……………….

For two years in a row, Kwame Yankson, a business school student at the University of Virginia, has sent a flurry of résumés to investment banks. He has cold-called Wall Street recruiters. And he has landed coveted interview slots.

But the difference in the outcome was stark. Last year, Yankson was turned down for summer internships by about 15 recession-plagued banks and ended up working for an education non profit organisation. This year, as he sought a full-time job, Wells Fargo quickly gave him the response he wanted: When can you start?

“The banks this year kept saying, ‘It’s a good year,’ ‘We just approved a lot of hiring,’ ‘The market is clearing up,’” Yankson said. “It was a completely different experience.”

With banks climbing out of the recession, more business students across the country are finding banking jobs and internships, enrolling in finance clubs and going on class trips to Wall Street, universities say.

Unemployment is plaguing millions of families, and the public may still be seething about bank bailouts and eight-figure bonuses. But business students and career advisers see a job market that is quickly stabilising.

Aspiring bankers know their career choice comes at an awkward time. Ben Phelps, an MBA student at Duke who is going to work for Bank of America Merrill Lynch after graduation, was shouted at by a stranger on Wall Street during a summer internship. “A lot of people lost their savings, and I can understand those people being angry,” Phelps said. “But I wish sometimes that their anger wasn’t directed just at bankers.”

Still, he said, the public perception of banking was not a factor when he accepted the job that he calls “the reason I came to business school,” in the bank’s mergers and acquisitions division. He expects the work to be fast-paced, intellectually challenging, financially rewarding and helpful in building a career — the same reasons given by many aspiring bankers.

On a recent interview day at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, students in pinstriped suits and polished shoes waited anxiously for meetings with representatives from J.P. Morgan and BB&T Capital Markets.

The competition would be steep — with dozens of students applying for each internship — but less selective than in 2009. The number of banks interviewing at Darden this year increased 20 per cent and the number of job offers so far has risen 33 per cent, the school said.

“There’s reason for students to be optimistic,” said Tracy Handler, a spokeswoman for the MBA Career Services Council, an association of business school career advisers. “Any signs of recovery are modest. But business schools are looking ahead and seeing a light at the end of what is now a pretty short tunnel.”

A survey by the career council in December found that 39 per cent of business schools expected internship opportunities to increase this summer, while 26 per cent expected them to decrease.

At Duke University, for instance, the business school career office reported last month that the number of students with investment banking internships had doubled compared with last year. Four new banks went to Duke this year to interview, and the number of Duke students submitting résumés to banks increased 37 per cent. The number of students participating in the school’s Week on Wall Street trip also rose, to 90 from 60 last year.

“Ironically, this can be a superb time to enter banking,” said Jeff Fischer, the director of career management at the business school at the University of North Carolina, where the number of investment bankers visiting campus has risen 67 per cent since last year. “The MBA population is like the end of a whip. When cycles swing up and down, students are the ones who swing up and down the most in terms of employment.”

Though some banks are still cautious, business school counsellors are telling students to be persistent. Banks under-hired during the market collapse, the counsellors say, and will soon be creating more full-time positions than former interns can fill.

Top banks declined to release hiring statistics for this article, and many business schools said it was too early to predict hiring results because job offers can continue through the spring. But in interviews with two dozen students and administrators at several business schools across the country, there was growing optimism about banking jobs.

But many students admitted a twinge of guilt about landing jobs and internships while so many classmates —and much of the country — remain unemployed.

“I feel lucky,” said Phelps, from Duke. “My timing ended up being perfect, and it could easily have not been. Lots of friends are struggling and not finding jobs.”

The speed of the turnaround in banking has not surprised Ben Bloomfield, a first-year MBA student at Darden. Business students, he said, expect cyclical markets, but know that banking will remain prestigious.

“I don’t think any business school student was disillusioned enough to think, ‘Oh, Goldman Sachs on my résumé is not going to be valuable’,” Bloomfield said. “It was more, ‘Goldman Sachs is going to come to campus, and I’m not even sure they’re going to hire anybody’.”

Source: New York Times News Service

……………

And yet companies are not exactly tripping over themselves to respond. Busy executives must make their own personal choices between the relentless pressure they feel at work and what they know they need for themselves.

