... Day 2

The next morning started off with a guided tour of the farm where we saw Ripe Guavas, Lemons, Tangerines, Chickoos, Mangoes (Not too many considering the season has ended) and a few other fruits I was seeing for the first time and pretty much every vegetable one might need for day-to-day cooking. It was really nice to pluck some ripe Guavas (with the red core) and almost instantaneously bite into them. Yummm!!! Around 11am, got ready and decided to do some sightseeing. Since we were quite close to Infy, decide to go down memory lane and see how Infy had changed (if at all). We obviously couldn't get in but we did stop over at the Gate and ask the Security Guard at the Infosys Gate (for random directions which we didn't need) as we got a peek past the gate at some of the Buildings. We drove around the compound looking at some of the other buildings and facilities and decided to head off towards the city before one of the security guards posted at a height near the 4 corners of Infosys Campus shoots at us assuming we are terrorist doing recee. :-)

We then went straight to the Mysore Palace got tickets and went around watching in astonishment the Palace and the Life of the Maharajah and the poor dude(s) (Wodeyar and his children/grandchildren) who missed out on all the fun because India gained Freedom and became a Democratic Republic. I had of course been there a few times, but was surprisingly the first time for Bhagya (someone who had studied in Tiptur for 4 years and probably visited Bangalore tons of times). Some minor shopping (Sandal scented Incense Sticks, Perfumes, Soaps, etc) later, we headed off to the Jaganmohan Palace. This included an Art Gallery and a Museum which had all of the utensils, weapons, dresses and portraits of all the Kings and their History. I also learnt on this visit that the fifth King of the Wodeyar Dynasty was actually (Ranadhira Kantheerava) Narasaraja Wodeyar I (1638–1659). For some weird unknown reason, this made me happy. :-) A little more shopping and we decided to take a break and head back home (to the farmhouse) but not before we stopped over to have some pastries. Did I mention that before the plans for the trip got finalized, we were actually on the GM Diet. :-( Need to start afresh or maybe screw the diet and get back to some workouts.

Before we reached home, I saw a sign-board that read Kalidasa Road and this again brought back nostalgic memories of the 3-4 months spent at our Apartment on KD Road (It is Bangalore’s MG Road equivalent in Mysore). Decided to drive around and find our old Apartment and get a pic or two. We finally found it after asking a couple of people for directions. Since it had started drizzling, we managed with pics from the car and headed on to the farmhouse.

Since it was Ganesha, Periyaswami had cooked Ganesha's favorite sweet - Modak. Had a couple over lunch and hogged the other dishes he had cooked. We were also warned to keep enough space for the evening's special - Persian Veg Pulao. After lunch, had some nice filter coffee (yummm!!!) and after a lot of thought decided that Brindavan Gardens and the Musical Fountain was not to be missed (especially since KRS was not too far from Mohan Uncle's farmhouse). Started around 5ish and we were at Brindavan after some bumper to bumper traffic around a kilometer from the entrance to KRS where the Parking Fee was being collected. The parking lot was packed to the core and with great difficulty managed to find what was a suspect parking slot. Even though I was a little worried that my new car might get nicked by someone trying to sneak in the gap between my car and the next line, decided to take a chance since there didn't seem any better options. 

We got lucky with a new line that got formed at the Ticket Counter and rushed to enter Brindavan Gardens. It was better than I had memories off from my last visit (Of course Bhagya wasn't with me the last time round ;-) so she does get some credit) and around 7ish, we decided to head off to the North Block of Brindavan where the Musical Fountain was showing. We were shocked to see the bridge packed with people trying to get to the other end. But left with no choice, we decided to join the rush and after about 15mins of struggling through and guarding our purses & camera from pickpocketeers, we finally got to the Musical Fountain area. It was pretty impressive but for some weird reason, there was a 10 min gap between every set of 2-3 songs. After watching a couple of sets, we decided to sneak out midway through a set so that we don't get caught in the rush again. It was a great decision because we were back at the parking lot in 5 mins. Had a couple of Sugar Cane juices and started back towards the farmhouse. It was a nice short drive back as well with lot of overtaking maneuvers that would have made a Schumacher happy. Yummy Persian Pulao and lot of home-grown fruits later, we were ready to crash.

