by Raghu Nandhan | Jan 3, 2019 | Ace the Interview
Do you remember what life was like before the internet or the iPhones existed? Or can you imagine actually having to look up a word in the dictionary? Probably not, but the truth is your most useful tools didn’t even exist 15 years ago. Yeah, you read it right. Want to know something even crazier?
By 2022, we’ll lose over five million jobs to automation. That means that future jobs will look vastly different by the time you graduate university. Don’t worry, though! The jobs of the future will actually be more interesting than those of the past.
Gone are the days of factory workers and physical production. We’ll let the machines handle that. Instead, future jobs will involve knowledge and innovation. Machines are actually doing you a favour. They’re freeing you up to explore experiment and find interesting solutions to complex problems, like pollution.
Say goodbye to a desk job and hello to the world of creation!
Future Skills
Although no one can accurately predict what jobs will look like in the future, there are seven skills that will be essential to your future success.
- Creativity:
Worried about robots stealing your job? The more creative you are, the less likely you are to lose your job to a robot! While robots may be better than you at calculating and diagnosing problems, they aren’t very good at creating original content, thinking outside the box or being abstract.
- Critical Thinking:
Technology may be able to automate many of the jobs that currently exist, but you probably wouldn’t trust it to do your critical thinking for you; as such your future career will require you to have excellent critical thinking skills. You’ll constantly need to be analysing various situations, considering multiple solutions and making decisions on the fly through logic and reasoning.
- Mental Elasticity and Complex Problem Solving:
The future is going to bring problems you’ve never seen before in a world you’ve never experienced. In order to solve these problems, you’ll need to have the mental flexibility to think outside of the box, see the big picture and rearrange things to find a solution. Luckily, this skill is highly develop able and simply takes practice. The more difficult problems you tackle, the more bendy your brain will get.
- STEM:
Even though Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths jobs are super-hot right now, don’t expect them to go away in the future. As technology progresses, you’ll need to have more advanced STEM skills to keep up.
- SMAC:
You’ve heard of STEM but you probably haven’t heard of SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud). Catchy, right? Learning all of these skills/platforms will make you stand out in the future job market.
- Interdisciplinary Knowledge:
Your future career will require you to pull information from many different fields to come up with creative solutions to future problems. This skill is easy to work on as well. Start by reading as much as you can about anything and everything that interests you. Once you get to college, consider double majoring or minoring in completely different fields. Trust me, it’ll pay off in the long run.
- People Skills:
Listen, machines are going to take over eventually and technology is going to get much more advanced, so humans have to stick together. If you want to succeed in the future job market, you’ll have to learn how to manage and work with people and robots, which includes getting in touch with your emotions, having empathy and listening.
Now that you know what skills will make you successful in the future, let’s take a look at some future jobs.
- Waste Management/Trash Engineer
This may be the oddest future job but it’s totally necessary. Humans produce 2.6 billion pounds of trash annually, and what do we do with it? There is no way this practice is sustainable so we have to think about something else to do with all of our rubbish. You could turn our rubbish into clean gas or figure out a way to make it strong enough to construct buildings with. The possibilities are endless but it’s up to you to come up with the award winning ideas.
Average Salary: $25,425 – $87,178
Skills Needed: Strong STEM skills, critical thinking and mental elasticity.
Best Undergraduate Majors: Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Trash Engineering.
- Alternative Energy Consultant
People cannot survive on fossil fuel forever, so alternative energy sources are the only hope. I’m sure you’ve heard of solar, wind and hydroelectric energy. The question is, which one is right for your home, your community and your city? You’ll be an expert in all energy forms and go from city to city around the world assessing the best sustainable energy source for each place. Believe me, you’ll be in high demand very soon.
Average Salary: $35,561 – $86,162
Skills Needed: Strong STEM background, mental elasticity and people skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Renewable Energy Engineering, Environmental Studies, Physics, Mechanical Engineering
- Organ/Body Part Creator
Ever heard of the organ black market? Well, it exists, it’s illegal and it’s a huge problem. Why? Because many people around the world spend years on medical waiting lists praying that their name will get called for the next eye, kidney or even heart available. Eventually, they get sick of waiting and they discover the deep, dark world of the organ black market, where they can buy whatever they need for a price.
Every 12 minutes a new name gets added onto the already gigantic waiting list and every day about 21 people die because they didn’t get the organ they needed.
With those kinds of stats, it’s not surprising that people turn to the black market. However, in a few years, it’ll be up to you to create organ and body parts from stem cells and other materials that is not yet known or don’t yet exist.
