Interview Tips: How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

(by William Poundstone, Book Excerpt)

The Impossible Question

In August 1957 William Shockley was recruiting staff for his Palo Alto, California, start-up, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Shockley had been part of the Bell Labs team that invented the transistor. He had quit his job and come west to start his own company, telling people his goal was to make a million dollars. Everyone thought he was crazy. Shockley knew he wasn't. Unlike a lot of the people at Bell Labs, he knew the transistor was going to be big.

Shockley had an idea about how to make transistors cheaply. He was going to fabricate them out of silicon. He had come to this valley, south of San Francisco, to start production. He felt like he was on the cusp of history, in the right place at the right time. All that he needed was the right people. Shockley was leaving nothing to chance.

Today's interview was Jim Gibbons. He was a young guy, early twenties. He already had a Stanford Ph.D. He had studied at Cambridge too - on a Fulbright scholarship he'd won. Gibbons was sitting in front of him right now, in Shockley's Quonset hut office. Shockley picked up his stopwatch.

There's a tennis tournament with one hundred twenty-seven players, Shockley began, in measured tones. You've got one hundred twenty-six people paired off in sixty-three matches, plus one unpaired player as a bye. In the next round, there are sixty-four players and thirty-two matches. How many matches, total, does it take to determine a winner?

Shockley started the stopwatch. The hand had not gone far when Gibbons replied: One hundred twenty-six.

How did you do that? Shockley wanted to know. Have you heard this before?

Gibbons explained simply that it takes one match to eliminate one player. One hundred twenty-six players have to be eliminated to leave one winner. Therefore, there have to be 126 matches.

Shockley almost threw a tantrum. That was how he would have solved the problem, he told Gibbons. Gibbons had the distinct impression that Shockley did not care for other people using "his" method.

Shockley posed the next puzzle and clicked the stop-watch again. This one was harder for Gibbons. He thought a long time without answering. He noticed that, with each passing second, the room's atmosphere grew less tense. Shockley, seething at the previous answer, now relaxed like a man sinking into a hot bath. Finally, Shockley clicked off the stopwatch and said that Gibbons had already taken twice the lab average time to answer the question. He reported this with charitable satisfaction. Gibbons was hired.

Find the Heavy Billiard Ball...

Fast-forward forty years in time - only a few miles in space from long-since-defunct Shockley Semiconductor - to a much-changed Silicon Valley. Transistors etched onto silicon chips were as big as Shockley imagined. Software was even bigger. Stanford was having a career fair, and one of the most popular companies in attendance was the Microsoft Corporation. With the 1990s dot-com boom and bull market in full swing, Microsoft was famous as a place where employees of no particular distinction could make $1 million before their thirtieth birthday. Grad student Gene McKenna signed up for an interview with Microsoft's recruiter.

Suppose you had eight billiard balls, the recruiter began. One of them is slightly heavier, but the only way to tell is by putting it on a scale against the others. What's the fewest number of times you'd have to use the scale to find the heavier ball?

McKenna began reasoning aloud. Everything he said was sensible, but somehow nothing seemed to impress the recruiter. With hinting and prodding, McKenna came up with a billiard-ball-weighing scheme that was marginally acceptable to the Microsoft guy. The answer was two.

"Now, imagine Microsoft wanted to get into the appliance business," the recruiter then said. "Suppose we wanted to run a microwave oven from the computer. What software would you write to do this?"

"Why would you want to do that?" asked McKenna. "I don't want to go to my refrigerator, get out some food, put it in the microwave, and then run to my computer to start it!" "Well, the microwave could still have buttons on it too."

"So why do I want to run it from my computer?" "Well maybe you could make it programmable? For example, you could call your computer from work and have it start cooking your turkey." "But wouldn't my turkey," asked McKenna, "or any other food, go bad sitting in the microwave while I'm at work? I could put a frozen turkey in, but then it would drip water everywhere."

"What other options could the microwave have?" the recruiter asked. Pause. "For example, you could use the computer to download and exchange recipes." "You can do that now. Why does Microsoft want to bother with connecting the computer to the microwave?" "Well let's not worry about that. Just assume that Microsoft has decided this. It's your job to think up uses for it." McKenna thought in silence.

"Now maybe the recipes could be very complex," the recruiter said. "Like, 'Cook food at seven hundred watts for two minutes, then at three hundred watts for two more minutes, but don't let the temperature get above three hundred degrees.'"

"Well there is probably a small niche of people who would really love that, but most people can't program their VCR."

The Microsoft recruiter extended his hand. "Well, it was nice to meet you, Gene. Good luck with your job search." "Yeah," said McKenna. "Thanks."

The Impossible Question

Logic puzzles, riddles, hypothetical questions, and trick questions have a long tradition in computer-industry interviews. This is an expression of the start-up mentality in which every employee is expected to be a highly logical and motivated innovator, working seventy-hour weeks if need be to ship a product. It reflects the belief that the high-technology industries are different from the old economy: less stable, less certain, faster changing. The high-technology employee must be able to question assumptions and see things from novel perspectives. Puzzles and riddles (so the argument goes) test that ability.

In recent years, the chasm between high technology and old economy has narrowed. The uncertainties of a wired, ever-shifting global marketplace are imposing a start-up mentality throughout the corporate and professional world. That world is now adopting the peculiar style of interviewing that was formerly associated with lean, hungry technology companies. Puzzle-laden job interviews have infiltrated the Fortune 500 and the rust belt; law firms, banks, consulting firms, and the insurance industry; airlines, media, advertising, and even the armed forces. Brainteaser interview questions are reported from Italy, Russia, and India. Like it or not, puzzles and riddles are a hot new trend in hiring.

Fast-forward to the present - anywhere, almost any line of business. It's your next job interview. Be prepared to answer questions like these:

How many piano tuners are there in the world? If the Star Trek transporter was for real, how would that affect the transportation industry? Why does a mirror reverse right and left instead of up and down? If you could remove any of the fifty U.S. states, which would it be? Why are beer cans tapered on the ends? How long would it take to move Mount Fuji?

In the human resources trade, some of these riddles are privately known as impossible questions. Interviewers ask these questions in the earnest belief that they help gauge the intelligence, resourcefulness, or "outside-the-box thinking" needed to survive in today's hypercompetitive business world. Job applicants answer these questions in the also-earnest belief that this is what it takes to get hired at the top companies these days. A lot of earnest believing is going on.

To an anthropologist studying the hiring rituals of the early twenty-first century, the strangest thing about these impossible questions would probably be this: No one knows the answer. I have spoken with interviewers who use these questions, and they have enthusiastically assured me not only that they don't know the "correct answer" but that it makes no difference that they don't know the answer. I even spent an amusing couple of hours on the Internet trying to pull up "official" figures on the number of piano tuners in the world. Conclusion: There are no official figures. Piano-tuner organizations with impressive websites do not know how many piano tuners there are in the world.

Every business day, people are hired, or not hired, based on how well they answer these questions.

The impossible question is one phase of a broader phenomenon. Hiring interviews are becoming more invasive, more exhaustive, more deceptive, and meaner. The formerly straightforward courtship ritual between employer and employee has become more one-sided, a meat rack in which job candidates' mental processes are poked, prodded, and mercilessly evaluated. More and more, candidates are expected to "prove themselves" in job interviews. They must solve puzzles, avoid getting faked out by trick questions, and perform under manufactured stress.

"Let's play a game of Russian roulette," begins one interview stunt that is going the rounds at Wall Street investment banks. "You are tied to your chair and can't get up. Here's a gun. Here's the barrel of the gun, six chambers, all empty. Now watch me as I put two bullets in the gun. See how I put them in two adjacent chambers? I close the barrel and spin it. I put the gun to your head and pull the trigger. Click. You're still alive. Lucky you! Now, before we discuss your résumé, I'm going to pull the trigger one more time. Which would you prefer, that I spin the barrel first, or that I just pull the trigger?"

The good news is that the gun is imaginary. It's an "air gun," and the interviewer makes the appropriate gestures of spinning the barrel and pulling the trigger. The bad news is that your career future is being decided by someone who plays with imaginary guns.

This question is a logic puzzle. It has a correct answer and the interviewer knows what it is. You had better supply the right answer if you want the job. In the context of a job interview, solving a puzzle like this is probably as much about stress management as deductive logic. The Russian roulette question exemplifies the mind-set of these interviews - that people who can solve puzzles under stress make better employees than those who can't.