Also Read ... Mysore Calling ... Day 1

Coming Up ... Mysore Calling ... Day 3 & Some Pics

Mysore calling ... Day 1

Long weekend and plans of a Ooty+Kerala Trip cut short due to Bhagya's needing to go to Hyderabad on Saturday meant that we had to come up with a quick plan for Wed-Thu. Wed morning as we start typing in Google "Places to see near", the first Auto Suggest option that comes up is Bangalore and then comes Mysore. That's how we make plans in the Internet or Google Era.

Even before I could pick Bangalore and hit enter, we are both like "Purrrrfecttt!!!". We had been talking about visiting Mohan Uncle's Farmhouse in Mysore for quite some time now (He had moved in around 5 years back when I was in the US and somehow everytime there was a family trip to Mysore, I had been out of the country). I had been talking about giving my new i10 some work (I had done around 400kms in 2 months considering that my office is 10mins from home). Bhagya had not been to Mysore really except for a trip with friends to Balamuri Falls a few years back. We decided within minutes to go for it, asked Mom and Dad if they wanted to join (Mom agreed since she wanted to catch up on loads of gossip with her bro - Mohan Uncle and Dad decided to pass considering his coming in will mean finding a security guy and that is such a pain at such short notice.

Started off around noon after a call to Mohan Uncle to confirm he was going to be in town and had the most painful 1km on the Mysore Road Flyover (Eid celebrations and people coming out of / going into the Mosque there combined with Metro work) meant that getting out of Bangalore took a good 2 hours and the last 100m of the Mysore Road Flyover took 45mins. Once out of Bangalore, it was the most amazing driving experience (going at  80-100kmph consistently) and switching back and forth between 4th and 5th gear through most of the journey and by around 4:30ish was near the outskirts of Mysore. A 30-45min break for lunch at Kamat Lokaruchi (Just after Channapatna) meant that I had done about 140kms in under 2 hours. 

A couple of calls for directions later was at Mohan Uncle's Farmhouse in Emerald Enclave just behind Infosys (My former company and the campus where I spent the most fun 3 months of my career during Infy Training). Since it was around 5:30 by the time we got in, had some snacks & coffee, we decided not to do any sightseeing and went for a long romantic :-) walk around Emerald Enclave. Bhagya said that it would have been more romantic if we had gone out with one Umbrella instead of two or better still without Umbrellas and got drenched/danced in the rain. I decided that with the small size of the umbrella and the fact that one of them was broken slightly, we were safer from catching a cold and spoiling the weekend with one each instead of one for both of us. How unromantic eh!!! :-(

We came back to some hot food cooked by Mohan Uncle's cook Mr. Periyaswami. We obviously weren't very hungry at 8:30pm considering we'd had a full North Karnataka Meal at 3pm and Snacks at 5:30pm. But we ate enough to ensure we didn't hurt the hosts' feelings. :-)


Please read ... Mysore Calling ... Day 2
Coming Up ...
Mysore Calling ... Day 3 & Pics

Wanted: Feedback on my Blog

Over the last one week, I received strong feedback from 3-4 people very close to me around the content and style of writing in recent posts which got me thinking.

I totally enjoy writing (just for the heck of it) and I'd write most of these posts even if my blog had no readers (There are more unpublished posts than published posts on my blog :-)). This blog has had nearly as many visitors/page-views/comments in the last 6 months as it had seen since its inception (back in 2005) to start of this year. This has helped inflate my already inflated ego :-).

I am seeking feedback from you - the esteemed readers of my blog to get me back to level-ground and validate the feedback received. Please click here to provide your feedback on how you want this blog to shape up. It won't take you more than 2-3 mins to do so (I promise!!!) and I also promise to act on your feedback.