Career stress, when it remains unrelieved by strong relationships and self-care, can do severe damage to both physical and emotional health. But what can someone with an eye on a top executive spot do when the demands pile up and the competition seems willing to go the extra mile?

Here are four basic strategies culled from executive coaches, counsellors and consultants who work regularly with executives who are under immense pressure.

Shape up

Executives must pay attention to their bodies with regular exercise, good nutrition, physical touch and deep breathing. It’s a business imperative to put the names and numbers of massage therapists and personal trainers right next to financial advisors in the “essential numbers” section of the address book so that they can be contacted without any difficulty.

Keep in touch

Executives must pay as much attention to their relationship balance sheet as they do to the accounts at office. A useful strategy is to ask for regular feedback from friends and family. Most over-busy, under-connected executives are shocked to find that the people at home have got tired waiting for them, leaving them either in the doghouse — perpetually — or very lonely. They haven’t figured out what cutting-edge psychological research shows: resilience on the job comes mostly from having strong, supportive relationships outside work.

Like a prayer

Medical research has found that time spent in activities such as meditation or prayer, keeps people healthy, alert and better able to concentrate at work. It’s the same in any field. When busy executives don’t pay attention to themselves, they undercut their performance, and ultimately, that of the company. As Dr Harold Bloomfield observes in his book The Power of 5: “It’s no accident that the word deadline contains the word dead; the human body is not well-suited to time-struggle.”

Laugh riot

Dr William Fry of Stanford Medical School recommends laughing 100 times a day to stay balanced and keep one’s mind clear. Most high-level career failures can be traced to the inability of harried leaders to see things in perspective and make informed judgments about what’s really important.

Burned-out executives don’t have the emotional reserves or the clarity of thought to stay ahead of challenges. Bad business and personal decisions come from the same myopic place. When executives ignore these four rules, they shortchange everyone, including their companies.

When they take time to maintain this programme, they increase their power to keep up with the competition and experience real joy in their lives.

Source: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

…………….

The US faces the prospect of a jobless recovery, with painfully slow employment growth and the economy not operating at its full potential until 2013, a top Federal Reserve official said.

The official, Janet L. Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said that a sharp increase in worker productivity was “here to stay”.

She predicted that unemployment, now at 9.7 per cent, would fall to 9.25 per cent by the end of the year and to around 8 per cent by the end of 2011. And she described the current inflation rate as “undesirably low”. The Fed has repeatedly said that it would not start to tighten credit for at least several months. When the time comes, Yellen said, the Fed will probably start by raising the interest rate it pays on bank reserves. Only after that will it gradually sell the Treasury securities and mortgage-related assets it bought to hold down long-term interest rates and support the recovery.

Markets are acutely interested in the timing and sequence of the Fed’s withdrawal of monetary stimulus, particularly after the Fed raised the rate it charges banks for short-term loans recently, a largely technical move but a crucial step toward the normalisation of lending.

Yellen, who was chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration and is one of the best-known economists among the Fed’s leaders, spoke at the University of San Diego.

Yellen offered a fairly grim outlook. Although gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of 5.7 per cent in the last quarter — the best gain in six years — the improvement was attributable to businesses reducing their inventories, rather than growth in sales, making a “V-shaped recovery” unlikely, she said.

She estimated that the economy would grow about 3.5 per cent this year and 4.5 per cent next year. Although the Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate to near zero in December 2008 and made big loans and asset purchases, Yellen said, “all in all, monetary policy can’t give the same kick to the economy that it delivered in past recoveries.” Yellen said she believed that the culprit was an increase in business efficiency and labour productivity.

“Strapped by tight credit and plummeting sales, businesses have overhauled the way they manage supply chains, inventory, production practices and staffing,” she said. “Stores don’t order merchandise unless they think they can sell it right away. Manufacturers and builders don’t produce unless they have buyers lined up. My business contacts describe this as a paradigm shift and they believe it’s permanent.”

Yellen believes that “economic slack and downward pressure on wages and prices are pushing inflation down”.

Large federal deficits have helped to buffer the economy from the financial crisis and the recession, but if they persist into the recovery, they could push interest rates up and absorb private savings that would be otherwise used in productive investments, Yellen said.

Still, she said there was “no evidence that government deficits cause high inflation in advanced economies with independent central banks, like the Fed.” If anything, Japan — which has run big deficits for years — has “suffered from persistent deflation, not inflation”.

