CellStrat - Redefining Mobile and Digital Strategy

I’m excited to announce that CellStrat, the research and analysis startup focusing on Internet & Mobile media in india, has joined hands with us, SutraHR (as Media Partner) to present the Digital Media Conclave (Mumbai) on 24th September at The Residence Hotel & Convention Centre in Powai, Mumbai. The conference theme is “Digital and Social Media Strategy”.

We met Vishal Singhal, the VP Marketing at CellStrat, in our new office a couple of weeks ago to discuss the details about the event. We are very excited about our association as a Media Partner with CellStrat for this event.

Without beating around the bush about the stories behind our parnership, let me come straight to “real” exciting points - The Speakers!

• Arvind Mohan, Group Chief Strategy Officer, Rediffusion Y&R
• Uday Sodhi, CEO - New Media, Balaji Telefilms Ltd
• Mahesh Narayanan, Country Manager - Business Development, Google India
• Rishi Khiani, CEO - Times Internet Ltd
• Rama Sadasivan, Director - Digital Business Development, Dow Jones India
• Maya Hari, Director - Digital, Conde Nast Digital India
• Rajeev Dhal, Country Head, J9 Ventures (Dainik Jagran)
• Sharat Dhall, Managing Director - India, TripAdvisor
• Mohit Gundecha, Head-India Operations & Director-Business Development, Mig33
• Mahesh Murthy, Founder, Pinstorm and Managing Partner, Seedfund
• Harish Gandhi, Executive Director, Canaan Partners
• Rahul Chandra, Director, Helion Venture Partners
• and of course, Vishal (CMO @ CellStrat) will also be sharing his 2 cents with us all

CellStrat - Digital Media Conclave September 2010 (Mumbai)

The registration fees for this event are pretty reasonable, and there are amazing discounts for early birds, students, etc.

• Individual Registration: Rs 2000 ($40) per person
• Early Registration (25% discount until 31st Aug): Rs 1500 ($30) per person
• Student Registration: Rs 1250 ($25) per person
• 3 or more Attendees from the same Firm: 25% disc (Rs 1500 per person)

For registrations, inquiries, or any other details regarding this event, you can get in touch with Vishal here or directly register for the event here.

See you all on the 24th September @ “CellStrat’s Digital Media Conclave (Mumbai)“!

Being a talent acquisition (read: recruitment) company, we have learned a lot about the art of scheduling interviews. We thought why not share this knowledge and prepare you for one of the most difficult aspects in the recruitment process.

This article is also very important for SutraLite customers, who have opted for the Standard Plan.

1. When you first call a candidate always introduce yourself and the company you represent. Immediately after the introduction, mention that “this call is regarding a job opportunity” so that s/he doesn’t disconnect the call assuming it’s a telemarketing one.
   1. In case you’re calling after the candidate has applied for your job, you need to still follow point 1.
   2. If you’re calling the candidate who’s replied to a mail sent by SutraLite, you would still need to follow point 1.
   3. Note: One should do this because candidates often apply for jobs without reading the job description thoroughly. They would hardly remember what you’re talking about.
2. Make it very clear that you’re a company and not an HR/Recruitment Consultancy. Though you/I might not consider this very important, it has proven to make a difference in the mind of the candidate. Some candidates don’t value a consultants’ call as much as a direct call from the company.
3. Don’t hold back in saying that you’ve liked their profile and are interested to know more about them. This increases their interest levels and they will be more forthcoming in explaining more about themselves and share info with sincerity.
4. If needed, do mention aspects like weekly offs, work timings, freebies, etc. and if you’re weekly offs/work timings are not very attractive you can always say “we can talk about it when we meet”, because you might not mind being flexible for the right candidate.
5. Some job seekers (seasoned ones, especially) are apprehensive of interviews without knowing the salary range a company can offer. They would hint/directly ask “I am drawing XX, I can come for the interview if you can offer XX+”. Don’t get annoyed and explain that the salary aspects can be touched upon only after meeting. You can always say, “We can offer more than that also, as long as we’re convinced the candidate is good enough”. If the candidate is very rigid and acting stuck-up on the salary bit, don’t hesitate to drop them off your list.
6. If you’re alright with considering candidates which live slightly far from your office, you must ensure that you provide more than enough info about ways to reach your office. Send an email with a google maps link, or a diagram route, Bus no. routes, Rickshaw/Taxi fare, etc. An SMS with the address and landmark info is also very helpful. Making standard templates of this would make it easier for you as well.
7. Some candidates might play tough and act pricey when discussing date/time/venue aspects. Don’t lose your cool or let your ego come in the way here. Just calmly handle the situation, and use turn the conversation in your favour. Whether it’s you or someone from your office who’s going to schedule interviews – ensure the person is very good at negotiation skills.
8. Last but not the least, the followup calls
   1. 1^st call is as per the above points, when you discuss the possible date/time for the interview
   2. 2^nd call is 1 day before the interview – perhaps in the evening before the end of day
   3. 3^rd call is an hour or two before the actual time of the interview

You might think 3 calls are too much, but I can bet that sometimes even 3 are not enough.