Why I bought an i10?

After a lot of thought, research, seeking opinion from friends (on this blog too) and tons of test-drives, I finally decided on an i10. I made the payment and took delivery last weekend. Here she is in all her splendor outside the showroom.

My reasons for doing so as against a bigger car such as a SX4 Diesel which I had almost decided upon a few days back:

• Easier Driving: I can't tell you how much easier it is to drive this car when compared to my brother's Swift Dzire which really is not as big as the SX4 I was considering. I still can't sneak through gaps as I used to with my bike. But this is probably gets me as close to that as I probably can with a car.
• Will be a lot easier for Bhagya to start driving as and when she does start doing so.
• Lower Cost: At 5.5L (On-Road), it is at half the 10L that the SX4 would have cost.
• Two other big cars at home: My brother's SX4 and my dad's Ford Ikon are still there for me to use whenever we need a bigger car. The choice for me was between this one and probably a SUV.
• Easier Maintenance: Lower the cost of the car, I was hoping lower the maintenance expenses. I did consider other small cars but decided to go with Hyundai for just service promise being better.
• Petrol vs. Diesel: The lower promised maintenance of Petrol Engines along with of course the fact that the premium charged for Diesel cars being too high for me considering the number of miles I will probably drive in a year because of my short commute to work. 12k miles (max) translates to 800liters and 24k INR in savings per year. The diesel options I considered were 7L+ atleast meaning that it wasn't that great a saving considering the supposed increased maintenance costs.
• Last but not the least, this is not going to be my last car. Let's start small and move up rather than start big and move down was the philosophy!! 

I am sorry if I disappointed friends who'd suggested other options on my previous request for suggestions. Did I?

Google plus plus

Google Plus is up!! While its still lonely out there right now, there are some cool features of Google+. Better integration with my other Google Apps (Chat, Picasa, Youtube, etc), Circles, Hangout and most importantly Sparks makes sure you don't leave Google+ ever. 

If someone can do an update FB and update Google + plug-in soon, we can probably start having some activity in Google Plus and a real fight might just take place in the Social Networking Place. Here's what Hitler thinks of Google Plus. He wants an invite and he wants one real bad. 

 Do you need one too? Ping me if you haven't already got one. :-)

Productivity: Three top daily time wasters

What are your top 3 time wasters and what's the solution / recommendation to limit the wastage?

1. E-Mail: Do this in 30 min time-bursts 2 or max 3 times a day. I have experimented this and it works like a charm. Just need to get more disciplined and do this more regularly.
2. Social Media: Stick to specific times a week (say 2-3 times) when you spend a max 30 mins connecting with friends and family on Facebook, LinkedIn and other Social Media channels.
3. Meetings: When you get an invite, see what is the worst thing that can happen if you skip it. My super-boss made this recommendation last week. You should attend a meeting only if you are chairing the meeting or are going to talk in the meeting (for more than 10% of the time)? If the answer to both is no, you can probably skip it 90% of the time. Additional Rules: Can you avoid the meeting by sending out an e-mail with your thoughts or talking to the meeting co-ordinator for 5 mins after the meeting. How important is your role there? Use these above guidelines to skip a meeting today and gain 30 mins of your life back.

Source: http://the99percent.com/tips/7019/The-Top-3-Daily-Time-Wasters-How-To-Tame-Them

Why MBA?

I get this question (or a variant such as Why did you go for an MBA, Why HKUST, Why after 6 years in the industry, etc). I thought I'll take a stab at that question in this post.

Here are a few reasons (in my order of priority) for why I went into an MBA and now that I am done with the MBA and spent some time in the industry, feel that doing my MBA when I did was the right decision.

