You can over­come fear and anx­i­ety

You can’t over­come any­thing un­til you ac­tu­ally look at what it is. You can’t over­come your fear un­til you know what it is you’re afraid of, or why you’re afraid. What most of us are scared of, at the deep­est level, is death, ex­tinc­tion. This is pure Dar­win­ism. Our core in­stinct is to sur­vive. This is true for a mos­quito, an earth­worm, a hu­man be­ing. With most things we are afraid of, let us pic­ture them tak­ing place and ask our­selves, ‘Then what?’ In­vari­ably, our an­swer is, ‘I will die.’

It may not al­ways be about death of the phys­i­cal body. We’re also afraid of things such as hu­mil­i­a­tion. If we in­tro­spect about why we are so afraid of be­ing em­bar­rassed, we learn that be­ing deeply hu­mil­i­ated ac­tu­ally feels like we have ceased to ex­ist. Not on a phys­i­cal level, of course, but on a deep, emo­tional level.

On a psy­cho­log­i­cal, spir­i­tual level, we are con­stantly judg­ing our­selves based on how peo­ple re­spond. We are con­stantly read­just­ing our sense of self based on how peo­ple look at us. Slowly, you re­alise that the ul­ti­mate even­tu­al­ity we are afraid of, through fear of fail­ure or hu­mil­i­a­tion, is: ‘I will dis­solve.’ On a very deep level we be­lieve that if peo­ple don’t love us and ac­knowl­edge us, we don’t ex­ist.

Think about the new-age ‘self­ie’ ob­ses­sion. Psy­cho­log­i­cally, it is fas­ci­nat­ing. We don’t just take pic­tures and keep them. No. We go ahead and post them on so­cial me­dia. If no­body likes or com­ments on the pic­ture, in our heart of hearts, we feel we don’t ex­ist. We keep post­ing to re­mind peo­ple, ‘Hey, i ex­ist.’ The more re­sponses i get, the more i ex­ist; the fewer i get, the less i ex­ist.

This is the root of a lot that ails us. When we talk about over­com­ing fear, we have to first break this myth. Mak­ing a fool of our­selves does not oblit­er­ate our ex­is­tence. We have to de­velop courage to take risks, be­cause our aware­ness of our ex­is­tence is no longer de­pen­dent on how peo­ple look at us or re­spond to us. I have to ground my aware­ness in my Self. I have to know who i am, so that re­gard­less of whether you think i’m the biggest fool who has ever walked the face of the earth or whether you think i’m the great­est per­son you have ever met, it does­n’t change how i feel about my­self. That’s the only way to over­come the fear.

The other side to it is to recog­nise that the great­est tragedy is not fail­ing, but never step­ping up to grab the op­por­tu­ni­ties in your life. The great­est tragedy is look­ing back on your life and know­ing you were afraid you were go­ing to fail and peo­ple would laugh at you. That’s the tragedy, that’s some­thing to be afraid of. We have this in­cred­i­ble gift, this in­cred­i­ble life, all these mo­ments brim­ming with po­ten­tial, and it is tragic if we don’t use them.

A beau­ti­ful line in the prayers that we chant here every morn­ing at Par­marth Nike­tan says, ‘Tu akele nahin pyare, Ram tere sath mein’ – You’re not alone, dear one, God is with you. If we can live know­ing that we’re re­ally in the Moth­er’s arms, that we’re be­ing car­ried by God, if we can al­low that faith to take over, it will re­place the fear in our life.

Source: TOI: The Speaking Tree 30 Nov 2019 

How to design an effective campus hiring strategy

Here are some major ways in which HR leaders can design an effective and scalable campus hiring strategy within their respective organizations.

An effective and scalable campus strategy is at the heart of hiring new and talented candidates who possess new-age skills. According to research conducted by Mercer-Mettl, about 74 percent organizations today reported that talent acquisition is still a challenge for them. In 2019, 67 percent organizations said campus hiring is the best channel to source talent.

But companies face a number of road blocks in the campus hiring process. There is a three-part challenge that companies have to navigate – each visit to a campus for a pre-placement talk or to screen candidates requires aligning leadership schedules, navigating logistics and investing time, one campus at a time. In addition to that, companies spend time conducting structured interview and shortlisting candidates. 

In this age of intense competition for highly-skilled talent, HR and business leaders are grappling with the challenge of creating an effective hiring strategy that would also be suitable for the long-term in a sustainable way. In order to optimize their time and effort, leaders need to know which campuses to target and how.

During a People Matters & Mercer-Mettl Webcast on “Getting the most out of your campus hiring programs: Access candidate fit with technology,” Siddhartha Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, Mercer-Mettl, and Vachaspati Saxena, Head Talent Acquisition, General Electrics discussed the ways in which TA leaders can formulate a campus hiring tactic that would be based on four core pillars that can make or break the campus hiring strategy. 

The first steps

“While hiring laterally can help filling the positions faster, campus is really where the organizations get built,” said Vachaspati Saxena, Head Talent Acquisition, General Electrics Technology Center. Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer-Mettl kickstarted the discussion by noting that the fundamental question that organizations must answer is whether they need fresh talent and for what purpose. 