The popularity of today's stress - and puzzle-intensive interviews is generally attributed to one of America's most successful and ambivalently regarded corporations, Microsoft. The software giant receives about twelve thousand r?sum?s each month. That is amazing when you consider that the company has about fifty thousand employees, and Microsoft's turnover rate has been pegged at about a third of the industry average. Microsoft has more cause to be selective than most companies. This is reflected in its interview procedure.

Without need of human intervention, each résumé received at Microsoft is scanned for keywords and logged into a database. Promising résumés lead to a screening interview, usually by phone. Those who pass muster get a "fly back," a trip to Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters for a full-day marathon of famously difficult interviews. "We look for original, creative thinkers," says a section of the Microsoft website that is directed to college-age applicants, "and our interview process is designed to find those people." Six recent hires are pictured (three are women, three are black). "Your interview could include a technical discussion of the projects you've worked on, an abstract design question, or general problem-solving puzzles or brainteasers. The types of questions you'll be asked vary depending on the position you're looking for, but all are meant to investigate your capabilities and potential to grow. It's important for us to find out what you can do, not just what you've done." Another company publication advises bluntly: "Get over your fear of trick questions. You will probably be asked one or two. They are not exactly fair, but they are usually asked to see how you handle a difficult situation."

Riddles and Sphinxes

"Not exactly fair"? It's little wonder that some compare this style of interviewing to fraternity hazing, brainwashing, or the third degree. As one job applicant put it, "You never know when they are going to bring out the guy in the chicken suit."

Another apt analogy is that familiar type of video game where you confront a series of odd and hostile characters in a series of confined spaces, solving riddles to get from one space to the next. Not many make it to the highest levels; for most, after three or four encounters, the game is over. As classicists point out, those video games update the ancient Greek legend of Oedipus and the sphinx. The sphinx devoured anyone who couldn't answer her riddle: "What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?"

Oedipus solved the riddle by answering "Man." A baby crawls on all fours, an adult walks on two legs, and the elderly use a cane as a third leg. It was, in other words, a trick question.

The sphinx tale puzzles people even today. Why didn't they just shoot it? is the reaction of most college students. The principal source for the story, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, is a realistic and psychologically nuanced tragedy. There the man-eating she-monster is as out of place, one scholar noted, as Godzilla would be if he were to lumber into the New York of Coppola's Godfather trilogy. Still, something about this crazy story strikes a chord. We all undergo tests in life. Maybe we succeed where all others have failed - or maybe not; at least, it's a common fantasy. There is something familiar in the banality of the riddle too, and in the weirdness of its poser. They remind us that the tests of life are not always reasonable and not always fair.

Tales of people proving their mettle by solving riddles exist in cultures around the globe. The "ordeal by trick question" was possibly raised to the highest art by the monks of Japanese Zen. Zen riddles are the antithesis of the Western logic puzzle, though one might describe them as demanding an extreme sort of outside-the-box thinking. A student of Zen demonstrates worthiness by giving a sublimely illogical answer to an impossible question. Zen master Shuzan once held out his short staff and announced to a follower: "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?" In traditional Zen teaching, the penalty for a poor answer was a hard whack on the head with a short staff.

So Microsoft's "not exactly fair" questions are not exactly new. The company has repackaged the old "ordeal by riddle" for our own time. With its use of puzzles in its hiring decisions, Microsoft plays to the more appealing side of the digital generation mythos - of maverick independence and suspicion of established hierarchies. Puzzles are egalitarian, Microsoft's people contend, in that it doesn't matter what school you attended, where you worked before, or how you dress. All that matters is your logic, imagination, and problem-solving ability.

For of course Microsoft is an egalitarian meritocracy. It is ruthless about hiring what it calls the "top ten percent of the top ten percent." Microsoft's interviews are carefully engineered to weed out the "merely" competent who don't have the Microsoft level of competitive drive and creative problem-solving ability. It is estimated that less than one in four of those flown up to Redmond for a day of interviews receive a job offer. Like most riddle-bearing sphinxes, Microsoft's human resources department leaves a high body count.

Blank Slate

Microsoft is a fraught place. It represents the best and worst of how corporate America lives today. The software company that Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded was one of the great success stories of the last quarter of the twentieth century. The Justice Department's 1998 antitrust suit against Microsoft has not entirely dimmed that reputation. Maybe the opposite: Microsoft is now bad, and as we all know, bad is sometimes good. People have misgivings about Microsoft, just like they do about pit bulls and the Israeli Army. People also figure that if Microsoft hires this way, well, it may push the ethical envelope, but it must work.

Microsoft's role in changing interview practice is that of a catalyst. This influence owes to a shift in hiring priorities across industries. With bad hires more costly than ever, employers have given the job interview an importance it was never meant to have.

There was a time when a corporate job interview was a conversation. The applicant discussed past achievements and future goals. The interviewer discussed how those goals might or might not fit in with the company's. If the applicant was "put on the spot," it was with one of the old reliable human resources chestnuts such as "describe your worst fault." At many companies, that type of low-pressure interview is on its way out. The reasons are many. References, once the bedrock of sound hiring practice, are nearing extinction in our litigious society.The prospect of a million-dollar lawsuit filed by an employee given a "bad reference" weighs heavily on employers. This is often dated to 1984, when a Texas court ruled that an insurance salesman had been defamed when his employer, insurance firm Frank B. Hall and Company, was asked for a reference and candidly rated the salesman "a zero." The court added a few zeros of its own to the damage award ($1.9 million).

Employment attorneys observe that awards of that size are rarer than the near hysteria prevailing in human resources departments might suggest. They also allow that - theoretically - the law protects truthful references. It is tough to argue against caution, though. "We tell our clients not to get involved in references of any kind," said Vincent J. Appraises, former chair of the American Bar Association's Labor and Employment Law Section. "Just confirm or deny whether the person has been employed for a particular period of time and that's it. End of discussion."

Equally problematic for today's hirers is the generically positive reference letter. Some companies are so terrified of lawsuits that they hand them out indiscriminately to any employee who asks. It's no skin off their nose if someone else hires away an inept employee.

With references less common and less useful, hirers must seek information elsewhere. The job interview is the most direct means of assessing a candidate. But the ground rules for interviews have changed in the past decades. It is illegal in the United States for an interviewer to ask an applicant's age, weight, religion, political view, ethnicity, marital status, sexual preference, or financial status. Nor can an interviewer legally inquire whether a job seeker has children, drinks, votes, does charity work, or (save in bona fide security-sensitive jobs) has committed a major crime. This rules out many of the questions that used to be asked routinely ("How would your family feel about moving up here to Seattle?") and also a good deal of break-the-ice small talk. Hiring has always been about establishing a comfort level. The employer wants to feel reasonably certain that the applicant will succeed as an employee. That usually means sizing up a person from a variety of perspectives. In many ways, today's job candidate is a blank slate. He or she is a new person, stripped of the past, free of social context, existing only in the present moment. That leaves many employers scared.

One popular website for M.B.A. recruiting offers a "Social Security Number Decoder for Recruiters." Based on the first three digits, it tells where a job candidate was living when the social security number was issued. "The point being..." you ask? Well, it's one way of telling whether someone is lying about his past - a way of spotting contradictions when employers can't pose direct questions.

The Two-Second Interview

There are other, more serious reasons to worry about the American way of hiring. In the past decade, the traditional job interview has taken hits from putatively scientific studies. An increasing literature asserts the fallibility of interviewers.

Two Harvard psychologists, Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, did a particularly devastating experiment. Ambady had originally wanted to study what makes teachers effective. She suspected that nonverbal cues - body language and such - were important. To test this, she used some videotapes that had been made of a group of Harvard teaching fellows. She planned to show silent video clips to a group of people and have them rate the teachers for effectiveness.

Ambady wanted to use one-minute clips of each teacher. Unfortunately, the tapes hadn't been shot with this end in mind. They showed the teachers interacting with students. That was a problem, because having students visible in the clips might unconsciously affect the raters' opinions of the teachers. Ambady went to her adviser and said it wasn't going to work.

Then Ambady looked at the tapes again and decided she could get ten-second clips of teachers in which no students were visible. She did the study with those ten-second clips. Based on just ten seconds, the raters judged the teachers on a fifteen-item list of qualities.

Okay, if you have to judge someone from a ten-second video clip, you can. You probably wouldn't expect such a judgment to be worth anything.

Ambady repeated the experiment with five-second clips of the same teachers. Another group of raters judged them. Their assessments were, allowing for statistical error, identical to the ratings of the people who saw the ten-second clips.