If the call doesn’t go too well even when you’re simply trying to schedule his/her interview, don’t bother to follow up. And if it goes well, don’t miss the follow ups because he might just be your ideal candidate.

Happy interview scheduling!

PS: Credits to Kratika from SutraLite team, for taking the initiative and contributing to this article.

Here’s a good read. We found this article very relevant and interesting for our readers, and thought might as well publish it here. It’s re-published from Nandini’s blog (http://nandini.madhouse.in).

@Nandini: thanks for allowing us to re-publish your article here.

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There was a recent discussion on MVP gang about a particular “wrong-hire” which prompted me to write this longish experience-based note. For more on the discussion Robin of ReachTax has a blog post off it here.

Do not sell or glorify your start-up to the candidate. Be matter of fact, undersell the growth opportunity to the candidate. It may sound a little crazy for a tip, but in my experience, initial employees for a start-up should join the team for the work the start-up does and believe in the concept and the founding team. Joining a start-up for its “The Thing To Do”; For a great salary package, to help their resumes’ or to make their application to MBA look better are all not the right reasons from the start-up’s perspective.
1. Be Candid and Straight Forward in explaining the Job Description. List out the various things that the person will have to do when hired. Be explicit in listing out obvious things. When I hired for Madhouse in the initial days – we had a small 600 Sq Ft Basement Office – and we insisted that we interview candidates at our little basement office and explained to them what they had to do. “The What” had everything from – Major Responsibilities, Back-up functions and other things one would do as being a part of the team. If i were hiring a customer care person, for example – his/ her core responsibility was to answer request calls, make intelligent movie recommendations, confirm order and send it out for processing. Their back-up functions were – Doing sales calls, packing DVDs. The other things expected were – opening of the office if they were the first ones to come, closing the office if they were the last to leave (We had a solid iron shutter at the entrance), helping in promotions – if necessary – which meant participating in roadshows and interacting with potential customers at Malls and Promo stalls. We explained most of these and gave them real life examples of things to display we mean what we say. If you have to multi-task and do anything that’s required for the start-up or for the benefit of the customer, we all do it – that message was conveyed strongly.
We’d have written Job Descriptions. These JDs not only helped us get clarity on what was expected from the position we were hiring but most importantly, “set expectations right” at the candidates end. The JD would have main responsibilities and secondary responsibilities – listed as one line items. It would also have the main purpose of the position which were usually linked to key items like – customer acquisition and customer service.
Do a trial. In a start-up scenario, one wrong hire would cost us dearly. I’ve made a few wrong hiring decisions – this was not just a bad thing for my start-up, but was a bad  thing for the candidate too. There is no point trying to make the hire work to make it a good hire or convince yourself that its a good hire. Similarly, the candidate will be trying hard to ensure to himself and you that he’s a worthy candidate. This is a pain for the person as well as a loss for the start-up as each day does count and no point investing too much time in damage control or maintenance. As well invest that time in increasing value for customers and productively. And so, a trail period has always helped us. We infact follow it to this day @ MVP and “live-in” with companies before we official induct them as part of our portfolio. This trail period will help set expectations at both ends, get to know the candidate and him/her, the start-up culture better. So, at the end of the trial even if we have to let go of the candidate or the candidate chooses not to continue – it’s fair and not ugly. Only, ensure that the trial period test the candidates in various situations to find out how he performs. This helps evaluate not just his domain expertise and capability; but also his attitude, capacity to stretch & passion toward the start-up.
Another key aspect is to identify a wrong hire quickly and made a fast decision to let go! The longer you postpone a firing decision, the more painful it will get. Be logical and make a fast decision – all of us are humans and we learn out of our mistakes – so acknowledge it and rectify it. By making a fast firing decision -you not only do you and your start-up a favor, you will also be doing the candidate a favor! And ya, the first firing act will be the most painful
Once the person is in the team, treat them well, make them a part of the group and shower them with care, training and feedback helping him perform!
Finally, lead by example! If you expect someone to do an odd job that is typically not expected from that position outside of this startup – then, to make them comfortable and get on to doing it – the best motivation is to exhibit acts that display the founding team, CXOs doing similar things with ease. At Madhouse, Sameer and I sat on the worst possible seats giving the new ones to new hires. Soon we found that, team mates were happily sitting on a not so good chair, if they had to and do work without complaining! Their funda was, if Nandini and Sameer can we will too.