1. Increase your salary (over and above the opportunity cost lost): Over a lifetime or even 5-7 years post an MBA, if you do an NPV calculation, am sure the returns of the money spent on an MBA are quite good.I have to admit this was one of my top reasons, but post my MBA has gone down lower in priority. There's a lot more to life than money and a lot more to a job than just how much you make from it.
2. Skills enhancement (Negotiations, Financial Modeling, Investment Management, XL, Deck prep, Problem Solving Skills, Business Plan Preparation) - These would be relevant in both your personal and professional life and some of the things I've learnt, I apply on a day-to-day basis (esp. Problem Solving, XL and Consulting style deck prep).
3. General Management Capabilities (Frameworks / Concepts in Marketing, Finance, HR, Ops among others): You may or may not apply all of them unless you are in Management Consulting. But you would be the one sought after in a cross-functional project and will be able to provide a more holistic solution. I have been sought after for several key projects in my current company and I would like to think my MBA played a big role here.
4. Career Change Opportunity (Opportunity to step back, try multiple career / industry options via internships / projects and finally make the call): I don't think I would have got into analytics and been as effective (I hate to say successful - still early days) if not for my MBA. I did consider alternative career paths such as Finance, Marketing and Consulting and made a conscious decision not to go in there for various reasons.
5. Increase your brand value (:-)): Of course, an MBA itself helps and an MBA from a school such as HKUST and LBS definitely helps. Let HKUST/LBS stay in the Top 10 in FT and other rankings and keep doing the right things and along with the HKUST Brand, my personal brand value should also go up.
6. Network (The Network that your school gives you automatic access to), network (Learn the do's and don'ts of Networking), network (All of the Networking Practice opportunities you get to strengthen your skills): I am an introvert by nature and found the networking sessions during school quite painful at times. But over time, soon mastered my own style of networking.
7. Ability to think through life/career situations through the various models/frameworks you've been exposed to (This is the topic of another post I am planning in which I'll expand with examples)

Depending on where you end up post your MBA, some of these may not be relevant or at least as relevant. My MBA Network is weak in India - so the obvious bitch is that it is not as useful. But I still made great friends and have had multiple people from my class reach out to me (when they were in India or had an India question), have friends I have sought help from when I am in Thailand or UK or China on work and vacation and some day when I move to HK or Singapore, it is going to become relevant again. And who is to say the HKUST Alumni Network in India will remain weak for long (I recently had a junior reach out to me seeking help in getting into a previous company I worked for.). 

What was/is your reason for doing an MBA and do you think it worked for you? I would love to hear your story via the comments section of this blog or on Facebook/Twitter.
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You might also want to read:
Ahead of the Curve - Book Review and comparison of B-School
My HKUST Interview
My First Semester at HKUST
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Free Trial! Why not?

This is the most popular and effective sales weapon that is so rarely used that it's crazy. The context is a couple of fresh grads I met recently and had to inspire into getting a job (give gyaan and help out with leads of course). I gave them all the usual gyaan of polishing their resume, adding skills, adding certifications, how to prepare for interviews and how to handle key questions in interviews. When I finally said, you should offer to take on projects/jobs for free, to gain experience, I got a weird look that said "Why would I work for free?" / "Doesn't it mean that they are using me?" / "Would I want to work in such a cheap company"? and other similar looks.

Considering some of the world's largest internet companies are based on the "Try me for free" concept and the fact that in this case you are actually going to gain so much more in terms of experience and possibly a brand-name on the CV, I can't see why this is so difficult to fathom.

I myself have not yet tried this successfully. When I did offer to work for a few companies for free in the recession of 2001 when my Infy joining date got postponed and Lucent Bell Labs withdrew their campus offer, there were enough competition in the job market for the companies to refuse the "Free Offer".

Have any of you tried this option and has it worked for you? Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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Blog moves to a new location

With help from my friend Sridhar, I moved my blog to a domain I had registered earlier this year.

