Interviewer: Is Ruby on Rails  open source?

Candidates: I don’t know

Interviewer: Explain some features/advantages of  Ruby on Rails over PHP?

Candidates: I don’t know

Interviewer: Have you ever worked on Ruby on Rails?

Candidates: No

Interviewer: Why have you applied for this job?

Candidates: I love railway related work. I can do any work related to railway. I can give hundred percent effort in this work. I love that types of work. I think I am born only for railway work. Please give me only one chance.

P.S. – This is a real incident. Recruiters job can be a lot of fun sometimes.

Do let us know if you had similar stories to share..

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Please respond and   help us understand what you feel about relevance of social media in software / IT industry.

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Take a look at a powerful resume in other words a fake resume

Applying for position of CEO / Managing Director.

Summary – CEO of Forstaffing.com for last 6 years. In this 6 years oversaw the growth of company from a start-up to a multinational. (We service clients in many countries.) 

Total Experience – 9 years

Current Salary – 15 Lakhs /annum but 90% of it is allowance including bonus+phone+ house+ medical+ Child’s education+ conveyance + incentives. Basic is INR 7000 /month.

Current Location – Delhi/NCR. Can attend telephonic interview for any location but don’t want to relocate out of Delhi/NCR. I am attending interviews to know my market value.

 Work Experience 

 Sales – Sales target was assigned as 20 Crore and have always achieved more than the assigned target. But the operations people could not deliver and company is on the brink of shutting down thats why I am looking for a change. Of course operations have other story to tell.. 

Recruitment – I had a recruitment target of over 200 people every month but none joined.

Interviews – Take technical interviews for all position – .net, java(hibernate, spring, struts), Php, sharepoint, Ruby on Rails, Sales, DBA(oracle/SQL/Linux), Cloud testing, research/business analyst, Marketing(online/ corporate) etc… and whatever new technology that is not even invented. But most of my candidates fail the technical interview.

 Marketing + Branding – Has made a brand that can compete with fortune 100 company of the world but people have never heard of Forstaffing.

 Client Servicing – Have handled more than 500 clients at a time but none of the clients ever returned.

Accounts – Take care of audit, ledgers of the entire company. But I don’t understand the difference between credit and debit. Please ask accounts related queries in simple language.

Everything was done by me but we also had a 15 people team I am not sure what they were doing.

In most resumes everything after the BUT is missing but as someone wise once said “Everything before the BUT is bullshit”

Click here to post your resume for  crating a powerful but REAL resume

One question that often troubles people in IT industry is…. what next? Where am I heading? When will I be ready for my next role? What does it mean to be IT head of a company or an CIO? Should I aim to become a delivery manager or CTO?

Well you need to answer these questions yourself. However it will be good to understand the definitions of these top roles and salaries that they make today.

Chief Information Officer

Need of CIO in an organization

To stay ahead of the competition organization needs to be fast and efficient and technology plays an important role in helping you achieve this goal. With increase in competition sometimes technology becomes the key differentiator for the organization.

Chief Information Officer are also called IT or technology head in some organizations. CIOs come from technology background. CIO typically reports to CEO, in some organizations CIOs also report to COO (chief operation officer). Qualification required to be CIO of a company would be BE, B.Tech, ME or M.Tech from a good institute. Typically CIO will be having relevant experience of 12 to 18 years.

Role and Responsibility of CIO

Responsibility of CIO may vary depends on type of organization, in general it includes providing IT strategy in line with the organizations business strategy. CIO creates the IT plan and vision for the organization. CIOs are responsible for successful implementation of IT strategy of the organization and ensuring that the organization is moving with times in terms of technology. CIO heads the IT department in the organization and ensures smooth implementation of IT initiatives as well as buy-in from other divisions.

CIOs also interface with all key divisions of the organization to successfully implement and deploy strategic IT solutions.

Salary of a Chief Information Officer ( CIO) can range between 30 lakhs to 40 lakhs

It is a demanding and challenging job. Though CIOs come from technology background and are responsible for technology, this job is more about management than technology.

Click here to post your resume for  top IT Jobs like CIO, CTO, Country  Head, Delivery Head..

What is the salary raise that I should demand during salary negotiation? This is a question that every job seeker asks himself or herself at some point in life.  It is a very important question. Sometimes the biggest driver for change in job is salary (though very few people accepts it in front of the interviewer ). Regardless of what your drivers are for change in job, it is very important that you have clear idea of what you should be expecting in terms of salary.

Some people go for an interview with a vague number in mind; some people have a set number i.e. 30% growth from current salary, however very few people analyze this issue objectively. During the initial phase of your career it might not matter how you negotiate your salary or what kind of salary you demand. As you grow in career it becomes very important to understand your net worth, responsibilities and demands from your job and how it translate into compensation etc

I recently saw a survey on salary range for different profiles in IT companies. A developer with 3 years experience can get from 3 lakhs to 8 lakhs. That’s a huge gap, you may ask, why is there such a big difference?. Salary is not just a function of skills and experience. Industry demand and availability of required skills is a huge factor. For a long time PHP developers with 3 years experience were getting paid a lot less than Java developers with equal experience. PHP was not considered as enterprise technology and big software consultancy firms were not hiring PHP skills. Today, the equation has changed. There are many factors that determine what a company is willing to pay for a particular role. Some factors that do matter are education from premier institutes, past experience, skills etc..

Role of education – Companies lap up IITns. There are three aspects they don’t have to worry about a candidate from IIT i.e. Core intelligence, hard work and ability to adapt to new technology. These are very important factors, only thing that is left to evaluate after this is core values ( culture fit) and domain skills i.e. how much experience he / she has in a particular technology. People from premier academic background i.e. IIT, BITS Pilani, NITs will always be in higher end of the range. I think it is fair; people who make it to IITs were burning midnight oil when some of us were sleeping. After some time though this factor does not matter much, experience becomes more important.