She called the underutilisation in the American economy “the most worrisome challenge for price stability over the next few years”.

Source: New York Times News Service

By employee level, the projections are highest for the junior manager-supervisor-professional category (10.9 per cent). Among others, top executives will get 9.6 per cent, senior management 10.1 per cent, middle management 10.6 per cent and the officer cadre 10.4 per cent. All studies share this optimism.

Happy days may be here again. But it could be worthwhile looking at what companies did to hang on the people it wanted to. It is a fact of life that the people you really need are always the first to seek opportunities elsewhere while the staff you hope will resign never do. so.

The earlier Hewitt survey says the weapons in the HR manager’s armoury were:

*Career development opportunities (33 per cent of employers providing this)

*Non-cash rewards and recognition (28 per cent)

*Leadership training in employee motivation (21 per cent)

*Flexibility options (20 per cent)

*Monetary rewards for high performers (19 per cent)

*Monetary rewards for mission critical talent (15 per cent).

The monetary awards were a one-off payment and not part of the salary.

Away from the numbers, it is becoming clear that HR in India must once again start focussing on the retention of talent rather than handing out pink slips. “But this crisis, minor though it may have been compared to the problems some Western nations faced, has brought in some changes that will linger,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh.

First, though the realisation dawned on the IT and BPO industry some time ago, other more traditional industries are also discovering that jobs are not for life. This is both on the part of the employees and the employer. The trauma has really been suffered by employees, while it has been an eye-opener for employers. “Let’s put it this way,” says Singh. “Lifetime loyalty has gone. Employees are often prepared to put up with all sorts of problems and make sacrifices when they know they are not going to lose their jobs. The ultimate betrayal is the pink slip, particularly in India where there is no security net.”

Indian companies have, by and large, not sacked people; multinational subsidiaries have. They will discover later that they are creating organisations sans corporate culture; in the future, they will not be able to rely on their employees to go the extra mile.

It’s wrong, of course, to generalise. Several MNCs have been caring of their employees. In fact, some of them have treated them even better than Indian-owned companies.

“It will be forgotten as times improve,” agrees Singh. “But it will take years to get back to an era of trust.” There is no measure of productivity lost and psychological problems because of this era of insecurity.

JOB HOPPERS BOOM

- >Highest voluntary turnover rate

->India 13.8

->Australia 11

->New Zealand 10.3

->China 10.3

Source: Hewitt Asia Pacific Salary Increase Survey November 2009

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PBS (www.praxis.ac.in) currently offers a single course — a postgraduate programme in business management (PGPBM). The first batch commenced in 2007. The institute accepts the scores of management tests such as CAT, XAT, GMAT and GRE. “We have developed a weightage system to take into account the lack of uniformity among these exams,” says associate dean Charanpreet Singh. Work experience isn’t mandatory but 40 per cent students have between one and three years’ experience in BPO, KPO, engineering and other sectors.

The location of PBS should not deter prospective students because the two-year programme is residential. Currently, there is a residential hall which is home to 90 students. Every student is alloted a single room. There are separate floors for male and female students. The residential hall has table tennis and pool facilities, as well as a gym. Cricket and basketball are played on a nearby field. There are clubs, including for quiz and business specialisations such as human resources, finance, marketing and entrepreneurship.

The dining hall serves three meals a day. There is also a night canteen, which remains open till 4am. Some students of the 2007 batch started a small co-operative called Boss, which sells snacks and stationary.

The institute has facilities for medical emergencies, including a car that is available 24 hours a day. A doctor visits the campus every day.

The total cost of the two-year programme is around Rs 6.5 lakh, excluding food.

The residential requirement is, in fact, an advantage for the students. Nabila Azmatulla, a second-year student, says, “A business course without the residential component doesn’t make sense. Our learning doesn’t end when we leave the classroom; we do group projects all the time.”

The institute’s pedagogy follows the pattern of the IITs. Exams are open book, challenging the professors to frame questions that require maximum application. Presentations are very important. When the curriculum was being prepared, the educators took the guidance of industry leaders. The treasury and risk management, and retail strategic management courses were co-designed with industry leaders.

Another unique feature is the Kollaborative Klassroom (www.kk.praxis.ac.in), a website where students and professors interact after classes. This is available to the public too. Professors upload lectures, assignments, quizzes and other learning material. Students and teachers can ask questions and even post information that they want to share with others. There are groups for prospective students and alumni. “It’s like our own Facebook,” says Singh.

