The projects and research (thesis, surveys etc) that they participated in are very strong clues to the nature and capabilities. So if you have done the classic library management software, inventory control software, survey customer satisfaction levels and like, you do not have any special reason to be on the short-list.

However if you have developed a software or hardware product (even if it is not path-breaking), setup a blog where you comment on the industry developments, products being launched and like, we would conclude that you are aware of the current trends and have passion for developing some worthwhile products, given a chance.

These help you score valuable brownie points and put you at the head of the queue. Sorry but wearing Rupa Frontline vests won’t help (you would know what I mean if you have seen that ad).

So the take home is – build a CV over the entire duration of your studies, and not just write it when you have started looking for the job.

We had a hotly debated discussion with Abhijit and Subrata pretty much disillusioned by the young generation who would endlessly tweet (as in chat) but not take up a serious stand on the really important things that matter to the ‘India cause‘. Add to this the fact that there are less than 20000 Twitter users in India out of a total population of more than a billion. Looks like a really uphill battle.

On the other hand, Abhishek, Abhijit and I felt that we are definitely making small impact to the society by sharing our notes on Cricket, Politics and Movies (CPM – a term coined by Simar) and by acting as whistleblowers on corruption by tweeting when we find a deficiency in someone’s service or attitude.

Can we make a difference to the way India works? If you are talking about being able to change the way India works or the way India works, well no. But as one audience member put it – we are definitely making a small impact. And if we can change just one thing, we can consider repeating that performance over and over and soon, we will find people taking note and changing. This is the way big revolutions were started.

My message to you is – when you see something nice, appreciate. When you see something bad, complain – loudly. Share with your friends and Twitter followers. Some will take notice and you will be causing an impact – however small. And you will be pleased you did.

You should try your best to offer excellent customer service to your clients. However you should lay enough focus on understanding that they may be tensed when they are needing your help. You first need to reassure them that you are listening to their grievances with utmost attention and will do everything possible (within the limits of practicality) to help solve their issues. Then apply 100% efforts to help them – and then some more.

A delighted customer is the biggest asset a business can have and you should spare no effort to acquire as many delighted customers as you can. A significant portion of the marketing budget can be set aside for it as this exercise can result in very high ROI.

Please share your initiatives with the fellow readers through the comments below.

If you have ever asked this to anyone (or even yourself), read on…

It is true that a prospective employee gets a very short amount of time in the interview and has to convince the interviewer with his/her technical and human skills. So many people lose a job they were quite fit for, because they get nervous or do not portray a good picture of their skills in the short time available.

The biggest tip that I give to all job-seekers and people who wish to enhance their careers radically is to create a blog to showcase their talent. You can setup a blog for free on www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com. You can also create a blog with your own name but that requires a small investment.

If you make research driven and informative posts (like comments on current happenings related to your field), a prospective employer can gain a very good understanding of your skills and who knows, they may be seeking you rather than you seeking them. In any case, a mere mention on your CV that you maintain a blog on the same topic that you are seeking employment for, can help you get in the short-list without any fuss. Make sure you include a prominent mention on the blog that you are available for hiring. A short blurb in the sidebar should do this job quite well, without getting in the way.

Think about it.

My presentation was not on the seminar topic specifically as I was the part of the inaugaral session where I was on the dais with Shri Tathagata Satpathy, Member of Parliament from Dhenkanal  and Mr. Joy Varghese, Director, Personnel and Administration of NALCO India.

Here are the excerpts:

You have to clearly understand that when you apply for a job in a company, you are generally competing with 100s of other candidates who are equally good or may be better than you. You need to demonstrate that you are unique and ‘passion‘ can be your secret USP. If you are excited about this job, this interview and this company, and if it shows while I am interviewing you, you have earned a place in the short-list.

Remember this quote – “One passionate person is better than 40 people casually interested!”

I know you are more interested in your career and your progress but make your company’s success your vehicle. Don’t try to progress at the cost of your company, progress with it and you will progress a lot.

Here is my big tip about getting that coveted job. I call it the Imagine-Achieve principle. With all your honest intent, imagine yourself working for the company – doing the various assignments, eating in its canteen, reporting to your boss, attending the appraisal meeting and everything else that will happen when you actually join the company. This may sound weird but it works. Of course, you have to do this exercise without a doubt in your heart or mind.

While on this topic, let me give you another perspective. Why does everybody present here, have to get a job? If you have a bit of adventure in your nature and high ambitions too, why not consider being an entrepreneur? You can start your own company and instead of taking up a job in some company, you may be offering jobs in your company. This is very much possible if you apply the Imagine-Achieve principle.

I will now do something that people don’t do on academic and business platforms. I will be sharing with you, 2 spiritual tips for winning almost any battle of life – be it studies, job hunting or business success.

