Resume for Sales Know the purpose of your resume Need help in creating or updating your resume? It certainly can be a tough task because your resume is going to be reviewed by software as well as by hiring managers. This new column brings you  top resume tips for choosing a resume format, selecting a resume font, customizing your resume, using resume keywords, explaining employment gaps, and more tips for writing interview winning resumes. Try to understand that the purpose of  building your resume is to land an interview and make it as precise as possible and impress the recruiters with your profile. Business and Marketing Writing   A great resume is one that highlights your strengths and emphasizes the highs of your career. It is imperative for every professional to get his resume periodically updated to move up the corporate ladder. A resume has four sections: Personal Information. This includes your full name, city, contact number, e-mail address and social media profiles. Your personal information can appear at the top center part of the resume with a header positioned below it. Employment History. Your work history must be arranged beginning from current or most recent employer. It must indicate your designation, inclusive dates of employment and a description of your scope of responsibilities. Educational Attainment. This should also be arranged according to highest level of education attained. Details should include degree earned, inclusive dates and relevant awards or achievements. You do not have to include information from secondary education and earlier. Special Skills. This section is where you highlight core competencies and other skills you have that are relevant to the job opening. What are the key ingredients of a great resume? A sparkling profile with sufficient emphasis on your key strengths. A cover letter that guarantees a personal interview. Customized and tailor-made resumes. Designed by skilled resume writing experts. Professional formatting and layout. What should be there in a profile statement? Understand that highlighting your skills and experience in your profile is the “Catch Point” to impress your new recruiters. Financial Planning and Strategy, Marketing Concepts, Positioning, People Management, Territory Management, Sales Planning, Competitive Analysis, Understanding the Customer, Product Development, Client Relationships, Creative Services are some of the criteria that make a marketing/sales manager stand out from the crowd. Try to bring out the achievements in your career till date and who might be the better master to do it other than yourself! Q: What’s the most common resume mistake? A: Making too many general claims and using too much industry jargon that does not market the candidate. A resume is a marketing document designed to sell your skills and strengths rather than just portray a bio of the candidate. For unemployed candidates, handing out resumes should be a full-time job. The majority of mid- to senior-level positions are filled through networking, so contact absolutely everyone you know in addition to recruiters who are in a position to hire you or share...

Tactics or Strategy – Ethical Considerations Give a man a fish everyday, his appetite is sated. Teach him how to fish; you have fulfilled his appetite for an entire life time. This is strategy. To make it work, to make the impossible, possible. There is no drawn out template for success or for that matter strategy. But both of them go together when the right strategy is used at the right time and you can bang on your target. Neither the same strategy fits the bill for everybody. Your smart approach to that particular situation backed up by your knowledge and experience does the magic. It cannot be taught, it comes from within when the situation warrants for action. It is more like “Survival of the fittest”, if you want to retain your niche in this business world you act fast and think wise. Tactics: How many of you are bold enough to think differently to make a difference, to make others feel your presence. Never implement tactics which is short lived and don’t make your presence felt either by imitation or by unethical competitor criticism. That will paint a greasy picture on your firm. That is of course strategy but cheap strategy. But always be on the run to know your competitors’ weaknesses and shortcomings which will make you improve your product or service. That is acceptable business practice where competitor spying gives us an edge in terms of identifying unexploited niches of the market. Resort to  Constructive Strategies: Strategies must always be constructive and it assures success in the long run. Tactics or gimmicks will prove to be fruitful only for a short while and that is not your aim also. Will you be satisfied if you are able to sell your product or service as hot cakes only for a season! Is that going to cover your profit margin for the entire accounting year? True, strategies are always associated with making profits, boosting up the sales, for retaining the market share and maximizing the share value. But it should also make your business perennial and viable. Strategic Framework: Many of us forget that strategies are applicable in every activity of a firm that forms a compact framework which gives your business a solid foundation upon which you can build your empire of success without looking back. Right from framing your vision, mission, policies, procedures and programmes including recruitment, selection, training, evaluation and empowering your employees, strategies play their role in giving clarity and direction to the firm.  Long-Term Planning: Although strategies are meant for long term planning, a periodic review and appraisal of the company’s strategies to all the employees concerned is a must to keep them informed. Strategies are secrets but not to the employees of your organization. Strategies are born out of compulsion, a compulsion to survive in the market and have an edge over others. So they must be meticulously planned after brain storming sessions and expert consultations. Sometimes even a small idea suggested by one of your employees might become the basis for a turnkey operation. So keep your eyes and ears open and also be open minded to accept ideas even from the lowest level as they are your pillars of strength and they know the pulse of the market and people better. Strategic Action Plans: Success is not a cake walk, it has to be achieved with great hardships and the taste of success will be sweeter. Strategies are formulated in every step of your business plan, remember it is an ongoing process; you have to revitalize your strategies every now and then to be in the scene, to make...