Average Salary: $34,882 – $130,484
Skills Needed: Strong STEM background, critical thinking, mental elasticity, complex problem solving and creativity
Best Undergraduate Majors: Biology, Genetics, Biomedical Engineering
- Memory Surgeon
Here’s where things start to get a bit sci-fi-y. What if there was a way to surgically remove bad memories, mental illness and destructive behaviour? Is it possible? Would it be ethical? Would it rid the world of terrorism?
Only you can unlock the answers to these burning questions by becoming a Memory Surgeon. Your future career is bound to cause controversy but stick to it and you could change the world. Just make sure you’re only removing memories, illnesses and behaviours that actually need to be removed.
Average Salary: $322,568 to $452,703
Skills Needed: Strong STEM background, critical thinking, mental elasticity, complex problem solving and creativity
Best Undergraduate Majors: Biology, Chemistry, Neurobiology
- Personal Internet of Things (IoT) Security Repair Person
We are used to calling plumbers or repairmen when something is broken around the house, but who do you call when your smart refrigerator gets hacked and tells your smart coffee maker to continuously make coffee and your smart lights to turn on and off every five minutes? A personal IoT Security Repair Person of course. Dis-functioning of products due to hacking is just one of the many problems that the world is bound to face as our devices become smarter.
As an IoT Security Repair Person, you’ll be in charge of thwarting hackers before they cause any damage and fixing any damage that you’re unable to prevent.
Average Salary: $113,670 – $157,197
Skills Needed: STEM, Critical thinking, people skills, mental elasticity, SMAC skills and complex problem solving skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
- Commercial Space Pilot
Elon Musk and Richard Branson are racing to space and soon, civilian space exploration is going to become a reality. However, there’s one little problem, who’s going to fly us around? We can’t possibly all become astronauts before exploring the moon or Mars that would take way too long and wouldn’t be practical at all. We’ll need someone who has the experience of an astronaut but is also trained to handle much larger rockets with many more people aboard.
Sounds like a tough job but if you’re an expert on space and have always dreamed of becoming an astronaut then it’s time to start thinking bigger.
Average Salary: $65,140 – $100,700
Skills Needed: STEM, Critical thinking, people skills, creativity, mental elasticity, interdisciplinary skills and complex problem solving skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Aerospace Engineering, Astrology, Physics, Computer Science
- Personal Productivity Person
In order to compete with the up and coming automated workforce, people have to become as efficient as possible. Think about how many distractions you have in your present life that hinders you from unlocking your full potential: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Netflix, the 24-hour news cycle and more. As technology continues to evolve, the number of distractions we have will continue to grow and if we are inefficient, machines will be looming in the background ready to take our jobs.
Unless, we have Personal Productivity People (PPP). As a PPP, your job will consist of analysing people’s daily lives and teaching them to silence their daily distractions in order to work harder and smarter.
Average Salary: $36,295 – $134,748
Skills Needed: Critical thinking, creativity, people skills, mental elasticity, SMAC skills and interdisciplinary skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Communication and Media, Physiology, Sociology
So here were few jobs or technologies of future which I could think of but it doesn’t limit only to these. There are many upcoming technologies which are still not known to the world.
Although a lot of the jobs that exist today will be automated in the coming years, we should be excited about the future, not scared of it. The robots will take over all of the boring jobs which will leave more free time for us to explore interesting, creative and important new jobs such as the 7 I outlined in this blog.
However, you shouldn’t limit yourself to the jobs on this list. Dream up your own list of potential future careers that use the essential skills mentioned earlier and who knows, you might create the next million-dollar idea.
Pragna is always involved in development/appreciation of new technology space. Do review the different solutions we are providing to our customers for over the years.
I hope this blog helped you dive into the future. What do you think, what other jobs or technologies would be high in demand in near future? If you could imagine something new apart from what I listed in then do let us know in the comment section below. Also share this blog with all your known ones and help them plan their careers.
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by Raghu Nandhan | Dec 11, 2018 | Blog, Offshore Recruitment
Is outsourcing HR the best solution for your business, or should you move HR in-house? Do you have an answer to the above question if Yes then thumbs up, if No then continue reading to find out more about the two options.
HR workers manage a wide level of responsibility based on the needs of the organisation. They manage the hiring processes of recruiting and interviewing potential employees, as well as orientation and training of workers. They also manage the relationship between employee and employer, as well as completing payroll and managing benefits. HR professionals work with the leadership team to implement policy changes and to best coordinate the wider administrative functions and duties of a business. Hiring and training new employees is one of the most expensive parts of the business cycle.
