Energy Conservation begins at home! Not really. Rather, it begins at office. There are quite a few who would agree with me and a lot who would disagree. But the fact of the matter remains that out of my productive 16 hours of life, I spend 8 hours in the office, 2-3 hours travelling, 1 hour in parties and other social gatherings. So that means that I am at home for only 4 hours everyday.

With the advent of millennium offices, the opportunity to conserve energy has increased manifold and it becomes even more obvious that energy conservation begins from office.

A few days back I had to stay back at office and work late due to some urgent assignment. As I packed up to leave and stood up from my workstation, I am amazed at the sight I saw. Some sensible facilities person had the courtesy to switch off all the lights on the floor. As I stood there at one end and gazed to the other end of the floor, I saw a spread of blue light across the floor giving it a look as if the entire floor had a light blue carpet spread across. This effect was being triggered by the almost 900 odd computers that were left working by the employees who were using it.

Was this beautiful sight worth it? Can the cost incurred justify the beauty of the sight?

It can never.

Indeed energy conservation begins at office. Almost all the facilities and admin teams in every organization has a policy around energy conservation. They have a policy around switching off all the lights if they are not in use. They advice on shutting down the computers if it is not required. But how many of us comply?

As responsible citizens of our country and responsible employees of the organization that we work in, we are responsible for every unit of electricity consumed. Saving on electricity costs has a direct impact on the variable costs incurred by the organization and this in turn, on the operating expenses. If the operating expenses of the organization is lesser, this will turn into better profits and better profits means better compensation for its employees. That makes it all the more important for the employees to conserve energy.

Rejections at interviews are not uncommon. But your success at every subsequent interviews depend upon how you handle your failure in the previous one.

How easy is it to overcome an interview rejection?

It took me 12 interviews to get my first job. With every failed interview, I kept loosing my confidence. Every subsequent interview seemed as if it was even more difficult than the previous one. It was later that I realized that it was not that the interview was difficult. Instead I was loosing confidence.

It was an uphill task for me to regain my confidence and keep appearing for interviews until I could get through.

Before we even discuss how to overcome interview rejections, a question to ask is – Why should your loose your confidence when you get rejected in an interview? What you need to understand is the fact that they have not rejected you. Rather they have lost you.

The best approach to take is to look at rejection as a loss to the organization and not a loss to yourself.

It is often seen that even after so many interview rounds and screenings, organization often make the wrong decision and hire the wrong person. The consequence is a disaster. In doing so they often reject much more and better skilled talent, only to loose them to another organization who has a better form of interviewing and screening.

7 Things to do to overcome Interview Rejections -

As soon as you are through with and interview and you get to know that you have not been selected, don’t be disappointed. Follow this 7 step method to overcome the disappointment and to gear up for your next interview.

1. As soon as the news of you not getting selected is conveyed to you by the interviewer, thank them for the time and effort they invested in you and ask them if there is a feedback.
2. Don’t leave the interview venue immediately. Sit there for some more time and jot down 5 things that you think that the company lost by not hiring you. Read that for about 10 minutes and then leave.
3. Go out with your friends for a cup of coffee or, a dinner or, to watch a movie. Prefer not to go to pubs or, discotheques.
4. Read about 2-3 chapters of your favorite book, preferably a non-fiction book. I recommend, “The Magic of Thinking Big” or, “Tough Times never last but Tough People do”.
5. Prefer not to use terms like “rejected” or, “not selected” when telling people about your interview result. Rather say, “I was over-qualified or, over talented for their organization”. It might sound odd, but it will make you feel good from the inside.
6. Prefer not to schedule any interview the very next day. Set up your next interview at a gap of at least a day and leave everything alone and take some rest for the entire day.
7. Jot down 5 things you thought did not go well in the previous interview and what their ideal responses would have been. Practice them for about 15 minutes. Then proceed for your interview

These are simple things to do and you might feel awkward with doing a few of them. But these give good results and help you rejuvenate for the next interview.

Emails!!! In this century, people, office and organizations are connected through mails. This is the century where mails are preferred much more than a verbal conversation. Why? Because these mails can later be used as a proof of the conversation.

The days of the office memo are gone. You do not sign on those circulars that the office boys circulate in departments seeking the signature of everybody reading it. Today it is the electronic signature that is important and it is a valid enough evidence that you have read a circular.

This is a series that I am starting today on professional email etiquettes. This series would cover everything that is important when you write a professional email – the what, how and when of email writing.

In the first article here, we will be discussing about the importance of addressing the right person in the “To” field.

If you peep into your inbox right now, you will find quite a few mails which were actually ones that were to be actioned by you, yet you were nowhere in the “To” field of the email. There would also be certain other emails where you were one of the many who were addressed in the “To” field, but you had nothing to do with it and it was just for your information.

The Importance of the “To” field -

The “To” address field has a lot of importance. It is indeed the electronic signature that we discussed a while ago in one of the paragraphs above. When you mark a mail to a person, he is supposed to be the intended recipient of the mail. He is the one who is to action on the email, if the email had an actionable item in it. He is the one who virtually electronically signs the email, accepting that he has received the mail and that he will action on it, unless he explicitly writes back saying that he disagrees to the actions.

This importance of the “To” box is often forgotten. Emails that you receive are blindly forwarded to others without even checking on who is the person to act on the email.

The person who you think has to definitely and compulsorily read the email has to be marked in the “To” box. It is only he or, they if there is a group of people who should be there in the “To” box. The rest of the people who, you think should be kept in the loop  and who should also know about such a mail being sent by you are the ones who should be marked in the “Cc” or, “Bcc” boxes.

Always bear in mind that the person receiving the mail will only give as much importance to it as is required and he will decide this on the basis of the field that his name is appearing on.