Ambady then had another group view two-second clips of the same teachers. Again, the ratings were essentially the same.

The shocker was this: Ambady compared the video- clip ratings to ratings made by the students of the same teachers after a semester of classes. The students knew the professors much better than anyone possibly could from a silent video clip. No matter - the students' ratings were in close agreement with those of the people who saw only the videos. Complete strangers' opinions of a teacher, based on a silent two-second video, were nearly the same as those of students who had sat through a semester of classes.

It looks like people make a snap judgment of a person within two seconds of meeting him or her - a judgment not based on anything the person says. Only rarely does anything that happens after the first two seconds cause the judger to revise that first impression significantly.

All right, but the raters in this study were volunteer college students. Who knows what criteria they used to rate the teachers? Who knows whether they took the exercise seriously?

A more recent experiment attempts to treat the hiring situation more directly. Another of Rosenthal's students, Frank Bernieri (now at the University of Toledo), collabrated with graduate-student Neha Gada-Jain on a study in which they trained two interviewers for six weeks in accepted employment interviewing techniques. Then the two people interviewed ninety-eight volunteers of various backgrounds. Each interview was fifteen to twenty minutes, and all the interviews were captured on tape. After the interview, the trained interviewers rated the subjects.

Another student, Tricia Prickett, then edited the interview tapes down to fifteen seconds. Each fifteen-second clip showed the applicant entering the room, shaking hands with the interviewer, and sitting down. There was nothing more substantial than that. You guessed it - when another group rated the applicants just on the handshake clip, their opinions correlated strongly with those of the two trained interviewers who had the full interview to work from.

This would be funny if it weren't tragic. These studies suggest that the standard job interview is a pretense in which both interviewer and interviewee are equally and mutually duped. The interviewer has made up her mind by the time the interviewee has settled into a chair. Maybe the decision is based on looks, body language, or the "cut of your jib." What's certain is that it's not based on anything happening inside the job candidate's head. The questions and answers that follow are a sham, a way of convincing both that some rational basis exists for a hiring decision. In reality, the decision has already been made, on grounds that could not possibly be more superficial.

Human resources experts categorize interview questions with terms such as "traditional" and "behavioral." Traditional questions include the old standards that almost any American job seeker knows by heart. Where do you see yourself in five years? What do you do on your day off? What's the last book you've read? What are you most proud of?

Traditional-question interviews walk a tightrope between concealment and disclosure. They often invite the candidate to say something "bad" about himself, just to see how far he'll go. These questions seem to be about honesty. Really, they're about diplomacy. What you're most proud of might be your comic-book collection. That's not necessarily what the interviewer wants to hear, and you probably know that. There are safer answers, such as "the feeling of accomplishment I get from doing something - it could be anything - really well." The trouble with the traditional interview is that both sides are wise to the game. Practically everyone gives the safe answers. The interviewers nod, not believing a word of it.

This has led to the rise of behavioral questions. These ask the candidate to describe a past experience bearing on character and job skills. An example (used at Microsoft) is "Describe an instance in your life when you were faced with a problem and tackled it successfully." Another is "Describe a time when you had to work under deadline and there wasn't enough time to complete the job." The rationale for asking behavioral questions is that it's harder to fabricate a story than a one-liner.

Unfortunately, traditional and behavioral interview questions do almost nothing to counter the two-second snap judgment. These are soft, fuzzy, and ambivalent questions. Rarely addressed is what you're supposed to make of the answers. It's mostly gut instincts.

Ask yourself this: "Is there any conceivable answer to a traditional interview question that would cause me to want to hire someone on that answer alone? Is there any possible answer that would cause me to not want to hire someone?" I guess you can imagine alarming answers that might betray the candid psychopath. But most of the time, job candidates give the cautious and second-guessed answers everyone expects. With half-empty or half-full logic, an interviewer can use any answer retroactively to justify the first impression. Rarely does an answer challenge that first impression. This probably makes some interviewers comfortable. It may not be the best way to hire. It is far from clear that traditional and behavioral questions are a good way of spending the always-too-limited time in a job interview.

Future Tense

Microsoft's interviewing practices are a product of the pressures of the high-technology marketplace. Software is about ideas, not assembly lines, and those ideas are always changing. A software company's greatest asset is a talented workforce. "The most important thing we do is hire great people," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has stated more than once.

But how do you recognize great people? It is harder than ever to equate talent with a specific set of skills. Skills can become obsolete practically overnight. So can business plans. Microsoft is conscious that it has to be looking for people capable of inventing the Microsoft of five or ten years hence. Microsoft's hiring focuses on the future tense. More than most big companies, Microsoft accepts rather than resists the "job candidate as blank slate." Its stated goal is to hire for what people can do rather than what they've done.

Because programming remains a youthful profession, Microsoft hires many people out of college. There is no job experience to guide hiring decisions. Nor is Microsoft overly impressed by schools and degrees. "We fully know how bogus [graduate school] is," one senior manager is reported to have said. This attitude has changed somewhat - Harvard dropout Bill Gates now encourages potential employees to get their degrees -but Microsoft has never been a place to hire people because they went to the right schools.

Microsoft is also a chauvinistic place. The private suspicion in Redmond seems to be that Sun, Oracle, IBM, and all the other companies are full of big, lazy slobs who couldn't cut it at Microsoft. The only kind of "experience" that counts for much is experience at Microsoft. So even with job candidates who have experience, the emphasis is on the future tense. Microsoft does not have a time machine that lets its human resources people zip ten years into a subjunctive future to see how well a candidate will perform on the job. Predictions about future performance are perforce based largely on how well candidates answer interview questions.

"Microsoft really does believe that it can judge a person through four or five one-hour interviews," claims former Microsoft developer Adam David Barr. Barr likens the interview process to the National Football League's annual draft. Some teams base decisions on a college football record, and others go by individual workouts where the college players are tested more rigorously. At Microsoft, the "workout" - the interview - is the main factor in hiring all but the most senior people.

Why use logic puzzles, riddles, and impossible questions? The goal of Microsoft's interviews is to assess a general problem-solving ability rather than a specific competency. At Microsoft, and now at many other companies, it is believed that there are parallels between the reasoning used to solve puzzles and the thought processes involved in solving the real problems of innovation and a changing marketplace.

Both the solver of a puzzle and a technical innovator must be able to identify essential elements in a situation that is initially ill-defined. It is rarely clear what type of reasoning is required or what the precise limits of the problem are. The solver must nonetheless persist until it is possible to bring the analysis to a timely and successful conclusion.

What This Book Will Do

The book will do five things. It will first trace the long and surprising history of the puzzle interview. In so doing, it will touch on such topics as intelligence tests for employment, the origins of Silicon Valley, the personal obsessions of Bill Gates, and the culture of Wall Street.

The book will then pose the following question: Do puzzle interviews work as claimed? Hirers tout these interviews, and job candidates complain about them. I will try to supply a balanced discussion of pros and cons - something that is often missing from the office watercooler debates. The book will present a large sample of the actual questions being used at Microsoft and elsewhere. Provided your career is not on the line, you may find these puzzles and riddles to be a lot of fun. Many readers will enjoy matching their wits against those of the bright folks in Redmond. For readers who'd like to play along, there's a list of Microsoft puzzles, riddles, and trick questions in chapter four (most of which are in widespread use at other companies as well). A separate list of some of the hardest interview puzzles being asked at other companies is in chapter seven. I will elaborate in the main narrative on some of these questions and the techniques used to answer them but will refrain from giving answers until the very end of the book.

The final two chapters are addressed in turn to the job candidate and the hirer. There is a genre of logic puzzle in which logical and ruthless adversaries attempt to outsmart each other. This is a good model of the puzzle interview. Chapter eight is written from the perspective of a job candidate confronted with puzzles in an interview. It presents a short and easily remembered list of tips for improving performance. Chapter nine is written from the opposite perspective -that of an interviewer confronted with a candidate who may be wise to the "tricks." It presents a list of tips for getting a fair assessment nonetheless.

If this appears a paradox, it is only because these interviews have been touted as being difficult or impossible to "prepare" for. Most logic puzzles exploit a relatively small set of mental "tricks." Knowing these tricks, and knowing the unspoken expectations governing these interviews, can help a candidate do his or her best.

The hirer, in turn, needs to recognize the possibility of preparation and structure the interview accordingly. The merits of puzzle interviews are too often defeated by the hazing-stunt atmosphere in which they are conducted and by use of trick questions whose solutions are easily remembered.