1. Forgiveness: Forgive everyone who has done anything bad to you. Yes, your girl friend who has ditched you, your friend who avoided you when you needed his help, your brothers and sisters who played loud music when you were studying – get rid of all the anger, frustration and resentment and you will feel a tremendous relief. Your mind and body will feel very light and you will be able to achieve your future targets so much more easily. This is an abstract thought – difficult to accept and act upon – but you will feel the difference in a day when you apply it.
2. Gratitude: Be thankful to everyone around you. Be thankful to your institute which gives you the education that prepares you for a successful career ahead, to your parents who brought you in this wonderful world and perhaps, have parted with their life-savings to send you here, to all these people who are sharing the wisdom of their life with you. Think a little and you will be able to find ‘at least one’ reason to thank anyone you come across. And to follow my own dictum, I thank you – heartily – to have come here and listen to my ‘gyan’.

I see a lot of teachers, professors and guides here and if I may dare to (I am too young to be teaching the teachers), my tip to you, Sirs and madams is – ‘Love your students who have given the oars of their life-boats to you and row them to a successful career and satisfying lives, give them all you know and then some more, and you will be amazed at the grace of Almighty that will be showered upon you”.

I will like to close with this parting message. You have great potential and capable of achieving a lot. Believe in yourself and get on the job. Some French general once said “Difficult problems are no worries for us; it is the impossible that takes some time!”

You must have heard – “When the going gets tough, the tough get going!” The best way to counter the effects of the recession is to take control and initiate positive action steps that will not only help you ride out the recession but you will come out a winner!

1. At first, you should remind yourself that you did not create the recession and you cannot rid the world of it. Stop feeling down and out and concentrate all your energy on making the best of it. “When life hands you lemons, turn them into lemonade.“
2. Don’t stop marketing – do more of it. When everyone around you is cutting down on marketing, it is easier and cheaper to be in the limelight and your prospects will see more of you than others. This will create a ‘top of mind’ recall when they are finally ready to order.
3. Set up and improve processes for everything your company does. Right from customer acquisition to customer sign-off and all internal activities should be highly process driven to squeeze the maximum efficiency out of the scarce opportunities and resources.
4. Cut down the dead wood. Get rid of non-performers, whether these are low response marketing avenues or low performance employees. Redeploy people to other departments where they can produce better output. It is very painful, sometimes bordering on insensitive. However if a tree won’t save itself from dying, it won’t be able to provide food and shelter to anyone. One who tries to please everyone, pleases no one.
5. Identify seasonal lean periods in your business if you have any. Run special promotions at these times to keep your teams busy.
6. Make sure you announce offers only periodically. I know a company which has either a 60% off promotion or a 50%+20% off promotion running at all times. Also, don’t extend your offers ad-infinitum or they will lose their urgency factor.
7. Use the lean periods to invest in training your teams on upcoming technologies so that they are fighting fit when markets improve and there is a demand in the market for these technologies.
8. Service businesses can redeploy some part of their teams to create innovative products when demand for their service is low.

These strategies will help you ride out the storm and you will come out stronger when the sentiments have improved – as they eventually will. No recession has ever lasted for ever – nor will this.

What strategies and tactics are you employing to tackle the monster? Please share your tips with your fellow readers by commenting below.

Is this an art that one is born with or can this be developed? Here are some tips to add the professional touch to your presenting skills that will make your audience stand up and take notice:

The Content

What are you going to say and show? These tips will help you come up with some killer ideas:

1. First and foremost, you will need to have quality material. While good delivery can make mediocre material great, it cannot bring a dull, boring and useless content to life.
2. Have an attractive title – think headlines. Don’t settle on lifeless titles like “Great Presentations”.
3. The outline must be very clear in your mind. It should also be printed on a piece of paper in large fonts with good spacing, as a backup. Trying to make sense of what is printed on your sheet in the dim light of the hall can be very embarrassing.
4. You must offer at least take-home idea in your presentation. More are better. If most members of the audience cannot go back to their office and implement at least one idea in their business, it takes away from the effectiveness. On the other hand if they can apply at least one idea and even gain mildly from that, they will become raving fans.
5. Quoting from some authoritative resources can increase the credibility of your facts and the points you are making.