A lot of extremely important activities and updates miss the actual intended recipients just because the email sender did not bother to focus on the “To” field.

It would be extremely unprofessional on your part if, you miss the name of the intended recipient from the “To” box. Hence the first lesson in professional emailing is to carefully identify the people who should be marked on the mail in the “To” field and the ones who the mail is to be marked as a carbon copy.

Are your spending more than 12 hours in your office and still unable to complete your work?

Is your team feeling demotivated and unimportant?

If you are wondering, why I asked these two different questions that has no relation with each other, then think again!! These two questions are related to each other.

I have still not forgotten that day, when my boss walked into my room once late in the evening just as he was passing by the office and found me still in the office. He looked at me and asked me, “What are you doing in office so late”? I had a sarcastic look in my eyes and replied, “Boss, I am trying to complete my work”. My boss responded with an even more sarcastic look and said, “If you cannot complete your work in 8 hours of office time, you cannot do it in 16 hours”. I felt insulted and disappointed. After a few minutes when I tried to decipher what was the inherent meaning of this statement, I learnt the biggest lesson of my life.

If you cannot complete your work in 8 hours of office time, you will not be able to complete it in 16 hours.

In my further discussion with my manager he told me how to work effectively in order to complete things in time. A lot of these discussions were around effectively delegating work.

What is Effective Delegation?

Are you someone who delegates all of your work to your team members and prefer being an audience? Or, do you delegate very little or, no work?

Effective delegation involves carefully assessing each of team members’ skills and competencies. Your team members will have specific areas of interests. There would be certain other areas on which they need to work some more and some others in which they are masters.

The key to effective delegation involves the following -

1. Delegating activities which are of utmost priority to team members who are masters in it.
2. Delegating critical activities to people who have an interest in those areas.
3. Delegating less critical activities that have some time to completion to people who are not experts in these areas and who require some grooming.

Though these could act as guidelines to deciding on how to delegate work, these might not be necessary rules to delegating. Effective delegation could involve a combination of all of these aspects. At times your decision could also be based on the composition of your team. Whatever the basis of decision, you need to bear in mind that your delegation should not in any way hamper the deliver-ability of the activities being assigned.

A few other aspects that you should need to keep in mind while deciding on how to delegate -

• Keep in mind, not to put somebody in charge of someone which whom they have a negative relationship.
• While delegating you should keep the “favoritism” aspect out of the decision making process. Delegate unbiased.
• You would not want to loose control of the situation and become vulnerable. Do not delegate everything that is important and put the burden on the shoulders of somebody else. Keep somethings that are important with you and stay in control. Keep on eye on everything that is happening around you.

It is often found that a lot of bosses delegate everything and finally find themselves at the edge of the cliff with no way to go. Don’t loose control of the situation ever.

Delegation and Motivation -

Every employee wants to be identified and wants some extra responsibility so that he can show his worth. He starts to develop a monotony with the activities that he has been doing everyday. There starts to develop a lack of sense of belongingness. They begin to distance themselves from the team and the team leader.

The gradual shift of the team member from the team and the feeling of not being important is the core of demotivation and loss of production. Delegation can take care of this to a great extent.

Additional responsibilities will make them feel important. They will learn and acquire new skills thus making their work even more exciting and interesting. They will identify themselves with the team and the leader.

I still remember once of the employee in a team of mine who had a huge problem in outage. His leaves exceeded much more that then entire team taken together and he has a reason every time he went on an unapproved leave. He was given the responsibility of outage management for the team. He had to approve leaves for the team. Gradually over a period of time, I observed that he became very efficient and kept his outage within control because he had to answer every other team member if he disapproved their application. Also he had the responsibility to ensure that the team’s outage is within control.

Delegation can do a world of good for your team members in motivating them and upskilling them in their career aspirations.

Do you really have to rely on your networking skills in order to grow in your organization?

This era is of networking. Business have taken to networking in order to connect with their customers because they know that it is the network that they create with their customers that will get them more and more customers. Stats have proven that networking has indeed helped businesses multiply their sales and their profits.

So when businesses have taken to networking, why shouldn’t networking play a role in your growth in an organization. And it is true that networking indeed plays a big role in your career growth in your organization.

If that is the last thing you wanted to hear then, career development is not for you.

When I as a manager, sees a vacant position in my department or, line of business as they call it these days, my worries are about the process that I will have to follow to pick the best person. Interviews, written tests etc. are the normal parts of the process and even after exercising restraints and judicious decision making, I still happen to get the wrong guy into my department. This only marks the beginning of a long and tiring journey in motivating, counseling, reprimanding etc. etc.

Interviews and discussions have more or, less become staged role-plays. The interviewee knows what will be asked and also knows what is the expected response to the question. Impressing an interviewer is not difficult if you are even slightly focused. Though there are extremely talented interviewers who are able to count the pulse of a person just by looking at the way he is responding to a question, most interviewers are not that talented and have to depend on the 1-2-3s of recruitment and interviewing techniques that they have learnt in trainings. A lot of negative aspects of the candidates, hence go un-identified and you end up picking the wrong person. The end-result – CHAOS and TROUBLE.

Why would I want to take that risk, when I have an alternate way of picking the best of the lot?

I would prefer talking to my colleagues and peers in various departments and organizations and ask them to refer candidates they think are the best fit for the role that I have in mind. Professionals, if they are and friends that they are, they would refer people they know and who have a proven track record. Though I am ruling out the possibility of a mis-fit being referred, still I would prefer this channel to the other.

This is where networking comes into the picture. If you have a strong network with your co-workers and superiors and with people in the department that you wish to get into as per your career plan, the likely hood of a referral for you by one of these is much higher and the chances of you getting the role is also much higher.

So wouldn’t you like to network better now?

In a later post we can discuss about what all are the things to bear in mind if you are to successfully network.