HOW WOULD YOU MOVE MOUNT FUJI? gives a proposal for how innovative companies ought to interview and explains how this type of interview can be improved by refocusing on its original goal of providing information that the hirer can use.

Copyright © 2003 by William Poundstone

How to invest in a Mutual Fund

Sanjay Prakash, CEO, HSBC Asset Management (India) Pvt Ltd, has an interesting tale.

Six years ago, he began to invest diligently every month in a mutual fund for his daughters.

From an amount as low as Rs 500 a month, he increased it to Rs 1,000. He then set himself a target of increasing it by Rs 500 every six months.

Today, he invests Rs 7,500 in each of his daughters' names every month.

Though very young and still in school, each girl has Rs 700,000 to her name.

Where did he invest? In a diversified equity fund.

How? Through a Systematic Investment Plan.

What is that?

An SIP is a vehicle offered by mutual funds to help you save regularly.

It is just like a recurring deposit with the post office or bank where you put in a small amount every month. The difference here is that the amount is invested in a mutual fund.

The minimum amount to be invested can be as small as Rs 500 and the frequency of investment is usually monthly or quarterly.

My friend would do well to learn from this.

Recently, when the Sensex rose to dizzying heights, the Net Asset Value of her funds soared too. The NAV is determined by the market price of the stocks the fund has invested in. So when the markets rise, the NAVs follow. And vice versa.

Being smart enough to sense she would not get a return like this in a while, she sold her units and made a tidy sum. Now, she is waiting for the market to slump and the NAVs to fall so she can buy them back cheap.

The theory is good; but does it work?

Nobody can time the market. Nobody can predict when it is going to fall or rise and by how much.

While she is waiting for the market to drop, she is missing out by just sitting on her money.

And just because she got it right once does not mean she will win again.

How an SIP works

An SIP allows you to take part in the stock market without trying to second guess its movements.

AN SIP means you commit yourself to investing a fixed amount every month. Let's say it is Rs 1,000.

When the NAV is high, you will get fewer units. When it drops, you will get more units.

Date	NAV	Approx number of units you will get at Rs 1,000
Jan 1	10	100
Feb 1	10.5	95.23
Mar 1	11	90.90
Apr 1	9.5	105.26
May 1	9	111.11
Jun 1	11.5	86.95

Within six months, you would have 5,894 units by investing just Rs 1,000 every month.

Over the long run, you make money

Let's say you invested in Prudential ICICI Technology Fund during the dotcom and tech boom.

Say you began with Rs 1,000 and kept investing Rs 1,000 every month. This would be the result:

Investment period	Mar 2000  -  Mar 2005
Monthly investment	Rs 1,000
Total amount invested	Rs 61,000
Value of investment of Mar 7, 2005	Rs 1,09,315
Return on investment	23.87%

Had you bought the units on March 13, 2000 at Rs 10.88 per unit (that was the NAV then), you would have lost because the NAV was just 7.04 on March 7, 2005. But because you spaced out your investment, you won.

How an SIP scores

It makes you disciplined in your savings. Every month you are forced to keep aside a fixed amount. This could either be debited directly from your account or you could give the mutual fund post-dated cheques.

As you see above, it helps you make money over the long term. Since you get more units when the NAV drops and fewer when it rises, the cost averages out over time. So you tide over all the ups and downs of the market without any drastic losses.

Also, a number of mutual funds do not charge an entry load if you opt for an SIP. This fee is a percentage of the amount you are investing. And if you do not exit (sell your units) within a year of buying the units, you do not have to pay an exit load (same as an entry load, except this is charged when you sell your units).

If, however, you do sell your units within a year, you would be charged an exit load. So it pays to stay invested for the long-run.

The best way to enter a mutual fund is via an SIP. But to get the benefit of an SIP, think of at least a three-year time frame when you won't touch your money. 

Sample interview questions for H-1B visa

The following are some questions you should be prepared to answer irrespective of whether you are going to the consulate for a fresh H-1B visa or an H-1B renewal.  These are suggestive and not all-inclusive.

1)      What does your US Company do?
2)      What will be your job duties in the US Company?
3)      How many employees does the US Company have?
4)      What is the annual turnover of the US Company?
5)      Show US company brochure and photographs, if you have
6)      Where will you be working in the US?
7)      What computer languages do you know? (Information Technology professionals are often asked this question)
8)      What computer languages are you currently using in your company?
9)      How long have you worked with your current employer?
10)  What is your current salary?
11)  Have you ever been in a 'no-job no-salary' kind of situation?
12)  What is your role in the current company?
13)  Which university in the US did you study in? (This is in case you have a degree from the US)
14)  What is your highest degree?
15)  Where will you be staying in the US?
16)  How long do you plan to stay in the US?
17)  Which state do you live in the US? What's your opinion about the state?
18)  Have you paid for your H-1B visa?

Dealing with changes in job location
 
Roving H-1B employees require special attention and analysis. If an employer sends an H-1B worker to a new worksite, not listed on the Labor Condition Application (LCA), the employer must act to maintain compliance with the regulations.  The regulations include a detailed definition of 'place of employment' which governs what an employer must do to maintain LCA compliance.

The definition creates several exceptions that are not considered new places of employment, such as places where an H-1B may travel temporarily for developmental activity or to receive training. If there is no new 'place of employment,' then the employer's LCA obligations remain fixed at the home base.

The first question to ask is whether the roving H-1B employee is going to a new 'place of employment' or 'worksite'. If the answer is 'yes', then the employer must do one of the following: 

~ Re-post (if the new worksite is within the area of intended employment). In this case, the employer must re-post notice of the LCA at the new worksite before the H-1B begins work there;
~ Use the short-term placement rules; or
~ File a new LCA for the new worksite

The regulations define a new type of H-1B employee whose work is 'peripatetic' or roaming in nature in that the normal duties of the occupation require frequent travel. Peripatetic workers may travel constantly, but may not spend more than five days in one place. For such peripatetic workers, a new location is not considered a new 'worksite', and therefore does not require a new LCA.

Similarly, H-1B workers who travel occasionally on a casual short-term basis (not exceeding ten days) to a new location are not considered to have a new worksite with new LCA requirements. Although in these cases, the employer is not required to take one of the three steps above to maintain compliance, the employer is required to pay travel expenses for each day the H-1B is traveling (both weekdays and weekends).

The short-term placement rules permit an H-1B to travel up to 30 or 60 days per year to another 'place of employment'. However, the employer may not use the short-term placement rules in any area of employment for which the employer has a certified LCA for the occupational classification. If the employer has such a certified LCA with an open slot, then the employer must use that and add a copy of that LCA to the employee's public access file. If the employer has a certified LCA, but it doesn't have any open slots, then the employer must file a new LCA. The regulations specifically prohibit employers from continuously rotating H-1B employees to short-term placements in a manner that would defeat the stated purpose of these rules. The rules are designed to give employers flexibility.

H-1 visas issued by US Embassy/Consulates to Indians in India

US Fiscal Year	No. of H-1B issued
2001  2002       2003       2004       2005       2006	46,020 25,247 28,730 37,041 39,521 43,167

Future scenario of H-1B visa

The US Department of Labor predicts 130,000 new information technology jobs each year for the next decade. Yet American colleges are producing only 25,000 graduates in computer science a year, 40 per cent fewer than in the 1980s, and only 20,000 electrical engineering graduates, one-third fewer than a decade ago.

Although many high-tech jobs do not require such degrees, the decline in computer and engineering degrees can only aggravate whatever shortage exists.

Estimates put the number of information technology jobs going unfilled in the United States at more than 350,000, and rising fast. The Department of Labor projects that the demand for computer systems' analysts, engineers, and scientists will double in less than a decade, from 1.5 million to more than 3 million. 

Many of the skilled trades are currently facing a shortage of workers and the number of people needed to fill these jobs is expected to increase dramatically over the next several years. Construction laborers, operating engineers, carpenters, iron workers, cement masons, bricklayers, truck drivers and many other construction related crafts are among the trades expected to see the greatest demand in workers over the next 6 years.

While immigrants are less than 10 per cent of the US population, they comprise 30 per cent of research and development scientists and engineers with PhDs. More than one-third of the engineers in Silicon Valley are foreign born.

Anti-immigrant groups in the US have so far, successfully disallowed reforms proposed by Pro-immigrant lobby consisting of US high-tech industry and several senators and congressmen.  The reforms related to increase in quota for H-1B and decrease on restrictions on H-1B visas.  

