My 5th Wedding Anniversary

Today is my fifth wedding anniversary.  Its hard to believe that five years has  passed since our marriage.  Time runs fast 🙂

As I write this post, I am stuck with Writers block. I wanted to write something, but don’t know what to write.  I thought  writing a blog post a day is easy, but when it comes to reality, its hard.  I am not going to let this stop me from writing.  To overcome this writers block,  I have to write more.  Yes, the more I write, the more ideas I am going to get.

Who is my role model…

Sometimes questions like this pop-up on my mind.  When the questions like this come up: I either think about it for a while and forget it or never think of it. This question is on my mind for past couple of days and so, I thought I will write on it.

Honestly, I dont have any role models (which I know is very bad).  But however, I get inspirtation from many and here are a few

 Bill Gates
 Steve Jobs
 Paul Graham
 Joel Spolsky
 Jeff Atwood
 Martin Fowler
 Craig Larman
 Robert C. Martin
 Scott W Ambler
 Ravi Mohan
 Rajesh Babu
 Charles Petzold
 Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo
 Narayana Murthy
 Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala
 etc.,

All the above are clear winners / achievers in their fields. When I get to read about them through blogs, magazines etc; I would be inspiried, but this inspiration is short lived. For the inspiration to be long lived, I think I should have a role model; who is a guru/expert in the field  I am into and look at his/her achivements and try to achive them. The biggest problem here is to choose the right role model. I will update once I have one.

So, who is your role model?

Where I want to be vs Where I am..

Setting goals on an occasions like birthdays, new year etc., is very easy. I have done this many times.  Aspiring goals, which by end of a time frame should take me to new heights.  But following an action plan to achieve those goals is bit difficult and this is where many people fail.  The same is true in my case as well.  I have many goals – read more books, write more software, find job in good company, write more  etc.  But, I have failed in following my action plans.  The result, time waits for none and I find myself in the same state where I was while setting those goals.  During this time of the year, I feel bit low and bad on not following my action plans.

And at the end of the day, worrying about not doing things is not going to take me to places where I want to be.  I have to follow my action plans. At least, by the end of the year I should achieve some of my goals I set in the beginning of the year.  I will have something more to update  by the end of the year…..

Walkin interviews and their Effectiveness

Off late there are a few Walk in interviews going  on in the city.  For the past two days,  I was thinking how effective it would be.  This post is about comparing the Normal interview process and the walk-interview process and talk about their effectiveness

Normal Interview process

1. Candidate gets to know about a job opening in the company through his friends working in that company / news paper ad/ job sites etc.
2. Candidate sends his resume to the HR.
3. HR sends the resume to the interviewer/panel for first round for screening.
4. Interviewer/panel either rejects  or asks the HR to schedule the interview with the candidate
5. Interview is conducted

Effectiveness

1. Everything is planned.
2. Interviewer goes through the resume before going for the interview
3. Weed out the unfit resume before calling the candidate for interview
4. Better chances of getting good candidates
5. HR sees to that an interviewer is not overloaded with too many interviews in a day.  This is very important because the state of the Interviewer’s mind is very important during the interview.

Walkin Interview process

1. Candidates gets to know about the job opening through news paper ads / chain mails generally of type – Walk-in with your resume and walk out with a job
2. Candidates come with their copies of resumes to the company.
3. The company collects the resume and asks the candidate to wait.  I have heard of instances of  candidate waiting for 4-5 hours.
4. Interviewer gets to see the candidate’s resume for the first time.  He would have been advised not to spend more time with the candidate. So, the interviewers in walk in interview have a general set  of questions to be asked. They ask the questions from their list, if the candidate fails to answer one / two from their standard questions, they candidate  is rejected.
5. The time taken for the interview would range for 10 mins to 20 mins.

Effectiveness

1. Many a  times interviewer doesn’t have time to go through the interview
2. After a couple of interviews, the interviewer either gets tired
3. Resumes are not screened / most of the time doesn’t get read.
4. Experienced and skilled candidates don’t turn up for the walk in interviews
5. You get to see a lot of people turning out for this interview , but the hit ratio would normally be low
6. Interviewer is overloaded.

There is another kind of interview – Job fairs.  They are good to get the entry level graduates but not the experienced.

Does anyone have experience to share on the interview process.