Managing Critical Factors of HR The prerequisite for an organization to excel in all aspects of its business activities is absolute strategic management of its HR functions.Human resource management is an extensive term that covers various aspects of personnel function. This discussion is focused on three main aspects that constitute human resource management. Personnel administration Human resource development Industrial relations Personnel administration: It can be also called as the HR module where policies and programmes are laid down by the HR department for the benefit of the human resource personnel. Employment and compensation are chiefly dealt with in personnel administration. While business firms in the corporate environment are in constant demand of man power, finding the right person for the right job is always a testing task for them. Right from job analysis to HR planning, recruitment, selection, placement, induction and orientation, HR department is held accountable to define and develop these operative functions. Mere acquisition and incorporation of human resource is not adequate, the organizations have to engage themselves in empowering their employees through competent training, motivation and refining their social relations. Job Assessment: Job assessment has to be done for fixing compensation that includes wages and salary administration, incentives, bonus, fringe benefits and social security measures. The shifting business environment and consumer requirements compel the organizations to restructure and re-engineer their organizational functions. These moves can be viewed as strategic responses reflecting from all domains of an organization, namely product, marketing, manufacturing etc., where people are the centre of focus. Human resource development: This is easier said than done. Firms are trying to evolve and employ various methodologies of training to enhance the performance levels to the desired standards. Performance cannot be achieved by coercion or bureaucracy, as the work force is protected by numerous enactment of labor laws enforced by various governments. Training and development is a separate entity by itself and is a continuous process that aims at the development of the organization as a whole and also facilitates employee career planning and development. Industrial relations: The following factors have to be scrutinized by the management to maintain good personal relations with the employees. Motivation Morale Job satisfaction Communication Grievance handling Discipline procedure Quality of work life Employee participation All said and done, the organizational health can be measured by checking the effectiveness of HR management through aspects like HR audit and research that aid the firms to analyze and understand the extent to which they are efficient in utilizing human resource for the benefit of their organization. The experience of a human resource manager comes in handy at situations like these, where he has to don different roles to suit the occasion. Personnel role-advisor for top management, policy maker, counselor to employees, spokesman of the company, change analyst, liaison Welfare role-researcher, catering man, motivator Clerical role-time keeping, wages and salary administration, record maintenance, human engineering Fire fighting legal role-negotiator, trouble shooter, peace maker, problem solver, grievance handling. The management employs scientific, analytical, psychological and social techniques to build the business around human resource, who are the real value additions to the...

