The Hindu Business Line : Make your Web site applicant-friendly

What job hunters usually look for is a good fit, and the Net-savvy among them try learning a lot about a potential employer from the Web site. “I can tell a lot about how a company regards its employees from its Web presence, particularly the parts designed to attract applicants. But so many corporate recruiting sites don’t seem to understand that the applicant is the customer in the relationship,” reads a quote in Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting & Orienting New Employees by Diane Arthur, fourth edition ( www.phindia.com).

She cites a finding of Steve Pollock, president of WebFeet Inc, that “half of job hunters became more interested in working for a company after visiting its Web site, while one in four lost interest in a company based on their Web site.”

Making your site applicant-friendly is not difficult, advises Arthur. A few helpful tips are: “Make job listings easily accessible, keep postings current, avoid slow-to-load images, keep screening questions simple and to a minimum, allow submission options, offer a resume builder tool, enable applicants to register to receive updates about new jobs, and provide a calendar of career-related events.”

Once established, maintaining a career site is crucial, the author reminds. “Few things prove more irritating for applicants than sorting through old listings and dated information,” please note. “And to keep from appearing complacent, give the site a face-lift every six months or so.”

Supportive counsel.

Think education with IT

Charles Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’ (1891) begins with this: “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” The speaker is Thomas Gradgrind, the schoolmaster, “A man of realities. A man of fact and calculations,” as Dickens would describe him.

In terms of pedagogy we have come a long way since the times of Gradgrind, writes Alan Pritchard in Effective Teaching with Internet Technologies ( www.sagepublications.com). There is a recognition that for different children, different subject matter and different times of day, even different approaches to teaching are required, he adds. “This is partly owing to a recognition that there is indeed more to a broad and balanced education than the acquisition of facts.”

ICT (information and communication technology) is a powerful tool when it is used as an aid to learning and when it has a supporting, not a central, role in the process of classroom learning, argues Pritchard. A quote of A. Ellis aptly cited in the book is this: “Thinking about computer’s role in education does not mean thinking about computers, it means thinking about education.”

Therefore, teachers need to carefully investigate ‘the integrity and usefulness of individual Web sites’ before using them as classroom resources, Pritchard urges.

Educative material.

Intellectual supply chain

By becoming an extension of industrial supply chain, China is fast turning out to be an adjunct to the rest of the world, even as India is morphing into ‘an intellectual supply chain’, writes Shashank Mani in India: A Journey Through A Healing Civilization ( www.harpercollins.com). “The chances of China outdoing the industrial West in manufacturing are less likely. There is a greater chance of India emerging as a front-runner in the emerging knowledge and service-based industries,” he predicts.

For the latter to happen, however, we should utilise and draw from our existing expertise in this area, insists Mani. The growth in knowledge-based industry is not limited to IT-related areas alone but extends to biotechnology and to business services, he explains. “The common requirement in these emergent industries is to use intellect, creativity and innovation, not merely massive factories. That is India’s passport to success, and that is also our main differentiating factor and strategy to compete with China.”

Reassuring thoughts woven into the diary of a train journey!
E-business and retail

How does Dell sell PCs using e-business? It sells directly to customers after receiving their order, thus eliminating distributor and retailer margins; and it collects payment within days of sale, while operating with phenomenally low levels of inventory and negative working capital. Negative because Dell receives payment for its PCs about 30 days before it pays its suppliers for their components, explains Supply Chain Management, third edition, by Sunil Chopra, Peter Meindl and D. V. Kalra ( www.pearsoned.co.in).

What are the takeaways from the Dell example for other PC manufacturers, who operate through the traditional routes of distribution? Incorporate the Net into the existing network, suggest the authors. “The PC manufacturer should use an e-business to sell new products or customised PC configuration whose demand is hard to forecast and let the retail channel sell standard configurations whose demand is easier to forecast.”

The book, which is based on “a course on supply chain management taught to second year MBA students at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University”, advises manufacturers to introduce new models on the Internet. “As demand for some of them grows, these models should be added to the retail channel.”

Another option, according to the authors, is to introduce recommended configurations of new models at retail stores, while selling all customised configurations on the Internet. “Retailers can be allowed to participate in the e-business by having kiosks where customers can configure models of their choice.” It is important that traditional PC manufacturers give retailers a chance to participate in any e-business to avoid damaging existing channel relationships, caution Chopra et al.

Tailpiece

“Whenever they count 123, I remember…”

“The nuke debate?”

“No, the good, old Lotus!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in

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