Understanding which competencies you are hiring for can then determine as to which campuses you want to go to, Gupta added, addressing the HR leaders. 

The four pillars include: 

Building campus intelligence 

Once HR leaders have identified the job roles they are looking to fill and understood the competencies and skills they are looking for, the next step is to build campus intelligence. 

The four Ws can help HR leaders in understanding whether they are ready to go on a selection campaign to a particular campus. 

The four Ws include: Which institute to shortlist, when to approach, whom to hire, and what  to offer. If either of the four Ws is unclear, then the start of the campus hiring season will be dicey and the goal of filling positions with capable, reliable, and dedicated employees would not be possible to achieve. 

Depending on the competencies a particular TA team is looking for, they can decide which campuses to go to, approach the campuses at the right time and keep in mind the budget set aside for the campus recruits. 

“The more campus participation you go through over the years, you understand what job roles you need to hire for. You also get a good heat map of where the quality candidates are and then understand what you need to do in order to appeal to them,” Gupta said. 

Needs of the modern workforce 

The next step is getting an understanding of what the new generation of employees is expecting out of their first workplace. It goes well beyond just having a great salary. More often than not, the top-quality candidates are attracted towards a company if they believe in the mission and vision of the firm and feel that they are going to be working towards a higher purpose, they are more likely to be more dedicated and invested in the company. 

“The overall proposition in terms of the kind of work that they are doing and how they can contribute to the society and the world at large is crucial,” added Saxena.

Pre-placement engagement 

Going to campuses prior to the placement days can help companies get an understanding about the campus dynamics and even appeal to the potential candidates well before the placement days. That’s when firms have the opportunity to build their employer brand and proposition, Gupta added. 

Having a relationship with the students who are the potential talent pool, prior to entering the campus, and building continuous relationships on campus is the key to keep candidates engaged. 

“Most companies are investing much earlier than the placement week. Asking us to help them tell a story on campus,” Gupta said, adding that designing a dedicated pre-placement week messaging campaign can go a long way in not only hiring the right cultural fit but also help build the employer brand. 

For companies such as GE, leveraging the brand name in the right way becomes crucial. If a startup is targeting the most talented graduates coming out of tech and business college campuses, then they would need to develop an employer brand message that resonates with the millennials well before the placement week begins. 

Screening the candidates with the right Assessment Tools

Knowing which candidates would make it to the next round of interviews is the next most important step. And, that’s where leveraging the right technology and assessment tools comes into the picture. Most organizations today are moving away from the rigorous tests that are designed with the principle of eliminating those candidates who might not be good test-takers and replacing the system with a Selection Strategy which takes into account factors such as hiring for the right culture fit in addition to the technical competencies. 

In addition to the technical know-how, especially for the roles related to AI, data analytics, machine learning, etc, softer skills such as the will to work towards solving a problem and finding the solutions by working collaboratively are also valuable, said Gupta. The right assessment tools help you screen for all such behavioral skills as well. said. 

Remote proctoring tools can drastically reduce the time and effort that companies put into testing candidates. It can not only test the students at a time that they are best prepared, AI-based technology can analyze the face of the person to avoid discrepancy. Companies are also innovating with their assessments from hackathons, case study competitions (Like Amazon Ace Challenge –add link) to engage candidates, and shortlist to shortlist the right candidates who are interested in joining the company.  

Conducting effective interviews 

India Inc. relies on interviews to identify the right candidates. However, there is no clear standardization of interviews even within the same organization. Having a clear and precise process for the way in which interviews are conducted, or rather, the parameters by which TA leaders can assess whether a particular candidate is suitable for a particular job role can help in conducting effective interviews that are transparent in nature and also scalable throughout the organization. 

Final steps

Campuses are a repository of new-age skills and the way to tap into this talent pool is to be honest about the company’s vision, keeping an open-door policy, and inculcating the culture of failing fast and learning faster. 

“Be honest about what you are trying to achieve, give them a platform where they can achieve what they want to achieve,” said Gupta. “You need to be there to tell them that it is okay to fail--fail quickly, recoup, and attempt again.” 

Source: People matters

How the Value of Educational Credentials Is and Isn’t Changing

The first year after the Great Recession, 2010, marked the historical peak of college and university enrollment in the United States. In the decade since, a popular narrative has emerged that the value of a college degree is rapidly declining. As a new wave of well-capitalized educational technology companies arrived on the scene — including massive open online courses (MOOCs) — it became popular to prognosticate about the disruption of American higher education. Badges earned online would challenge and replace traditional diplomas. Renowned business theorist Clayton Christensen forecasted that half of all colleges may be in bankruptcy within 15 years. Others said the degree was “doomed.”

A revolution in credentialing appeared underway, with colleges’ core product — the traditional degree — about to be swept aside by digital substitutes and disruptive start-up companies. Even more recently, this narrative has been amplified by reports that certain blue-chip companies such as IBM, Apple, and a number of others no longer “require” degrees for certain positions.