Though the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill has failed in the US Senate, certain stand-alone issues such as H-1B visa may get attention in future months as hoped by pro-immigrant groups and US business which is keen to ensure competitive edge of American in world economy.

(http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2007/dec/05abr.htm)

H-1B visas: Are you qualified?

Every year the H-1B application filing date opens on April 1. This is the time that US employers can file H-1B applications for foreign workers that they have interviewed and selected to employ.

~ Individuals cannot file their own H-1B visa applications - only the employer company (known as the "sponsor" can file the application.

~ With only a few months left before the start of H-1B filing period, it is important forworkers and students who want to obtain an H-1B visa, to start their H-1B job search as soon as possible.

How do you qualify for the H-1B visa?

The education requirements for the H-1B visa are the equivalency of a US bachelor's degree, or four years of post secondary (college/university level) study.  If you do not have a four year degree or if you have an incomplete degree, you can combine with a post secondary diploma from a government recognised institution or you can use work experience.

USCIS uses the three to one rule. Every three years of progressive work experience in the field is equivalent to one year of post secondary study. For example, three years of university study plus three years of progressive work experience in the field is equivalent to four years of study or a US bachelor's degree.

If you have no post secondary study, you can show 12 years of work experience as equivalent to a US bachelor's degree. Two associates degrees may NOT be combined, but an associates degree (two years and six years of work experience may be combined to be equivalent to a US bachelor's degree).

For the USCIS to accept your work experience you need employer's letters stating your dates of employment, designation and job duties. This must be on the employer's letterhead and signed. You will still have to provide USCIS with verification of the work experience which has to be submitted with the original documents or it will cause a delay in fulfilling your evaluation.

Market your skills

Having identified potential employer/s and/or H-1B solution provider, you must market your skills with effective presentation of yourself through your resume/CV

Employers rely heavily on the resumes they receive to 'screen' for the best potential candidates. Given the choice of two candidates of equal ability, hiring managers will always prefer to interview the one with the most professionally constructed and attractive resume. For this reason, candidates with superb qualifications are often overlooked, and companies end up hiring from a pool of talent made up of those candidates whose experience is represented by powerfully written, visually appealing resumes.

Many aspiring candidates send their resumes to immigration lawyers and visa consultants.  This does not help, as professionals assisting in visa services cannot find a job for you or locate employer for you.  Resumes should be given only to prospective employers and web sites offering services to locate jobs.

Documents required for H-1B visa

Mandatory documents

• Photocopies of the first page, address page and last page of your current Passport.
• One photograph.
• Original DS-156, nonimmigrant visa application form.
• Original DS-157, supplemental nonimmigrant visa application form.
• Original, valid HDFC Bank Visa Fee receipt.
• Copy of Notice of Action (Form I-797).
• For US consulate in Mumbai only: Additional questionnaire.

Supporting documents

• Original Passport
• Interview appointment letter.
   
• Form I-797 - the original Notice of Action.
• Form I-129 and letter from employer that describes your proposed duties.
• Letters verifying your employment history and specific work skills.
• Original degree certificates along with mark sheets. (Secondary school information is not required)
• Relevant diplomas or certificates, e.g. computer certification.

First time applicants are also requested to bring the following items:

• Names and current phone numbers of the personnel managers at the applicant's present and past jobs.
• Photographs of the inside and outside of current or most recent employer's place of business.
• Names and contact information of two co-workers from your current or most recent place of employment.
• Names and contact information of two co-workers from past jobs.
• A complete resume and cover letter describing current job duties in detail.
• Personal bank records for the last six months.
• US company information: photographs of the inside and outside of the company's offices, prospectus, brochures, and annual report.

The US consulate will not accept documents received directly from the company by mail or fax. All documents should be brought by the applicant to the interview. The consulate will not make this information available to anyone and will destroy the documents after review.

If you are currently working in the US on an H-1B visa, submit your pay slips for the current calendar year and your federal tax returns (IRS Form 1040 and W-2) for all years in which you were employed in the US.

All H-1B applicants are recommended to bring one extra photocopy of any original documents they presented with their application package that they wish to be returned.

Applicable to US Consulate in Mumbai only:

Submit all the documents listed above as 'Mandatory documents' at least 5 days before the interview.
Carry rest of the documents at the interview.

For all other consulates, carry all the documents to the interview. Do not send anything anywhere before the interview.

(http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2007/dec/04abr.htm)

How and when to apply for H-1B visa to the US

There is a misconception many aspiring Indians have that one can apply for an H-1B visa directly and get to the US for a job. 

You cannot apply for an H-1B visa yourself. 

US Immigration law is vague about the definition of the word profession (relevant to H-1B visa) stating only that the meaning includes such occupations as architects, lawyers, physicians, engineers and teachers. Other occupations, not specifically mentioned in the law, but routinely recognised as professional include, accountants, computer systems analysts, physical therapists, chemists, pharmacists, medical technologists, hotel managers and upper-level business managers.

You must hold the educational equivalent to a US bachelor's degree to qualify for an H-1B visa. Also, the job duties must require education equivalent to a US bachelor's degree in the occupation for which you are hired.

If you were not educated in America, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), as part of judging your H-1B eligibility, will often ask for an academic credential evaluation from an approved consulting service to determine the American equivalent of your educational level.

Before sending your academic documents to a Credential Evaluation Service, you may want to telephone in advance to discuss your prospects. Usually, you can get some idea of the likelihood of receiving good results. If your prospects are bleak, you may decide not to order the evaluation and to save the service charges. For details, contact:

Credentials Evaluation Service, AVAP Credential Evaluation Service
International Education Research Foundation Inc
Suite 19, 5053 Ocean Building, P.O. Box 3665
Sarasota, FL 3242

            or

Culver City, California 90231-3665
Tel: (1)-941-346 -1427 or Tel.: 310-258-9451
Fax: (1)- 941- 349-4370 or Fax: 310-342-7086
Email: eval@auap.com or  info@ierf.org

Present

Under the existing law, 65,000 H-1B visas are issued for each fiscal year (October 1 through September 30).  Of these, 6,800 visas are kept exclusively for Chile and Singapore according to a Free Trade Agreement with the US. 

In other words, only 58,200 visas are actually available annually.  The visas are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Accompanying relatives of H1-B visa holders are not counted in this total.  

Under the "L-1 Visa and H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004", effective March 8, 2005, up to 20,000 additional H-1B slots are available to graduates of US masters degree (or higher) programs.

There are some types of jobs that are exempt from the H-1B cap.  Not every H-1B applicant is subject to the cap. Visas will still be available for applicants filing for amendments, extensions, and transfers. The cap also does not apply to applicants filing H-1B visas through institutions of higher education, nonprofit research organisations and government research organisations. Physicians taking jobs under State 30 or federal government agency waivers based on serving underserved communities are exempt from the H-1B cap.

One of the highlights that makes this visa so desirable is that, unlike many other nonimmigrant visa categories, it is a "dual intent" visa. This means that a visa will not be denied simply because an individual has intentions to become a permanent resident.  The applicant does not have to show his liquid and fixed assets as justification to return to India.  The assumption is that if for some reason the permanent residency petition in future is denied, the person would still have the intention to return home.

Thus, assuming the applicant meets all of the statutory requirements for the H-1B visa, the main reason it would be denied is if the consular officer feels there is good reason to believe the applicant will not comply with the terms of the visa or the employer's credentials are in doubt. 

Numerous cases have been reported where fraudulent employers presenting themselves as consultants and promising jobs in the US prepare 'artificial' jobs and attempt to convince Visa Officers through the applicant about 'so called' genuine job.  Such situations have often resulted in application going in for long or unending administrative processing under Section 221(g) and the applicant lose precious time and money in the process. 

Another advantage to the H-1B category is that the employer does not need to demonstrate that there is a shortage of qualified US workers and, consequently, a labor certification process can be avoided. Aside from documenting that the position offered is in a specialty occupation and that the employee has the appropriate credentials for the job, the employer need only verify that the H-1B worker is being paid the prevailing wage for the work being performed and that employment of a foreign worker is not harming conditions for US workers.

Non-graduates may be employed on an H1B visa where they can claim to be 'graduate equivalent' by virtue of twelve or more years' experience in the occupation. Positions that are not 'specialty occupation', or for which the candidate lacks the qualifications/experience for an H-1B visa, may be filled using an H-2B visa. The disadvantage of the H-2B visa is that it requires 'labor certification' - an expensive and time consuming process that involves extensive advertising of the position, and satisfying the authorities that there are no US-workers available to do the job.