Longish thoughts, but hope it helps. Of course, these are based on my startup experiences in India, where i have seen unprofessional behavior exhibited by some experienced, top management guys; as well as experienced amazing professional behavior displayed by entry-level candidates!

New Business, SutraLite
A unique low cost recruitment service that aims to provide unmatchable “value for money” solutions to any cost cautious company or startup. It’s a different concept, and from the research we’ve carried out it’s definitely something not tried before in India. SutraLite will take care of posting your job on various paid and free internet resources, accept job applications on your behalf, and then filter them before forwarding the relevant ones to you.

While we take care of this time consuming cumbersome part of your recruitment work, you can concentrate on building your business and interviewing only those candidates who have passed through our intelligent human-filters.

New Office!
For this, we’d simply like the pictures to tell the story. We’re having a blast at the new office, which is a refreshing change from our old one. What’s more, it’s something we definitely enjoy showing off! Check out the pics below.

This is where Sutra Team sits currently

This is where we storm our brains

This is where our new teammates will laze, I mean work (the pantry's behind that glass)

New Plans
Besides, establishing our franchise network, we’re planning to expand multifold and double our teamsize this month from 7 to 14. Of course, hiring shouldn’t be problem. Ahem.

With this objective in mind, we’re looking for entrepreneurial people who’d like to join us in this endeavour. I have provided as much details as possible through this post. Please read on…

A summary of what’s Sutra: We’re a tech oriented people services startup which provides recruitment solutions to Startups and Emerging new-age media, tech, digital and mobile VAS companies from all over India. Through our 2 businesses, SutraHR.com and SutraJobs.com, we’re already catering to hundreds of Startups and Emerging Companies since the time of inception in late 2007.

TV Coverage: We were recently featured twice on ETNow’s “starting up” program as the ideal recruitment service for startups and emerging companies in India.
Company coverage and Waqar’s interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QWg5GCYees
Expert View on Startup Hiring and Jay’s interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoGLajXadzk

Who we are: We’re a dedicated team of energetic and ambitious young professionals from the new-age media and tech industry. We boast of some really enterprising, knowledgeable and creative people in our team, with most of us having varied, yet valuable, background and experiences.

Who we’re looking for:
- an enterprising individual who wants to be a part of a startup like ours.
- someone with direct or indirect recruitment/HR experience in any industry, preferably web/mobile
- even if you don’t have any recruitment/HR experience it’s alright, as long as you have the fire, passion and the will to make a mark.

What you can expect
- A revenue share of 50 to 60%
- Ready database of the new-age media/digital/tech/mobile industry’s entire professional directory
- Full access to job portals (for free)
- Training and Team Hiring Assistance
- Total process and systems support, and complete assistance in operational setup
- Total marketing, branding and day to day support
- Business from our existing clients
- Business development efforts from our end, over above your own
- Negligible cost investments in return for all above

This is not a salaried job but a business partnership based on sharing revenues.

Interested parties can get in touch with me directly by mailing to jay(at)sutrahr.com with your take on this. In your application email, please give us your thoughts on this opportunity, and reasons why you’re trying this out.

Watch it and leave your comments.

• It is located in the heart of suburbs, Andheri-lokhandwala area, making it accessible via Bus Depot (3 mins), Jogeshwari/Andheri Stn (15 mins), Airport (30 mins).
• The building houses companies like Id8labs, Reliance Big Entertainment, few Filmi studios/offices AND of course, Sutra Services.
• Walking distance surroundings include malls (Mega, Infinity & Citi), best restaurants (close to 30 of them), and corporate offices.
• The office is on the 6th floor of a commercial building, and consists of:

The professionally designed ready-to-use office features:
1) Waiting area
2) Fully furnished, wooden-floored conference room with huge whiteboard
3) Fully functional Pantry with fridge, microwave, water cooler, sink, etc.
4) High speed wireless internet connectivity
5) Daily office cleaning services
5) Centralized AC
6) Free recruitment consulting (1 position) and startup advice with tea & coffee

Each workstation consists of:
1) A Roomy Desk
2) 1 small and 1 big drawer
3) 1 CPU cabinet
4) 1 spot light
5) 4 plug points with network switch for internet (wifi also available)
6) 1 softboard
7) 1 comfortable adjustable chair

Each seat will cost Rs.5000 per month (incl of all above features). Minimum of 3 months rent in advance and 1 month rent as deposit, both are refundable if unused on adequate notice.

You can rent out minimum 1 or maximum 5 workstations.

The above facility is ideal for startup companies based outside mumbai who want to start a small regional office consisting of 1-5 people or local startups having 1-5 member team.

Hurry! Limited seats.

For starters, here are a couple of pictures of the building.