I was starting to feel bad about not using the domain I had registered earlier this week and started pestering Sridhar to help get this move done (since he helped me get the domain registered, had done this in the past with his blogspot blog and is the best expert I know on this). He was not feeling well earlier this week and promised to do this over the weekend. He finally made some changes on the host side and I made some changes on Blogger and voila http://hebbarr.blogspot.com has now moved to http://blog.randhir.net with all previous links continuing to work exactly as before and all Google Search links still taking a user to the new URL. Will need to still see if I need to make changes to the RSS Feed or if this feeds through as before. Mini-objective of this post. :-)

Next Step: Adding some default content to randhir.net website such as details about me, links to different social media handles (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare) and Picasa Photo Albums should be a good start for now.

Linkedin Inmaps

I thought I'd use an illustration of my connections on LinkedIn Inmaps to emphasize both the power of Visual Analytics (A picture is worth a thousand words. Let's see if this blog-post reaches 1000 words :p) as well as talk further about what differentiates an analysis from a report.

Before I get into what this image reveals, I wanted to highlight a couple of things. This image is a unique way to represent very complex and large n-dimensional dataset. In the age of Visual Analytics and the popularity of various VA tools such as Tableau, Qlikview, Microstrategy and JMP, this is a neat neat way of representing really complex multi-dimensional data (All people who you are connected to and everyone they are connected to is probably going to become a Million rows x Million columns dataset. I am not sure if this visualization has looked at second level connections in which case the data becomes even more complex). Another key insight from this is the fact that Color is one weapon that we don't use often enough in projecting charts to represent multi-dimensional complex data.

This representation captures quite a few things and projects these insights in a simplistic fashion:

1. What are the various social/professional/educational networks you are a part off?
1. Big Clusters in different colors
2. I had 4 major clusters (HKUST/LBS on the West representing the global network largely based in HK and London , Mu Sigma and Dell on the East representing analytics in Bangalore and UVCE and Infosys/Gap on the South and North respectively representing the IT side of Me)
2. How well-connected are these networks?
1. Size of the clusters
2. HKUST is a large well-connected cluster and so is Mu Sigma. UVCE is much smaller and less well-connected.
3. Who are the people who are connectors across networks?
1. Dots that are between two clusters and of a reasonable size
2. Santosh Atre, Tapan and Navin D connects Infosys and Mu Sigma and Bharath Murali connects Bethany and Mu Sigma networks. Deepak GD connects PESIT Gang and HKUST.
4. Who are the key people in your network?
1. Size of the bubble indicates how well connected they are.
2. If you can identify 4-5 people in each network spread across different networks and stay in touch with them, it might be more efficient than trying to be in touch with everyone in your network. This does have a materialistic angle to connecting to people. But all I am saying is if you had to choose 3 people to get in touch with to get the scoop on what's happening in your school gang, this map probably gives you a good idea.
5. Who will be most useful when you have a unique need?
1. Possibly someone who is not very well-connected to any of your networks who appears to have a good network (Big Bubble).
2. Reasoning: They have good exposure to multiple people in possibly a different field or atleast a different network and will be able to connect you to a unique network of people that you don't have access to. This could be a distant cousin in the real estate broking space who can connect you to a builder friend who will help with building your next house.

Now that I've given you some key questions that get answered with that one image, is the image a report or is it analytics. It depends on who's talking about it (I guess). LinkedIn would call it the best analytics ever whereas someone who saw it but did not get enough context to what this was about or why it is important to him/her thought it was a useless report. While this definitely fits the bill of a Visual Analytics representation of complex data, it would be good analytics only if backed by reason why this is useful to the viewer, what the key insights are and what actions he should take based on the insights. Does this blog-post then qualify as good analytics? ;-) I'll let the readers of the blog decide.

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Sitting is killing you

Received this on my office e-mail and thought this was really relevant and worth sharing with you all. The thought is around how you can change your life, improve your health, lose weight, live longer by just sitting a little less and standing a little more as was the habit a few decades and a lot more a few centuries ago.

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

The Japanese Tragedy - A different insider perspective

While it is great to feel sorry for the Japanese, here's another perspective from the inside. While we Indians talk about the indomitable Mumbai spirit and how Mumbaikars were back the day after 26/11, this piece from a Japanese Small Business Entrepreneur really brings out the wonderful Japanese spirit as also the Japanese engineering marvels and process orientation that reduced what could have potentially wiped out a country and saved millions of lives.