One of the best ways to determine whether your business should outsource the HR department or keep it in-house starts with taking a look at the size of your company. This will give you an idea of the services and manpower needed to run HR. Next, review the pros and cons of both options by taking a deeper look into what you may gain or lose through the process. Last, research the stories of other businesses similar in size to your own and find out how outsourcing or in-house HR has worked for them.
When you first start your business, your priority is to hire people who are integral to building the product and growing the company to fill the roles that move the bottom line and grow the business. At some point, a business grows big enough that it needs people to take care of the back office operations of the company. You need someone responsible for coordinating interviews, sending offer letters, managing benefits administration, and much more.
Figure out what stage of growth your business is in:
10-50 Employees
If you’re running a new business it can be easy to believe you can do it all yourself. There are only a few people in your company. Between managing benefits, equity, salaries, time off, writing employee documents, hiring, firing, onboarding, and everything else that is going on, where will the time come to talk to investors, build the product, or do significant business development? At this stage, you should outsource most of your human resources function. Your focus should be on the people who are coming in and out, not whether they are getting their pay check on time.
50-500 Employees
You’ve raised a much larger round and you are going to be scaling your business much faster, maybe growing from 50 employees all the way up to 100-500 employees. Recruiting is probably a massive priority as you grow and you might be running into new issues when it comes to expansion and compliance.
At this point, you need a back office time. For starters, you need to have someone on board who is able to handle strategic HR projects that are meant to make the company better. These include initiatives to keep employees healthy, to ensure that they are acquiring new skills that make them more useful. These requirements are better filled in-house, since they are so specific to your company.
But there’s still a role for outsourcing. While you might feel an itch to bring everything in-house, payroll experts are costly and normally unnecessary. There’s also no need to bring basic compliance in-house. Outsourcing this or getting software to do it will save you money and time that will allow your busy HR department to focus on hiring and strategic projects.
500-1000+ Employees
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
These types of companies are not too dissimilar to medium-stage companies. The difference here is that many larger companies bring many HR functions back in-house because they consider it a competitive advantage. But even for large companies, many of the administrative HR tasks can remain outsourced. Why bog down your in-house HR team?
Keep your HR department focused on finding quality talent, tackling strategic projects, and being the liaison to the rest of your team. Allow outsourced HR and payroll providers to handle the rest.
Apart from these few other factors can also be considered before coming to a conclusion:
- What level of HR expertise/skills do you need?
When hiring a in house HR person you are getting only the skill set they bring. When using an HR firm with multiple consultants, you have access to all of the skill sets employed at the firm.
This is a key question. If you determine that you would like to hire a HR Manager with 5-10 years of experience, this is where the cost of outsourcing to an HR firm makes more sense because the cost will be a fraction of hiring an internal HR Manager.
- What are the employee-related goals for your business?
Do you want to become an “employer of choice” with a goal of attracting top talent? Do you want to create career paths for employees? Focus on employee retention? Using an outsourced HR firm with the experience of doing this type of work regularly, can help you achieve these goals more quickly. Additionally, it will provide you with some ideas you may not have thought about due to the consultants varied experiences.
- Do you need your HR person onsite every day?
With 100 plus employees, having HR onsite every day makes sense.
- How much time do you have to supervise an HR person?
Entrepreneurs rarely have time to effectively supervise. And supervising a skill set like HR, that they often know nothing about, makes it even more difficult. Working with an outside HR firm gives Leadership peace of mind knowing that skilled professionals are in place who will work proactively, advice and collaborate, versus look for frequent direction. With an outside HR firm true supervision is minimal.
- Do you want an HR professional who can provide objective advice and guidance?
When hiring someone in-house, they may not be as forthcoming with feedback that does not agree with “the boss”. The internal HR person wants to remain employed and because of this may be reluctant to share feedback that could be perceived as “not being a team-player.” An experienced HR consultant understands that one of the roles they play is to be a trusted advisor and look at situations objectively while sharing ideas and feedback that will improve the client’s workplace, support their goals and culture while also mitigating risk.
HR is an important department. But many businesses sometimes forget this. Or they forget that the people doing it are qualified to do more than monotonous tasks. Outsourcing human resources and introducing new changes within the company can be both eventful and fruitful and worth the risk taken. Finding the right consultant not only gives you a sense of satisfaction but also will reward you and your company in the long term and will provide you with long lasting benefits. Try to hire a professional that truly understand the sentiments of the company and its motives and values.