Delivery

Some speakers really blow it in the delivery stage. If you are not effective in this department, your top of the line content will not be consumed by many of the listeners. Try these techniqies to make the delivery more effective:

1. Ask a question – involve your audience from the word go. Keep asking questions every few minutes. This will make them stay with you. Some questions may require detailed answers but most should be yes/no type or raise hands type. Doing so will not distract you from the flow.
2. If possible, upload your presentation somewhere and tell the people that they will be able to download it later, so no need to copy the slides. This way they can focus more on what you are saying.
3. You can decide whether you will take questions after you have finished or in the middle also. While they feel more engaged if they can ask questions midway, it may disrupt the flow of your talk.
4. Deliver some great tips or important news early. Once you have lost them, it is very difficult to get them back.
5. Use the pause effectively. Whenever you have made a key point, pause briefly. This will allow the audience to digest the fact or visualise the point as it applies to their situation. Sometimes you can pause after a question you raised so that the audience can form their own answers and compare with yours. You want to start a conversation in their minds.
6. Use funny or witty comments at times. If the presentation is getting serious, you can relieve the tension with a light-hearted comment. A relaxed audience is more responsive and enjoys your presentations more. However do not use any racial, regional or sexist comment – this can backfire specially with a mixed audience.
7. Maintain the average time per slide so that you can end in the allotted time. It is very odd to dwell too long on the first few slides and then to have to hurry through the rest. A good idea is to have slide number / total number of slides showing in each slide (small font). This will remind you to go slow or fast as appropriate.
8. You should make eye contact with the people but stay with one person for a short duration only and then look at some other person. If you are stressed (novice), you should look just above the last row. This way you are not making eye contact with any particular person but the audience does not feel that you are disengaged.
9. If you are not stuck at a place because of a stationary microphone, try to move around a little. However do not move too fast and avoid getting in front of the projection screen.
10. If there are people you know in the audience, you may refer to them once or twice but do not involve them in every example. Others people feel quite offended and left out if you do so.
11. Avoid presenting just before the lunch or tea breaks and also just after that. Either they are hungry and intently waiting for you to finish or they have not come back from the break yet.

The Slideshow

When you create a slideshow with Powerpoint or any similar package, the following ideas should come in handy:

1. When you are new to presentations, use a more detailed Powerpoint presentation. This will help you stay on topic and you will not forget any important point.
2. When you have more experience, only put the main topics, important facts and graphs etc on the Powerpoint presentation. This will enable the audience to concentrate on what you are saying rather than reading the slides.
3. Include specifics in your presentation. Statements like “.. has helped some people make some money..” does not cut it. However if you say “A client used my tips and made $15,307 in 25 days”, it may really make the audience sit up and listen intently to what you are saying.
4. Don’t put too much text or detailed graphic on any slide. Nothing beats the frustration of having to read a lot or concentrate too hard on a graphic. Either put the salient point only or break up into multiple sides.
5. I have got better results with white or light text on a dark background, while projecting. My personal choice is white on dark blue.
6. You should put a credit line with logo at the bottom of every slide if possible. This reinforces your brand.

In conclusion

How to end in a way that you are remembered longer than anyone else and get some quality response (may be leads for your business). Want to hear those excited claps?

1. You must present an executive summary at the end. Recap the main points and stress on the take-home values.
2. Always offer a way to learn more about your company (your website) and to contact you (email, phone as appropriate). The happy members may get in touch for assigning some business. Keep this slide showing for a longer time than the others.

I am positive you will enjoy giving talks and presentations and become a more popular speaker with these tips. Please feel free to share what ideas have you used to great effect in your presentations and talks.

1. What kind of entrepreneur is one who cannot take risk?

2. Opportunities are everywhere. You have to be able to see an opportunity in everything.

3. Selling is the biggest skill an entrepreneur should have.  Rest follows.

4. If you can sell something even if you don’t have it ready, go ahead. You will get thousands of people who will be happy to provide or build it for you. Selling is the most difficult part and you have cracked that.

5. An office can earn the money for a new house – a new house cannot earn money for a new office. Buy that office first, if you can only afford one.

6. Invest liberally in technology if you do not want to work with a major handicap.

7. You have to get up and go out to spot those fantastic opportunities. Attractive deals don’t walk in to your office
(well mostly).

8. There is no replacement for quality. If your quality is not great, you are bound to lose out – sooner or later.

9. Don’t advertise directly. Invest in advertorials or PR. An endorsement by a real user or a known face beats an
endorsement by a celebrity, hands down.

10. A good partner is a valuable asset. If you hold the same views, one is reduntant. You must agree to disagree. If you hold opposite views, you get the holistic picture.

So what do you say? Agree or disagree? Your comments are vital – please let me know what you feel about his ideology.

I made a small presentation about how bloggers can monitor, manage and protect their online reputation and I am happy to share it with you too. It is very important that we follow certain precautions when posting online because “What we post once, stays on the Internet forever!”. You don’t want to jeopardise that job, friendship or marriage because of what you posted when on a high.

Feel free to post your comments whether you like it or disagree with some point made.

There are lots of interesting discussions scheduled including a talk by your truly on “Online Reputation Management for bloggers“. I doubt that we can complete all the discussions scheduled but if any are left, we can always follow them up at the next meet

If you are coming, say Hi to me (make a mental note of my photo above) and I will be pleased to exchange notes with you. See you there!

Oh – by the way, why don’t you just post a comment below if you are coming over?