All that being said, lets keep Japan, our Japanese friends and their families in our prayers over the next few weeks/months as they apply their superior talents towards rebuilding Japan.

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Dell SMAC Unconference - Discussion on Indian Startups and Social Media

As part of the unique DELL Social Media and Communities Unconference (Follow #Dellstublr on Twitter for more photos and tweets from the Unconference) today, I anchored a session on how Indian Start-ups can leverage Social Media to make an impact and like the other discussions was quite enriching. A side topic that came up was how Dell can engage with Indian SMEs better. Below is the notes that I've taken. 

Primary Topic: Indian Startups: How can they leverage Social Media to make an impact?

1.       Demand Generation

a.       Build a gaming app around your application

b.      Start Contests or Quizzes around your area of expertise/product

c.       Launch Deals – Exclusive to Social Media

d.      Provide exclusive logins to gain exclusivity and word-of-mouth

e.      Limited referral links to each user (e.g. Gmail/Faceb)

f.        Referral Marketing

g.       Referral and Reward Schemes/Loyalty Programs

2.       Branding

a.       Be the brand that your relevant audience talks about

b.      Identify areas where you want to specialize.

c.       Answer questions on Linkedin and Quora on relevant topics

3.       Social CRM

a.       Connect to customers

b.      Integrate with offline channels

c.       Get feedback on products/service

4.       Idea-sourcing (Ideastorm/Feedback)

a.       Lot of companies doing this were cited

5.       Connect to the Ecosystem – Startups (especially SBs) need a lot of help on this.

a.       Lawyers

b.      Developers

c.       VCs to reach out to for funding

d.      Accountants

e.      Website designers

f.        SEO

6.       Operations / Supply-Chain: An example is a popular snack brand rewarding customers who report shortage of the snack in the neighbouring store with a free pack. There were several instances of people tweeting just to get a freebie. But the brand became a lot popular and sales/marging went up significantly year on year.

Other Points Discussed:

1.       Focus on the right channels with the relevant customer segments engaged there

2.       A good product is primary to winning in Social Media.

3.       SB vs.  MB obviously a factor to consider and will impact your strategy

4.       Good content (Zoozoos, Dominos and others listed) important for getting a content to go viral and good content is key for Start-ups

5.       Is ROI in Social Media low?

a.       Conflicting points of view on that.

b.      Summary that if you plan and execute this well, it can work for you and work cheaply for you.

Secondary Topic: How can Dell help Startups and also benefit from it?

1.       Ecosystem

a.       Grow its own (Using #Takeyourownpath as a starting point)

b.      Plug into existing ecosystems like Pluggd.in

c.       Build a Twitter Handle around this DellSMBHelp or SMBEcosystem something like that

2.       Financing

a.       Connect to Angel Investors/VCif not directly finance

b.      Legal Constraints listed as something that might prevent direct funding

3.       Purchase a Social Networking Company / Community site focused on startups?

4.       Things we are already doing in other regions

a.       Be the advisor for SMBs on relevant areas

b.      Become thought leaders on things to do/avoid in a start-up either personal or as a company too.

5.       Social Benefits

a.       Donate PCs to Villages and help start KPOs/BPOs

b.      Government incentivizes such initiatives and will be part of our CSR initiatives

6.       Business Plan Competitions and Mash-ups for Start-ups with a stall around listing our products

Those who participated (Thank you for contributing to the discussion) or even those who didn't with other ideas, please feel free to contribute or provide feedback on my twitter handle @rhebbar or in the comments section below. 

My blog has now become all about crowd/idea-sourcing now anyway. :-) My Other recent crowdsourcing posts:
Ideas for a car purchase
Ideas for my website name

To ensure you don't miss any of my blog posts, please click on subscribe to add my blog in your favorite RSS Feed Reader.

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