Yet by many measures, the value of a traditional degree today is as strong as ever in the job market. Innovation in degree delivery is occurring, but it is often being led by traditional, incumbent institutions, often in partnership with technology firms.

In a national survey of employers that we at Northeastern University recently conducted, a strong majority of HR leaders said that the value of educational credentials in hiring has either increased (48%) or held steady (29%) over the last five years. And, despite some high-profile employers relaxing their baseline educational requirements in a historically tight job market, more than half of all job openings nationwide over the last year preferred at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the tens of millions of job postings tracked by labor market data firm Burning Glass Technologies. This share has been consistent over the last five years. Additionally, the substantial wage premium that employers pay college degree holders remains at historically all-time high levels, according to recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York research. Businesses are continuing to value degrees and reward more educated workers.

Much of this is due to the increase in skills demands in the modern knowledge economy. In our survey, 64% of employers agreed that the need for continuous lifelong learning will demand higher levels of education and more credentials. This is spurring a boom in post-baccalaureate learning, in particular. For example, even before they turn 30, nearly 1-in-10 American adults now earn an advanced degree — double the proportion in 1995.

In a market that continues to prioritize formal educational credentials, the once free-of-charge MOOC upstarts have found a business model — and today it is squarely focused on online degrees and other fee-based educational credentials. MOOC platforms such as Coursera and EdX have transitioned to focus on the thriving online degree business, a market also long-served by publicly traded education companies such as Pearson, Wiley, and 2U. The MOOC platforms that birthed new credential products such as the “nanodegree” and the “MicroMasters” (both trademarked terms) are now competing in the established, two-decades-old market for online degrees — one of the only growth segments in American higher education.

More than 3 million students study fully online in the United States — and notably, 29% of all students enrolled in any type of graduate-level program are fully online students. Today, according to our national surveys, a majority (61%) of hiring leaders view credentials earned online as equal to or better than those completed in person. This acceptance of online delivery has been steadily driven by employers’ years of growing direct experience hiring from, participating in, and sending employees into online university programs.

First-movers like the for-profit University of Phoenix may have dominated the online credential market 15 years ago. Today, however, the key players include institutions such as Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins, among others — traditional and increasingly prestigious institutions who have boosted the credibility of online education. The shift toward digital delivery in higher education may be happening at a slower pace than in other sectors of the economy, but it is well-established and accelerating.

Rather than sweeping away degrees, new types of online credentials — various certificates, MicroMasters, badges, and the like — are instead playing a complementary role, creating the building blocks for newer, more affordable degree programs. This represents true innovation in terms of the fundamental cost inputs (including faculty labor), pricing, and service expectations associated with the delivery of degrees. By leveraging algorithms and operating at truly disruptive price points, these programs are less expensive for colleges to operate and market, and less expensive for the student.

The MBA market offers an illustrative example. In 2016, the University of Illinois launched its “iMBA” program in partnership with Coursera, building an online degree program on top of a stack of existing MOOC courses and certificates. This program is priced at just one-third of the traditional on-campus M.B.A. program cost — $22,000 for the entire degree. Just three years later, the program has grown to 2,000 students enrolled — an exponential growth rate that represents a leading share of the annual net growth in the national online M.B.A. market. This spring, the university announced it was discontinuing its traditional residential MBA to focus its resources on the online version. It’s a decision that may increasingly be repeated.

In a similar fashion, Georgia Tech has successfully scaled its innovative MOOC-based master’s degree program in computer science, priced at just $7,000 and now enrolling more than 6,000 students. As part of this program, the university has notably pioneered the use of AI-based teaching assistants. Other colleges offering MOOC-based, AI-driven degrees — many launched in just the last year — include the University of Michigan, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of London, and a number of others.

Continued technological innovation in the delivery of educational credentials is increasing access to and creating a diverse range of new options for talent development and corporate training. And, as a greater share of corporate learning is also delivered online, the boundaries between education that happens in institutional settings and on-the-job is likely to continue to blur.

Business leaders should recognize that the professional education market is in a period of experimentation and proliferating program offerings. Quality online credentials can be now earned online from many of the world’s top universities, but what a given program entails can often vary significantly. Through evaluation and experience, the market will over time coalesce around greater clarity and standards. Ultimately, employers will be among the key arbiters of value.

The growing digitization of credentials also heralds a new era of greater transparency for educational outcomes — providing more and better data on which corporate leaders can make hiring decisions. With learning occurring online and increasingly being represented in digital credentials, employers should ultimately be better positioned to assess candidates’ and workers’ skills and competencies. This can help optimize college recruiting strategies; the setting of hiring qualifications; and investment decisions about learning and development and executive education.

Finally, the new credentialing landscape and its potential deeper integration with talent strategy is also catalyzing the development of new corporate tools, services, and businesses. The educational technology sector continues to experience multi-billion dollar inflows — and the corporate HR technology market is itself catalyzed by approximately $3 billion in annual investment. It is still early in the development of this ecosystem, but the receptivity of business leaders to new educational credential offerings and delivery approaches will be key in defining the future shape of the market.

Source: HBR SEPTEMBER 20, 2019