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All those spam mails and millions of people cribbing on forums were not lying after all. I always thought it was a marketing scam to draw attention to something as trivial as fake watches so that we don’t pay attention to the bigger issues. But here it was, the seven digit figure glaring at me, mocking me. While I sat there, thinking of myriad different things, I had an epiphany.

Its brilliant how all these watches look as good as the real one. They work like them, look like them and even have the same flamboyance. Some times they are shinier and look better than the real thing. It is really hard figuring out which one is fake and which the original. But, that’s what we do all the while, we make a choice, we sort the good from the fake.

Hiring an employee is no different. There are fakes from the genuine, the paupers from the royal, and as Sameer (Morpheus Venture) put it, “the mediocre from the exuberant”.

You will always have people who splash the same qualities of a stallion. They flow free but are limited in their speeds, they show the same wild side but have severely limited powers. These are people who could have been great, could possibly have been the real hero but are too busy just acting like one.

If you look closely, everyone has this hero we want to be like, but trying to be like some hero is where we screw up. Like Kurt Cobain said “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are” All of us have these unique powers that no other hero has, its all about finding these and being the hero others would want to be.

You might have worked with fake heroes OR probably your colleagues are working with one, whatever may be the case, you need to recognize who is a hero and who is trying to be one.

There are traits that distinguish a real hero from a fake. Traits that you would get in any super hero movie, all those things they have always glorified except that in the real world, they are crass. Charm and charisma when it comes down from the celluloid, takes some dirt from our societies and seeps into people after getting a little corrupt. So, your hero might not be the most charming or the most helpful guy in office, but the guy who believes in his actions and stands by them. While the fakes fade away with time, the heroes are the ones who make the future of your organization.

Human traits have always perplexed me and there is no clear guideline for sorting out the fakes and helping them become real heroes. Its all very subjective and unnatural, very much like nature itself.

I will leave you guys to come up with a method of your own. You can make a sheet to list out traits that you would want an ideal employee to have. Also, you can make a list of people in your office, and sort them into heroes OR fakes. I am sure, a little bit of reasoning will tell you what I have been trying to say in the last 661 words.

We’re excited about these new ventures because like Sameer Guglani says, there are a lot of unsolved problems in India which are like untapped market opportunities, and all of us in the MVP gang are trying to solve them. For more details on this, click here.

Anyway, we’re going to celebrate this tonight… bring out the beer, oops, i mean Perrier!

From this figure I was really interested in the number of job sites in India, so I contacted Naukri.com on twitter and had to wait for a week to get the numbers. What came made the wait completely worthwhile. A long list of job sites - not everything, but the most helpful list I could had ever got.The list of jobsites did not have some of the new sites like ours who have jumped onto the hiring scene in India but it was still good to get an estimate. All this got me interested to come out with my own little market survey. I have only taken assumptions and have neglected factors like digital media out reach and literacy and willingness to go online and search for a job.

Also, though this survey might come across as very amateurish, it does serve one purpose - it makes for a good read

So, to start with - India holds 1 billion souls with a population density of 324 persons per square kilometer. There are 31.7% people in the age group of 0-14 years, 63.5% in the age group of 15-64 years and 4.8% 65 years and above.

Now, if we consider only people in the age group of 15-64 look for jobs online and that too not all of them. So, that leaves us with 349,785,804 males and 326,289,402 females. Now, considering the social factor, I assume only 2% of the females will ever be online to look for a job and only 10% of the given male population. Which is:

349,785,804/10=3,49,78,580 males, and

326,289,402/20=1,63,14,000 females

So, this gives us approximately 5 crore people who would come visit job sites. A very inflated figure but good enough for this article.

As we all know that the space is dominated by major players like Naukri, Monster, Times etc:Most of the job sites that cater to similar companies have similar jobs. Apart from job sites, the positions are also handled by offline consultants and agents who work like mercenaries.

So, from the 156 job sites that we have; catering to a wide spectrum ranging from offshore jobs to travel and cruise jobs; they share the 5 crore people between them. Close to 200 sites with 5 major players controlling majority of the market stake between them is an estuary for me - full of food

What I am pointing at is that the market is big enough to absorb the number of people there are and there is place for more players - the only thing we need is more jobs. If there were more companies coming up in different sectors, then there would be job sites concentrated to these different sectors and the growth of the hiring industry will be directly proportional to the growth of the sector and in turn the economy.

A very good example is the VAS sector that took off in India big time. A lot of job positions opened up and consequently a lot of job sites filling these positions. From the information I have accumulated, these sites are doing as well as the sector.

Brave people, who make smart companies doing things that are different are the need of the hour.

The number is definitely more than the 5 crores deduced above and the chance to make moolah is exactly the same. There have been many surveys telling us that the online recruitment space is crowded and others preaching just the opposite. I say, if you can run a job site that concentrates on one sector and have focus, then there is place for a lot of Naukri, Times and Monsters in India even today.