New Paradigms in Employee Retention What is Employee Retention: It refers to the various policies and practices which let the employees stick to an organization for a longer period of time . It refers to the ability of an organization to retain its employees. HRM Practices: A company to ground itself successfully in the chosen field of activity should adhere to sound human resource management practices, as it is firmly believed that human resource is an asset and investment in human capital paves way for comprehensive development. Many firms fail, in spite of being resourceful in terms of capital, infrastructure and technology. The reason shall be attributed to ineffective handling of human skills or misappropriation of human potential. Human resource management involves not only in recruiting and selecting the right people but also empowering them by suitable training to enhance their technical skills and expertise to perform tasks. The Purpose of Training: Training ultimately aims at converting theorists to performers and orients itself towards accomplishing the enterprise objectives. Big corporate companies concentrate on talent acquisition from the pool of fresh graduates and experienced hands in the IT industry as well. They create a lively corporate atmosphere with “an intelligence network” contributing to the success of the organization. Recruitment and Selection: If you have a feeling that, recruitment and selection are mere procedures to be followed for the sake of selection of human resource, kindly change that notion. These are the crucial steps which determine the fate of your organization. People from different disciplines form a team to achieve the goals and objectives of your organization. Leading a group with such diversity is a feat in itself. Selecting knowledge workers whom you believe will achieve your corporate mission and devising the human resource practices in accordance with their work-life balance will yield great results. Training Programmes: Training programs are developed for different spheres of activity by experienced trainers under the guidance of the top management. Proper training to the trainees ensures maximum work done in minimum time. Training not only makes individuals more informative and knowledgeable but also action buffs. Learning is a key process in training that brings about the desired change in behavior. Corporate companies are also concerned about the career prospects of employees working for them, as they are very well aware of the fact that providing lateral and vertical growth prospects for their workers is the only possible way to retain them. Another way for employee retention is to offer compensation on par or higher than industry standards and periodic review of their pay or compensation in accordance with the performance standards. This method of evaluation is suitable only for companies where workers are highly self motivated and have the capability to understand what it takes to reach the next level in their career ladder. Flexi-Timings: Flexibility is introduced in work life by some of the big corporates who try to visualize the practical problems faced by their employees, particularly women, who come to work. They offer “flexi-timings” in work and support by running “crèche” to nurture new borns. It has been proved that a small siesta after lunch improves the brain activity. The HR policies formulated by the management must encompass all the elements needed for a holistic vision, mission and business growth. This can be made possible by maximizing the efficiency of human capital that adds value to the organization. Note: Companies will also continue to remain generous with pay packages but the big change will be that they will invest a lot more in training and development. “Acquiring talent is much more expensive than grooming...

Evolution and Growth of Human Resource Management It is very interesting to trace out the evolution and growth of Human Resource Management. People – The Principal Resource The principal resource of any organization is people and managing people is the most important and challenging aspect of an organization. What we call human resource management today, dates back to 1800 b.c.,which is evident from the inscriptions of Babylonian code of Hammurabi and Kautilya’s Arthasashtra, which explains in detail the importance of selection, incentives, performance evaluation, quality of a manager and wage rates. So,we understand that the concept of managing people has existed even in the previous eras through ancient literature and philosophy. India, China and Greece have been the origin points of human resource management concepts. Evolution of Human Resource Management Industrial Revolution Till, 1930’s, there was no such department called “personnel management” that was considered necessary to cater to the needs and welfare of the labor society. The factory manager was acting as a link between the workers and the management, and most of the time he had to comply with the rules of the management to satisfy them, even if it were against the welfare of the workers. Also proper attention was not given to areas like, worker safety, security and living conditions. Industrial revolution saw mass exodus of workers to urban areas in search of jobs. Need for Employment Department Application of science and technology in production made the rich owners even richer; the poor workers were not paid adequately and their life became miserable. Since the owners lost direct contact with the employees, managers came into the picture to take over control of production and administration. Machines ruled the industry and importance of labor got reduced. This condition existed for sometime until the advent of new and improved management concepts by people like F.W.Taylor who is considered to be the father of scientific management and B.F.Goodrich who was instrumental in forming the “employment department” which can be considered the fore runner of present human resource department. Introduction of Scientific Management Scientific methods were introduced to make the workers perform the job with ease and perfection. It also saved enormous time and reduced the monotony of work. job-designs, job-specification, training and development and human relations were given due importance and the owners slowly started realizing the importance of labor. Through 1940’s to 1970’s behavioral approach was applied to professional management, the major architects being Abraham Maslow, Herzberg and Douglas McGregor. This approach suggested managers to modify their leadership styles to suit the type of followers and motivate the workers. Consequences of World War I and II World War I and II also had profound influence on Human resource development. The concepts of role playing, improved training methods, supervision and group discussions came into the fray. The advent of labor unions also established a clear pathway for the workers to claim their rights, ably supported by the labor laws enacted by various governments. International labor organization was formed in 1919 which created sensation in the worker community all over the world. All said and done, empowerment of workers has been achieved only in developed nations where “job security” is no more a great concern because job opportunities are more. But in unorganized and small sectors, employers continue to exploit workers because “supply” is more than “demand”. The responsibility to develop and empower the employees solely lies on the shoulders of human resource department. It should try to address the problems of workers to the management and amicably settle issues relating to wages, welfare, safety and security. → Objectives and Functions of...