I hope this article inspired you to investigate what works best for you, your organisation and most importantly, your employees – because they are your business’s most important resources.
If you found this helpful then don’t forget to share it with your friends and colleagues.
What business functions have you considered outsourcing? Tell us in the comments section below.
Pragna provides a wide range of Recruiting and HR solutions for businesses of all sizes. Click here to discuss your HR/Recruiting needs with us.
by Raghu Nandhan | Nov 14, 2018 | Blog, Industry Trends, Talent Acquisition
A start-up is a company working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed. There’s something incredibly adventurous to work in start-up companies. Maybe it’s the lack of bureaucracy and office politics or the freedom to create ideas and make decisions. Either way, many job candidates are attracted to the start-up environment. But this doesn’t mean that start-up companies are right for everyone.
Are you considering a jump into the start-up industry, than there is a series of questions you must answer to yourself to find out “Do you actually fit in a Start-up?”
- How Can You Solve the Company’s Problems?
Start-ups have too much work to do and not enough people. So if you are capable of solving the specific problems a company faces and get results, many other concerns goes the side way. The main one left is cost and your interest in the job shouldn’t be about money, but rather fulfilling specific personal goals or mere learning.
- Does your Passion connect to the Company’s Mission?
Convictions and motivation are way more important in a candidate than experience. Wanting to work at a start-up is a terrible motivation for applying. A good motivation is finding a company whose mission resonates with you, whose values align with yours, and whose goals work perfectly with your skill set.
- Are you a Multitasker?
Since most start-ups financially aren’t able to fill all of the positions they need. They expect to do significant savings by combining two or many staff positions into one. That way, the cost of benefits can drop significantly. So if you are capable of wearing multiple hats without taking a toll on your focus and productivity then you are the right fit.
- What are your Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations?
It’s important to figure out your motivations before you start working in a start-up. Inevitably your start-up career will go through extreme challenges, and this understanding will be called upon. Extrinsic motivations could be salary and benefits and intrinsic motivations could be purpose, mission and learning. But it’s important for you to articulate your motivations and have clarity on what it really means.
- Do you tend to push the Boundaries?
If you are a person who likes to be in your own comfort zone then think twice before joining a start- up. Start- up environment seeks candidates who put continuous efforts to achieve a task and tend to experiment new, pushing their boundaries every time.
- Do you have the Entrepreneurial Spirit?
The best start-up employees think like entrepreneurs and are prepared for the challenges. They have Creating something from nothing attitude. Working at start-up involves working with different types of personalities, keeping an open mind, always staying true to yourself and speaking up when you have an opinion.
- Are you Accountable or Do you have sense of Responsibility?
Successful start-ups have no place for sycophants. You have to show that you are willing and able to not only come up with ideas, but also defend those ideas and implement them. You can adapt and think on your feet.
So analyse yourself before thinking to start you career in a start- up. If you have a “YES” for all the above questions then you are right fit. If not kindly drop down the idea and focus on improving your Entrepreneurial skills which could help you in many other ways.
If you’re looking for top tech talent to power your start-up and strengthen your culture, try Pragna Solutions today.
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by Raghu Nandhan | Oct 25, 2018 | Blog, Industry Trends, Sales and Marketing
We often come across a statement “The hiring manager doesn’t have to sell the job to candidates. It’s the candidate’s job to sell him- or herself to the hiring manager”.
In 21st Century if you go by this statement then that means your hiring engine is designed to attract people with enough low self-esteem that they don’t need to be sold. They’re desperate. They’ll take anything. You’ve got an open position? Great. I want the job. I don’t need to know anything about your company. I just want to get hired!
But if you wish to recruit top candidates you have to be on top of your game too. Just imagine you are sitting in interview room with the job description in front of you, and your usual line of questioning. Then a smart, well-presented candidate walks in, and hits you with a question: “What happened to the last person in the role? What’s a typical day in this office?”
Good candidates know that hiring is a two-way process. Particularly in this market, with unemployment rates near historic lows, it’s tougher than ever to win a candidate’s attention and get them to apply to your positions as they have a lot of options. Interviewers have to be prepared to sell the role and the company just as much as candidates have to sell themselves.
Below are the best ways to make your company attractive to exceptional candidates and selling your employment opportunity to them during the interview:
- Social Media Tricks– It is important to post jobs on social media platforms but this doesn’t mean you do it in the most boring way. Instead of uploading a dull and boring list of job description, post a video or photo of someone actually doing the work. When a candidate sees the work being performed, it’s easy for him to imagine himself in the role.