New H-1B legislation requires certain employers, called 'H-1B dependent employers' to advertise positions in the USA before petitioning to employ H-1B workers for those positions. H-1B dependent employers are defined as those having more than 15% of their employees in H-1B status (for firms with over 50 employees - small firms are allowed a higher percentage of H1B employees before becoming 'dependent').

Step one for H-1B visa thus is to locate a good genuine employer.  This could be done in various ways.  Explore international placement bureaus, recruitment agents, your own friends/contacts/relatives in the US who could help locate one and the World Wide Web which is the biggest source of information on employers. 

Web sites such as http://www.nostops.org/; http://www.h1bsponsors.com/; http://www.h1base.com/ are some of the web sites where you register yourself by paying certain fees and use their sources to communicate with possible employers in the US by placing your resume.  Nostops.org is an Indian website operated from India and could be a better bet to start with whereas the others would want remittance for registration in US dollars.     

You have to be aware and beware of body shoppers or scamsters who give false hopes, charge advanced hefty fees when there is no guarantee of a job.

Procedure 

The procedure of filing for an H-1B visa petition is a three-step process and this is usually done by the attorney of the visa sponsoring company:

~ Verification and approval of the company by the Dept of Labor to file an H-1B petition on behalf of the candidate. (Qualify to be paying the Prevailing Wage Requirements, that they won't displace any domestic workers, show good faith in hiring practices, etc) 

~ Verification and approval of the candidate by getting the transcripts of the candidate from overseas evaluated as per the minimum standards required to do the particular job for which the H-1B petition is filed. (Educational evaluation based on the applicant's education and work experience, awards, performance letters, etc) - This is done by the World Evaluation Services, which evaluates the foreign degrees as per the US standards.

~ Actual filing of the petition, which includes collecting documentation of both above and including the full non-refundable fees for filing the H-1B petition (which has to be paid in full). The company pays the entire amount of the H-1B petition filing fees upfront to the USCIS to receive grant of an H-1B petition approval for the H-1B aspirant.

Interaction with Customers - Some useful tips

1. Do not write "the same" in an email - it makes little sense to them.
Example - I will try to organize the project artifacts and inform you of
the same when it is done. This is somewhat an Indian construct.
It is better written simply as: I will try to organize the project
artifacts and inform you when that is done

2. Do not write or say, "I have some doubts on this issue"
The term "Doubt" is used in the sense of doubting someone - we use this
term because in Indian languages (such as Tamil), the word for a "doubt"
and a "question" is the same.
The correct usage (for clients) is: I have a few questions on this issue

3. The term "regard" is not used much in American English. They usually
do not say "regarding this issue" or "with regard to this".
Simply use: "about this issue".

4. Do not say "Pardon" when you want someone to repeat what they said.
The word "Pardon" is unusual for them and is somewhat formal.

5. Americans do not understand most of the Indian accent immediately -
They only understand 75% of what we speak and then interpret the rest.
Therefore try not to use shortcut terms such as "Can't" or "Don't". Use
the
expanded "Cannot" or "Do not".

6. Do not use the term "screwed up" liberally. If a situation is not
good, it is better to say, "The situation is messed up". Do not use
words such as "shucks", or "pissed off".

7. As a general matter of form, Indians interrupt each other constantly
in meetings - DO NOT interrupt a client when they are speaking over the
phone, there could be delays - but wait for a short time before
responding.

8. When explaining some complex issue, stop occasionally and ask "Does
that make sense?". This is preferrable than "Do you understand me?"

9. In email communications, use proper punctuation. To explain
something, without breaking your flow, use semicolons, hyphens or
parenthesis.
As an example: You have entered a new bug (the popup not showing up) in
the defect tracking system; we could not reproduce it - although, a
screenshot would help.
Notice that a reference to the actual bug is added in parenthesis so
that the sentence flow is not broken. Break a long sentence using such
punctuation.

10. In American English, a mail is a posted letter. An email is
electronic mail. When you say "I mailed the information to you", it
means you sent an actual letter or package through the postal system.
The correct usage is: "I emailed the information to you"

11. To "prepone" an appointment is an Indian usage. There is no actual
word called prepone.
You can "advance" an appointment.

12. In the term "N-tier Architecture" or "3-tier Architecture", the word
"tier" is NOT pronounced as "Tire". I have seen many people pronounce it
this way.
The correct pronunciation is "tea-yar". The "ti" is pronounced as "tea".

13. The usages "September End", "Month End", "Day End" are not
understood well by Americans. They use these as "End of September", "End
of Month" or "End of Day".

14. Americans have weird conventions for time - when they say the time
is "Quarter Of One", they mean the time is 1:15. Better to ask them the
exact time.

15. Indians commonly use the terms "Today Evening", "Today Night". These
are not correct; "Today" means "This Day" where the Day stands for
Daytime. Therefore "Today Night" is confusing. The correct usages are:
"This Evening", "Tonight". That applies for "Yesterday Night" and
"Yesterday Evening". The correct usages are: "Last Night" and "Last
Evening".

16. When Americans want to know the time, it is usual for them to say,
"Do you have the time?" Which makes no sense to an Indian.

17. There is no word called "Updation". You update somebody. You wait
for updates to happen to the database. Avoid saying "Updation".

18. When you talk with someone for the first time, refer to them as they
refer to you - in America, the first conversation usually starts by
using the first name. Therefore you can use the first name of a client.
Do not say "Sir". Do not call women "Madam".

19. It is usual convention in initial emails (particularly technical) to
expand abbreviations, this way: We are planning to use the Java API for
Registry (JAXR). After mentioning the expanded form once, subsequently
you can use the abbreviation.

20. Make sure you always have a subject in your emails and that the
subject is relevant. Do not use a subject line such as HI.

21. Avoid using "Back". Instead of "Back" Use "ago". Back is the worst
word for American. (For Days use "Ago", for hours use "before")

22. Avoid using "but" instead of "But" Use "However".

23. Avoid using "Yesterday" hereafter use "Last day".

24. Avoid using "Tomorrow" hereafter use "Next day".

Effective Teamwork

Smart managers don't repeat mistakes

There was a very famous guy called 'T'. Wilson, who really was the eminence grise of the Boeing airplane company for many years. In fact, he was the guy who, in the postwar period, built up the Boeing airplane company.

When I got to know T Wilson -- he was a lot older than I was -- I was lucky enough one day to be having a drink with him. He was the guy who brought the Boeing 707 to the marketplace, which was really the first highly successful commercial jet airplane. Like a lot of other things, the Brits got there first but simply never turned it into a serious business venture. These guys in Boeing did it. But as a result, the demand for the aircraft rose so quickly that they were buying immense volumes of aluminum, which was a major piece of the material for the construction of the aircraft.

I was asking him, when he looked back over his career, what were the most difficult times he'd had in dealing with the investment communities and the analysts of the New York markets. He reminded me of a situation that I'd heard about briefly but didn't really understand.

They were buying such big volumes of aluminum at the time, and the lead time on taking an order and delivering an aircraft was three to four years - depending on the market supply and demand - so prices fluctuated violently. It's very similar to the oil situation today, actually. So you could sell an aircraft and assume a price for aluminum of X dollars per kilo, but by the time you actually came to buy it, it could have changed dramatically, either upward or downward.

T Wilson said to me, "We just had to find a way of managing this risk and getting it under control." He said, "I called the guy who was the chief buyer and said, 'Look, for these reasons, we have to find a way of stabilizing the risks in this program, and we think we need to look at some form of hedging policy.'"

Well, this was in the 1960s. Today, hedging policies are perfectly normal events. We hedge currencies, we hedge material prices, we hedge oil prices; but at that time it was pretty revolutionary. Anyway, this guy understood the basis of it, went out, and was effectively buying aluminum ahead of rates. The market suddenly turned against [Boeing], they lost a ton of money, and they had to go to the market and announce an exceptional loss.

T Wilson, as the chief executive of the company, had to go to all the big institutional investors in New York and explain what had happened. You start off with the investors, then you go to the analysts, and then eventually - because the analysts talk to the press - you have to talk to the press about it.

Eventually, this guy finished talking to the press. He was having lunch with a journalist, and the first thing this journalist said to him was, "I sure was sorry to hear about the loss on your hedging book on aluminum, but I sure as hell hope you fired the son of a bitch who was responsible for it." There was a bit of a pause, and I said to T. Wilson, "Well, what did you say to him?" He said, "I looked this guy straight in the eye and I said to him, `You what? And learn that lesson all over again? For sure as hell I didn't fire the guy.'"