Past experience – Regardless of education, where you have worked and what work you have done matters a lot. Lot of small companies put a premium on big name i.e. candidates from big company can end up demanding a higher than industry average salary. However, just having a BIG name like HCL, Infosys, Wipro on your resume is not enough… sometimes you end up doing a very mundane and routine job in large companies.

Moving from small company to big company – Candidates sometimes compromise on salary because they are moving into a large company.  However, you need to have confidence on your skills. Find out the payscale in the industry for your skill set and experience. Be true to yourself in terms of your expertise. If a particular technology or skills is in demand and you have been working on it for last 3 months, it doesn’t make you an expert in it. If you are knowledgeable about an technology that is in high demand and you are confident about your skills, don’t be afraid to demand even a bit more than industry average.

How to determine your worth in the job market?

During interview a candidate gets an idea that how much his current experience is relevant for the position that she is being interviewed for, amount of training that will be required for her. Research on job sites, speak to a recruiter (give us a call). They are the best source of information in terms of reality of job market.

One rule of thumb that is often used is ( number of experience * x ). X ranges from 1.5 lakhs to 2.5 lakhs based on the factors mentioned above.

Don’t be biased by what your friends are making. Understand your strengths, acknowledge the weakness in your experience and make an informed decision. Contact us if you think we can be of any help.

Click here to create a resume and apply for high paying IT jobs.

“May you live in interesting times” is a popular Chinese curse.

Well, I am not sure if it is a curse or not but as far as Indian IT industry is concerned, We are definitely living in interesting times. Not only Indian job market is flooded with job opportunities from large companies like Accenture, Infosys, TCSs etc.. There is a huge hiring drive from Startups as well.

This startup boom in India is fueled by  huge amount of VC funding available from over 300 VCs, several corporate VC funds, angel investors and incubator companies. Some of these startups understand that they need to pay more than the average salary in job market to attract talent, so it might not be a bad idea to join a startup.

A big percentage of people in India do not even consider joining a startup. It is a myth amongst job seekers that  joining a startup after you have worked in an established company is a bad idea. Typically in India people would like to move from a big company to an even bigger one, regardless of how monotonous or boring their work life is becoming.  Joining a startup or a small company can actually give a huge boost to your career as well as confidence. At a startup you would be responsible for things that in an big company you will have to wait for a long time.  The catch is, you need to carefully choose the company before you take the plunge…

What should you know about the startup before you decide to join it?

Can you ask these questions to the management during the interview? Of course you should, and if they are not comfortable answering these questions I would really think before joining this company.

1. During the initial few years, you will be directly working with the founding members. It is better to check the profile of the founding team before the interview. If you are connected to someone who knows the founders on professional networking sites like Linkedin etc; get feedback from them about the founding team. Check the education, experience and people who teh founders are connected to. That should give you a fair idea about the team you will be closely working with.
2. Startup is often about an idea or concept. It does not have to be a unique idea, however you should be excited about the industry or the market it it targets. If you hate finance or stock market there is no point joining a finance based startup. It takes a lot of hard work to make a startup successful, it is very important that you enjoy the work you are doing there.
3. Research the industry a bit before you join the startup. Understand the risks, challenges and competition. Clarify during the interview process, how they are planning to compete in the market, mitigate the risks their industry typically face.
4. If it is a funded startup it will be a good idea to know how long the fund is going to last and when they expect to breakeven or be profitable.
5. In a startup you have to be flexible with your role. Typically a startup is fighting many fires at any given time and  you are expected to jump in and save the situation. It might still be a good idea to get a generic framework about your role and additional responsibilities that you might be expected to take over.
6. If it is not a funded startup and is growing organically, do they have secure business for  at least one year and what is the deal pipeline looking like. Is it a running machinery or not..
7. Is this a single client or single project dependent company? It is risky to join such companies and it will not be a bad question to ask.

It is always a risk to join a startup, but if you want to be part of a growth story like Google, Amazon or Facebook you have to take that risk. Believe me..  it is worth the risk.

P.S. – This is not a comprehensive list, please do add your suggestions..

“Role of recruitment consultants is that of a catalyst, they smoothen and speed up the hiring process.”

Forstaffing has been servicing Jobseekers/companies in Indian IT industry since December 2005. Over last 5 years we have placed 100s of candidates in their dream job.  We firmly believe that recruitment consultants are extremely important for any organization in their hiring process.

Candidates depend on recruitment consultants to get advice on salary packages, prospective employer, role offered etc. Organizations also take advice from consultants because sometimes they are unsure about people they have interviewed want opinion from another person. A neutral opinion from a trusted person matters a lot in such cases for job seekers as well as companies.

It is always in interest of  jobseekers to speak with recruitment consultant before applying for a job. Jobseekers can get to know the prospective employer even before applying for it. Consultants can answer questions about things that are usually not mentioned on the website the company.

Job seeking IT Professionals, especially who have some experience sometimes apply for similar job in multiple companies to compare the fitment in terms of role/work culture/salary and their growth path. They can get all information through consultants without applying anywhere.

Companies depend on the consultants to share their post interview feedback to the candidates, such as Negative feedback, Hiring plans getting delayed, Salary negotiation with selected candidates and Reference checks. Companies also depend on recruiters to source information on industry trends in hiring, expected salaries by different roles etc.

It is very important  for the recruitment consultants to be  effective in this role of a trusted advisor. This is the only way you can build long term relationships with your customers which in this case are both Job seekers as well as  Organizations.

Click here to create a resume and apply via recruitment consultants.