Delving Deeper

Over the past 4 years Whatsapp groups have become a huge source of learning and connections for me. Today I happened to see a discussion about how Women's cricket should not be compared to Men's cricket on a whatsapp group - where I had also posted a comparison and felt the need to explore this further. As I did my search for third party articles, I realised that this moment has within it an opportunity to help understand or connect to Career and career paths for individuals with  any Talent.  For this purpose - I would define Talent as anything that the seekers of that talent derive value from. Now Mandira Bedi is an actor starting and Shanti  was her major break in 1995. Her career path is explained via this Your Story article . To bring in the connection to cricket - let me paste a portion of text from this article below: Her love for cricket took her straight to hosting the ICC World Cups in 2003 and 2007, proving to people that women could host cricket matches too...

Here I am, blogging from an Uber rushing towards the venue of one of India's largest gatherings of Human resource (#HR) professionals, Vendors and newsmakers.  Yes, I had read what Keith Hammond had written about Why he hates HR some years back and from then on, I had been thinking about creating my own ways for getting stuff out of conferences like these. The roles I get to play in the function I chose back in 1997 had been giving me the opportunity (with some special access rights) to large gatherings of HR folks from 2012 onwards. For those interested in numbers, I have been attending upto 5 such events every year from 2012 - yes, every year. With that as a context, let me delve into stuff that's making me excited about my 4th such conference in 2018, the Annual gathering curated by SHRM's India entity - the first version of which I had attended in Goa back in 2013. 1. The SHRM Social media Squad has been my special Learning network from 2012 Atlanta conference, my f...

June of 2018 had been a hectic month for me.  Let me attempt to list the things I got to touch in June to set the context for this post: My special times inside Kerala's  IT SME Life... journeys via contributions to SME entrepreneurs . I had two retainer clients, one each in Kochi and Kozhikode who kept me clued in to the SME's journey.  Nipah scare in Kerala made some of my past clients reach out for help - to ensure they managed this scare staying within the freedom + responsibility approach that we had got them to take.  Last month of my term as Volunteer Secretary of NIPM Kerala Chapter  - four programs to plan - Young Managers Contest, Corporate Citizen Award,  revamping Legal Update and Annual General Meeting Annual meetup of Citizen Science enthusiasts at Thrissur for deliberations on technology and crowd sourcing enabled Bird Monitoring in Kerala - will blog about this soon as this meeting made the early 40's brain in me to take up an...

So I've landed in Chicago for SHRM18 after a 24 hour journey (over 21 hours in the air) from my home in Kochi, India. I'm very excited about the theme that www.shrm.org  has chosen for #shrm18 - 'Expand your world' - here are my reasons: From the first time I attended this conference back in 2012, SHRM has helped me expand my world via HR pals, connections with whom they have catalysed via special events organised at the annual conference and exposition - the international delegates get really pampered at any SHRM annual.  Apart from being an international attendee, I have been lucky to be part of SHRM's blogging squad as well - this platform which gives me a 'behind the stumps' (Cricket Umpire lingo) connection opportunity to some of the best content creators at a global scale - t hey are  - don't miss connecting with them as they help you traverse this year's conference via social media updates.  This excitement of being able to expand my worl...

I had missed SHRM16 but had not missed blogging about why I thought large conclaves like the ones organised by  www.shrm.org  are great social selling opportunities after reading about the power of social selling later that year. SHRM18 too has a carefully curated list of service providers who will be showcasing their wares at the Exposition which will be open from 4 pm on 17th June - immediately following the opening general session which will be featuring Johnny C Taylor, Jr. the new CEO of SHRM and Jeb Bush. The would be over 600 exhibitors and I have realised, with each of my 4 previous conferences that there will be exciting stuff which will keep attendees glued to most exhibits.  Here are some tips that I found useful as one attempts to traverse this maze looking thingy that we can call the exhibition floor! 1.  Identify at least 25 Exhibitors based on your current role or your companies immediate needs by speaking to your colleagues about your the oppor...

So people keep asking me this question - why am I geeked about #shrm18? Here's what on top of my mid now as I'm preparing for my fifth time at an SHRM Annual . SHRM12 opened out the world of possibilities to me when I managed to combine it with my annual visit to connect to work related matters with Arbitron (now Nielsen Audio) - I had blogged about it then - here is the first post  written excitedly as I got to be part of SHRM bloggers for the first time! Here are the other posts from that year - looks pretty silly now I confess.  A list of tweets  An attempt to capture the essence of shrm annual on video  3. SHRM has been my mentor on #socialmedia trends - I had blogged about some lessons after my second edition. This was the time when I could find my way around better and could connect to more learning stuff - this was at Orlando.  4. The need to reconnect to social media got me back for my third shrm conference - this time at Las Vegas where I...

Yep, this is one question I love to hear these days - especially when it is from someone based in my home state Kerala. Some context : So I got back to my home state in Dec 2007 to become first employee of a US Media measurement major (Now part of Nielsen Audio) who was then setting up it's Captive Technology centre in India, yes a GIC as per NASSCOM. Post a global acquisition by the Market research biggie - I set out to form a Boutique Consulting gig  with a purpose of catalysing the growth of the IT SME ecosystem in the state, combining with ex-boss - a Rocket-scientist turned Programmer turned CEO who I would need more than a blog to introduce. I have to confess that it was a bit tough for me to answer them initially. To give my readers a context, here are the assumptions that people keep while asking this questions: HR consulting means 'recruitment' - that too 'sourcing' resumes - worst still - the keyword searching variety. After I shake my head with...

June 2018 also means that I'm going to be stepping into my 20th year as a Human Resource a.k.a. #HR management professional.  I remember being very excited when I got to hear for the first time via our Organisational Behaviour class that Work itself is a classification of motivators. Looking back on my first five years of Corporate life - I cannot remember many role descriptions from recruiters including the ones I made for my first employer (a Rayon yarn manufacturing plant) which exemplified 'work itself'.  It's towards early part of 2010 that such descriptions were slowly found - albeit rare.  Come to think of it most other forms of motivations propounded by theories, have now being questioned - the famous among them being Maslow's  Hierarchy of needs  theory.  Why did it take over sixty years to question any theory is a valid question I have.  Maybe this podcast about Why Bschools should be bull dozed - by the Guardian provides some answers ?...