That's a great story that tells you about how management interacts with the guys that have to do the job. It's also a lesson that tells you, in management terms, that you only have to be right 51 percent of the time to be on the right side of the curve. Here was a guy who had stood up and defended a guy who had cost the shareholders and the company an immense amount of money and kept the guy on in the belief that the guy would never, ever make that mistake again.

That always stuck in my mind, when I've had guys working for me who've made some seriously big mistakes. It's very unusual for a high-quality person - and hopefully when you put guys in these positions they are high-quality people-to make the mistake a second time around. That was another big lesson for me in this business.

TAKEAWAYS

• Everyone make mistakes, regardless of career experience, length of service or seniority. Firing someone for making a mistake maybe an error on your part. Once that person has made a mistake and realized the reasons behind it, they are highly unlikely to ever repeat their actions.
  
• Trying something new and untested can lead to mistakes, which should be accepted as part of the learning curve and used as a foundation for future projects. You may find you learn best from your failures.

(Excerpted from: Leading By Example, Lessons Learned Series.)

Tips to become a successful entrepreneur

Indian entrepreneur? These two words no more ring a surprise. While entrepreneurs are blooming across small and big towns in India the people who support them convert their dreams into reality are inceasing as well.

The Indian Angel Network is one such organisation that invests in early stage businesses of entrepreneurs who can create immense value. The members of this network have prior entrepreneurial and/or operational experience that they bring to help nurture and grow early stage businesses.

Ranjit Shastri is one such influential member of the Indian Angel Network. He co-founded PSi, Inc, an investment advisory firm incorporated in New York with an associated company in India. PSi has assisted a wide range of international investors in India, including both strategic investors and private equity firms, in identifying opportunities in India.

In the first of a series where members of the Indian Angel Network offer their tips to entrepreneurs in India, Ranjit Shastri discusses his experience and what he has learnt from it. A Get Ahead Special.

Over the past couple of decades I've observed many entrepreneurs in India and abroad, and have seen some of them achieve great success and others stagnate or sink into oblivion. I've been asked to share some of these experiences, and can also share some more recent experiences that I've had through the Indian Angel Network, India's largest and only-pan India network of individual early stage investors, which has been instrumental in kick-starting a number of ventures in India.

The tips that I've listed below are not based on anything that I've read -- in fact, numerous books have been written on the subject -- but on real experiences with people that I've met and done business with over the years. This is not a scientific or exhaustive list, but the thoughts that have come immediately to mind. I'm sure my entrepreneurial friends will add many more ideas in articles that will follow in the future.

There are three sets of issues that one must consider when thinking about how to become an entrepreneur, particularly if you are born into a middle-class family of professionals (one or more of your parents work for a large company).

The first involves getting started, leaving a safe job or career prospects and jumping into the entrepreneurial fray.

The second issue has to do with maintaining and building a viable business, successfully scaling up so that one has not just managed to 'survive' but also to grow the business and create great value for investors.

Finally, there's the issue of knowing when to move on, either by selling the business or handing over to someone who can bring new energy, skills and ideas to bear. Let's take each of these issues in turn, and examine some of the things you can do to address them.

Getting started

Tip #1: Don't worry about not being courageous enough for the uncertainty of the business world, as being an entrepreneur has nothing to do with courage. People who observe entrepreneurs leaving a secure job and taking the plunge into the unknown sometimes marvel at their courage (or foolhardiness).

Most successful entrepreneurs that I've met, however, don't see themselves as particularly brave. In fact, they do a lot of homework and make contingency plans that take into account the possibility of failure.

I've met a number of entrepreneurs who have left McKinsey & Co., my first employer after business school, because they recognised that becoming a director at McKinsey is not guaranteed for even some of the hardest working, smartest people that you come across in the business world.

Becoming a director at any large organisation has much to do with factors that are not in your control, including personal relationships and the economic cycle that the company happens to be in when promotion decisions are made. While organisations try to be fair, they operate in a world that isn't, and if you recognise that staying put is not necessarily safe you are more likely to get over the fear of venturing out.

Tip #2: Look for a big idea, and be rational.

There's no point taking a big risk if you have a small idea, and from an economic perspective, it's logical to concentrate on expected value, which means the potential value creation times the probability of actually achieving it. So if your job is 100% secure, and the chances of entrepreneurial success are only 10%, then compare your future salary against the expected future value of your venture (the 'payoff') times 10%. 

If the expected value (payoff times 10%) is more than your salary, then logically you should give it a try. However, most people are irrationally risk averse, so if the expected value is not vastly higher than their salary, they would opt for the more certain outcome.

On the other hand, people who are destined to become entrepreneurs are more likely to be sceptical about the security of their job, so they wouldn't assign a 100% probability to the so-called safe option.

Tip #3: Start small.

In Tip #2, I said it's important to think big, but for most entrepreneurs it's also important to start small. A good example is SchoolTrainer, which was started by a Delhi-based Hindi and Math tutor. He has a big idea, but has started out small (just himself).

He currently has less than 100 teachers on his panel, but expects to scale up to a thousand over the next few years. Starting small enables you to experiment, work out the bugs in your systems, and prove your idea. The discipline of a tight budget also forces small companies to do what customers ask them to do. Companies that start operations with a lot of resources often scale up too quickly, waste money and enjoy the luxury of not having to listen to customers.

Tip #4: When faced with the fear of giving up a secure job, concentrate on the equally frightening possibility of someday looking back with regret.

In other words, if you think the risk of entrepreneurship is high, consider the risk of losing a fortune by letting an opportunity slip out of your hands. Of course, explaining this to conservative family members (usually a parent or spouse) may be difficult. For some people, even a 10% chance of failure is too high to contemplate, no matter how big the potential payoff is.

A 90% chance of failure is out of the question. Conservative family members will only be convinced if you have an airtight back up plan, which leads to Tip #5.

Tip #5: Have a backup plan.

One entrepreneur I know asked his employer, a very prestigious professional services firm, for a leave of absence. This gave him time to verify that his idea had merit. He knew that if he failed (which he assumed was likely), he could always return to the relative safety of a conventional career. His friends and acquaintances thought he was gutsy, but he knew he had a safety net.

In the end, he was able to prove his idea during his leave of absence and was able confidently to convert his leave of absence into a separation. He was shrewd, not brave.

(http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2007/nov/07ranjit.htm)

How Vineet Nayar transformed HCL Tech

In 2004, when HCL founder Shiv Nadar approached Vineet Nayar, then HCL Comnet chief, to take over the reins at the floundering infotech major, Nayar refused. A year later, he accepted the offer.

But it was a tough initiation: HCL lost three valuable clients during Nayar's first week as president. HCL had ranked among India's most successful hardware companies during the 1970s and 1980s, but slipped when software services came on the ascendant.

Over the next 18 months, HCL transformed itself from a company that had been all but written-off, to an enterprise that delivered the fastest organic growth among Indian IT companies. Nayar's change management initiative was closely watched by management experts everywhere - it even appears as a case study in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review.

In conversation with Prasad Sangameshwaran, Nayar explained his strategy, emphasising that CEOs need to become servant leaders who enable change. Excerpts:

Why did you turn down the top job at HCL Technologies when it was first offered to you in 2004?

Big, bold companies do not drive innovation. I fell in love with small organisations. At HCL Comnet (the company he founded), we were able to re-engineer ourselves every two years. In a large set-up there was the danger of becoming an administration manager of a larger number of people.

Then, I was worried about not living up to the expectations of the job. Large companies are usually slow on innovation and speed. I was afraid of facing the challenge of bringing innovation and speed in a big enterprise that was very much in need of it.

So why did you take it on the next year?

I had no option. HCLites were proud of its heritage and felt bad that the company had lost its sheen and was not getting its due for what it had achieved in 30 years in the IT space. There were several talented employees with a hunger to transform HCL and there were many like me who thought it would be interesting to build upon this large opportunity.

Was there any resistance while you took over the company?

I don't think so. I was, and continue to be, one of the 45,000 HCLites. There was some scepticism, though, on the success of such radical thoughts of transformation.

How did you combat the sceptics?

Scepticism is a given with anything you do. We decided to communicate directly with all employees. It was important to meet all employees, not electronically but face-to-face, pumping the flesh.

We also communicated trust, transparency and flexibility. Whether it was communication about the current status - "this is us" - to the employees and letting them decide whether they wanted to do something about it, or communicating the early successes - all were equally important.