- Make each Job Irresistible– When you post jobs, promote the upsides of your opportunity. Think like a candidate, in addition to earning a competitive wage, what else would attract you towards this job? Few things which are just as important as money:
- Exceptional benefits
- Challenging work
- Opportunities for learning and advancement
- Convenient location
- Flexible work options
- Early or frequent performance / salary reviews
- Mentoring opportunities
- Improve Communication- Take great care of candidates and be proactive at every step of sourcing and recruiting process. Ensure it’s convenient and quick for candidates to submit an inquiry or apply to a job – especially from mobile devices. Keep them informed about timelines and next steps, from the moment they upload a resume or respond to the job posting. If you tend to remove a candidate from consideration, inform them as soon as possible. Being “left hanging” is a chief complaint among job seekers – and may drive them to post negative reviews on sites like Glassdoor.
- Be Friendly, Organised and Prepared- Hiring Manager is the only link between the company and the candidate, everything they know about the job they know from you, so put on your best smile and sell the job. An excited interviewer will transfer their passion to the candidate. Make sure you have studied the candidate’s resume and cover letter in detail to understand their motivations for putting themselves forward for the role. Try to show that just as they have been researching your company, you have spent as much time researching them, and the companies they have worked for.
- The Position- This makes the most sense but talking just about the job description can be monotonous and boring. If this is a top candidate, he/she already meets the criteria. Instead, make it compelling.
- The Company’s Potential for Growth- Take them through the company’s journey from incubation and share the vision of company’s potential for achieving growth within the marketplace. Top candidates want to be part of an achiever, so show them how your company already is a winner and will continue to be in the future.
- The Company’s Culture- Every company has its own work culture and not every candidate fits or feels comfortable working in the same. This point is often overlooked, but doing so can be a serious mistake. The candidate wants to know how they fit into the company’s culture. You must be able to communicate that to them
- The Position’s Potential for Growth- Top level candidates are always curious to know more so go beyond the position in its current form and discusses what growth potential the position offers and explain how the position ties into the company’s plans for the future.
- The Candidate’s Potential for Growth- The whole process is about the candidate, they want to know how making the leap to a new company is going to benefit them, especially in regards to the growth and overall well-being of their career. A-level candidates thrive on vision, so share that vision with them.
So pull up your socks and get inspired with the tips discussed above, sell your jobs and get the best candidates on boarded.
Pragna Solutions is always been in fore front of technological development. Helped several clients about our innovative methods of Recruiting using AI and scalable models. Contact usContact usContact us to learn more.
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by Raghu Nandhan | Aug 27, 2018 | Blog, Company Insights, Talent Acquisition
“When building the perfect team, the single most important thing is to bring the right people”
Finding the right people startups will inevitably reach the point where they need outside help to keep growing. Retaining the talent to help grow the business is a problem.
The initial problem which most startups face is finding the people suitable for the job.
Budgets are usually low for open positions in startups. Where the startup organization pays very well, there is a risk of offering too high salaries to candidates as well. As a result, they either quit sooner or their performance goes down due to stress.
- Lack of Brand Recognition
This is quite obvious because the organization is newly set up and applicants may neither be aware of the upcoming brand. To solve this problem, startups can try to build a larger brand image using free platforms, such as on social media, print media and more.
- Not knowing what you want
Being unclear about any part of the job can lead to a potentially bad hire.
With a clear idea of what you need, it will be easier to see those skills in the candidate.
- Having an unclear hiring policy
One of the most critical mistakes a company can make is failing to define its hiring policies before beginning an employee search. An unclear policy can confuse the hiring managers and candidates at best
Starting it out as a small company, most often they have a lot to compete against; big branded companies, startups, other small businesses.
The less number of resources available at hand can prevent better hiring.
The true art of recruiting is combining knowledge of the company’s unique culture so that both parties succeed and grow together.
- Challenge of Finding qualified candidates
Finding qualified candidates as dozens of applications from unqualified candidates waste a lot of time.
- Not Conducting Market Research
Most startup recruiters fail to focus on the huge talent pool of passive candidates and lose out in the process.
Candidates always look for the reputation of the company in the business. Reputation is earned with years of quality services. It’s not something to achieve overnight.
Marketing battle matters a lot in successful startup business. It’s hard for a new firm to access specialised recruiter for marketing specialists for advertising.