We needed to communicate success in 90 days. Command and control does not work when you are guiding a couple of thousand individuals. I told them that I would work as an enabler, as a servant leader. My job is defined as not a master strategist, but as a master enabler. Almost always, employees had more answers to the problems than I had.

The other most critical part was to listen. Most CEOs have talking skills and not enough listening skills. I am used to listening, perhaps because I married young (laughs). But I had the advantage of not knowing enough about the industry. So I did not preach, but listened. Younger employees' thoughts are brighter: all we needed to do was unleash their potential and channelise their energy in the right direction. A hands-off approach worked the best for the organisation.

What were some of the early concerns and challenges?

They fell in three buckets. One was with reference to our own capabilities. The challenge was about transformation and we needed significant energy and speed to transform. Second, investors, customers and the market in general had a fixed image of HCL as a company that would be difficult to change. Then, while the passionate majority in the organisation were capable of delivering at high levels, there were a critical few who were not ready to change.

Since HCL is a public, listed company, the challenge was to ensure business continuity and simultaneously transform on the run. We had to ensure that quarter-on-quarter results and the profit and revenue stories were not compromised.

That is why we funded new investments from reserves. We wanted to prove to the market that our organic business model would grow faster and that we could become the fastest growing company in the IT sector without an acquisition and we would use those proof points as a benchmark.

Now, one of our biggest achievements is that in this transformation journey, we have been the fastest growing IT company among our peers. Without compromising the year-on-year growth, we successfully launched disruptive and innovative initiatives like Employee First, 360-degree, Service + Thinking IT framework and so on.

What was the biggest problem you faced in the transformation process?

The biggest problem was that nobody took us seriously. Our investors, customers and even employees took some time to understand and believe that we as an organisation could change. We had to be disruptive in our thinking. Instead of waiting and watching their reactions, we increased communication with our employees to make them involved.

We had to make many changes internally, including in the organisational structure and the way we used to operate until then. And that could happen only with the acceptance of the people who were to implement these changes.

You had lost three clients in your first week as chief. At that stage, what prompted the decision to chase big deals?

We had to ensure that our vision was on track in 90 days. The biggest deals involving Indian IT companies then were around $10 million. Blue Ocean thinking  [competing in uncontested market space] meant we had to chase bigger deals. We pulled the best and brightest out of their current jobs and asked them to chase the top four or five big deals. The motivating factor for them was that if we won those deals, HCL would never be the same again.

Fortunately, we won three out of those five deals. When we won a project worth $330 million, the world sat up and took notice. Soon everybody in the organisation believed that the transformation could happen.

What lessons from Comnet did you implement at the parent company?

Comnet always demonstrated that the only way to do business is by swimming in blue oceans. At Comnet we reengineered our business four times in eight years so that we were often considered the pioneers offering a unique value in services. If you are not unique, no one will notice you.

The other learning I picked up was disruptive thinking. When I put my 360-degree evaluation on the Intranet within the first 90 days of taking charge at HCL Technologies, it showed that the CEO was willing to put his neck on the line. It is a simple gesture that galvanises others into thinking on similar lines. We claim to be the world's largest democracy, but while running our businesses we are dictatorial towards our employees.

Then we stretched the envelope, with me personally answering queries on our web forum called "U & I". We used a trouble ticket in our Intranet where employees could raise issues and be assured they would be addressed within a certain time frame.

Also, there were service-level agreements for solving issues, which transformed them from being citizens of an autocratic company to citizens who had a voice. Huge energy was unleashed through this initiative.

You said Comnet had reengineered itself every two years. Is it possible to do the same with a large organisation?

We aim to transform HCL Technologies three times over a five-year period. The first transformation was to demonstrate that we would be the fastest in growth with an organic growth strategy.

Then we introduced a pricing model where clients would pay us based on the effectiveness of the transaction. Now, by 2010 we target to get 50 per cent of our revenues from businesses that never existed in 2005.

If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? Why?

Well, there is one thing I would have done differently, or additionally. That is to measure the value being created during this transformation in the interface between the employee and the customer.

We are now creating a value portal for our customers to measure the same, but if possible, I would have liked to have done this from Day One of the transformation.

(http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/nov/07inter.htm)

10 secrets for everyday writing success

During my 25 year career in a variety of professional positions in both the private and public sectors, I have written literally thousands of letters and memos and hundreds of reports. If I had to boil down everything I've learned about practical day-to-day writing for both personal and business purposes into 10 key points, this would be my 'Top 10' list.

1. Preparation is the key

Do all of your research first, before you start to write. Even a letter normally requires some minor research such as making some phone calls or reviewing a file. It's also very important to prepare yourself mentally before writing. So don't sit down to write too soon. Mull it over for a while, sometimes a day or two, sometimes an hour or two, depending on the complexity of the job at hand. It's amazing how the sub-conscious mind will work on the problem 'behind the scenes' and when you finally do start writing, it will flow.

2. Always use a sample

For me, this is critical. No matter what I write, it helps tremendously if I have some visual stimulation. If I'm writing a letter I post a copy of a similar letter, or the one I'm responding to, somewhere in my direct line-of-sight. It helps me focus and keeps my mind on the subject at hand, minimising the tendency for my mind to wander. No matter what it is, I always make a point to find some previous work or a sample of work similar to what I'm doing. It really stimulates the creative writing process and increases productivity significantly.

 

3. Shorter is always better

Whether you're writing a report or a letter, look for ways to cut it down in length. Concentrate on conveying the essential message. If something you've written does not enhance the core message, or doesn't add value, consider cutting it. These days, you have to be 'short and to the point' to get your message read.

4. Use concise and appropriate language

Your letter or report should use simple, straightforward language, for clarity and precision. Use short sentences and don't let paragraphs exceed three or four sentences. As much as possible, use language and terminology familiar to the intended recipient. Do not use technical terms and acronyms without explaining them, unless you are certain that the addressee is familiar with them.

5. 'Be' your addressee

A key technique to use when writing anything is to clearly 'visualise' your audience. As you write, try to imagine in your mind's eye the specific person(s) to whom your written product is directed. I often imagine that I am sitting across the boardroom table from my addressee, trying to explain my points in person. Make an effort to see the situation from the other person's perspective. What would you be looking to see if you were the recipient of the letter or report?

6. Do the outline first

Even if it's a one-page letter, it doesn't hurt to jot down a few quick notes on the main points that you want to cover. This process forces you to think logically about exactly what you want to cover and it helps you decide in which order you will approach your subject. For a letter this is helpful. For a report, this is absolutely essential. In fact, I believe that you should force yourself to go through the entire thinking process that is required to develop a complete draft Table of Contents, before you start to write any report.

7. Write and then rewrite

No matter how much preparation I do, I always find that I can improve on the first draft. That's partly because when I'm writing that first version, my main focus is to get the essence of my thoughts down on paper. At that stage I don't worry about perfect phrasing, grammar or logic. My main mission the first time through is to make sure that I capture the critical words and phrases that form the core meaning of what I want to communicate.

8. Format is important

Whatever you are writing, make sure it looks professional. This is where proper formatting comes in. Your credibility and/or that of your organisation is on the line, with your report or letter serving as your representative. If it is not professionally formatted, it will reflect negatively on you, even if the content is good and it is well-written. Rightly or wrongly, the value of your work will diminish in people's eyes if the formatting of your document is shoddy or amateurish looking.

 

9. Read it out loud

Some people who haven't tried it may laugh when they read this, but it really works. At any point during the drafting process, but definitely at the draft final stage, read your report or letter to yourself 'out loud'. It's amazing what one picks up when they actually 'hear' their words as if they were being spoken to them as the addressee. I find this helps me the most in picking up awkward phrasing and unnecessary repetition of words or terms.

10. Check spelling and grammar

Last, but far from least, make sure you double check the spelling and grammar in your document. These days, with spell-checkers built into word processing programs there's really no excuse not to do this. Once again your document is a direct reflection of you and/or your organisation. If it is riddled with spelling mistakes and obvious grammatical errors, it will appear unprofessional and your credibility will suffer. Watch out for the words that sound the same but have completely different meanings that a spell-checker won't pick up. Words such as 'four' and 'fore', for example. Your final read-through out loud should catch any of these.

Whether you're writing a letter, a memorandum, a report or an essay, follow the above tips and you won't go wrong.

 

(http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2007/nov/02writing.htm, Shaun Fawcett is webmaster of the popular www.WritingHelp-Central.com. He is also the author of several best selling 'writing toolkit' eBooks. All of his eBooks and his world famous f-r-e-e Writing Success Course are available at www.WritingHelpTools.com.)