Keeping up with the times, the entire Praxis campus is Wi-Fi enabled. The institute offers a course on Web 2.0 strategy, a web-based marketing platform, which is not offered by most B-schools. “We want to prepare students for the next era,” says Anindra Haldar, a professor.

Praxis students have bagged plum jobs in companies such as Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and KPMG. Placements are mostly outside Calcutta. Last year, there was a foreign summer internship. But final placements have been only in India so far. Vinay Joshi, an alumnus of the 2007 batch, says, “I have reached the position of assistant brand manager so fast because of Praxis.” Budhaditya Banerjee, a student, says, “The faculty members are leaders in the industry. Good contacts lead us to good placements.”

Despite everything, Praxis does have a few drawbacks. It is not approved by the AICTE. The institute is planning to introduce evening classes for executives, and the location may prove to be a problem.

Nevertheless, people at Praxis are undaunted. “AICTE approval? How does our infrastructure say anything about the quality of education?” asks Singh. “Students who come here are aware and take a risk because they are different.”

Vital Statistics

WHAT IS IT? A business school offering a postgraduate programme in management

WHO’S THE BOSS? Srinivas Govindrajan is the dean

Where is it? Bakrahat Road, P.O. Rasapunja, 24-Parganas (South), Calcutta-700104

pros :-Web-based student support, courses and faculty

Cons: Not AICTE approved, location

Source: The Telegraph ( Kolkata, India)

……..
The NIIT University (NU) is a not-for-profit institution sponsored by NIIT Limited. Located in the National Capital Region at Neemrana in Rajasthan, it inherits NIIT’s 28 years of rich experience, global know-how and leadership in the IT education sector.

NU (www.niituniversity. in) is a government recognised private university that offers BTech, MTech and PhD programmes in computer science and engineering (CSE), information and communication technology (ICT), biotechnology (BT), bioinformatics, educational technology and business management (MBA). It plans to introduce many new courses and academic areas in the coming few years with an aim to “help students build great careers” in emerging areas.

The courses are delivered by a team of “academic luminaries” supported by a “leadership team” that includes eminent personalities from academia, industry, healthcare, energy and environment, journalism, performing arts and so on. The curricula are industry linked and career oriented.

The university is equipped with state-of-the-art technology for teaching and research. It offers merit-based scholarships to the top 15 per cent of enrolled BTech students. The amount is equivalent to full or part of the tuition fees. Admission forms are available online or can be obtained from the Admission Office, NIIT University, 8 Balaji Estate, Kalkaji, New Delhi-110019.

Eligibility (BTech in CSE, ICT, BT):-

BTech admissions (CSE and ICT) are based on Class X (17 per cent weightage) and XII (17 per cent weightage) board exams, rank in JEE / AIEEE (33 per cent weightage, whichever is higher), and a personal interview (33 per cent weightage). For biotechnology, aspirants must crack the entrance exam of the university (33 per cent weightage).

Plus Two toppers of all boards are invited to apply for direct admission with scholarship without going through the process applicable to other aspirants.

Entrance exam:-

The NU online exam for biotechnology will be held on June 19. It is of one-hour duration and consists of objective-type questions. There is no negative marking (see website for course details).

Source: The Telegraph ( Kolkata, India)

That was up from $17.4 billion for 2008. The tally, which is based largely on personal income tax receipts, provides a signpost for what has been one of the most controversial bonus seasons in Wall Street history.

For New York, the rapid return of big paydays at banks — a development that has prompted an outcry from many ordinary Americans — is something of an embarrassment of riches, since bigger bonuses mean more money for the public coffers.

The comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, acknowledged the divide between the financial industry and other professions, but said that the financial industry’s new prosperity would ultimately trickle down to the rest of the New York economy. His office estimated that the industry could exceed $55 billion in profits last year.

“The key thing now is, do we all benefit?” DiNapoli said at a news conference.

The 2009 bonus payouts trailed the record $25.6 billion awarded in 2005, when the housing bubble was inflating and the stock market was flying high. But DiNapoli and pay experts said the total value of 2009 bonuses was far larger than DiNapoli’s estimate, since many banks paid bonuses in the form of deferred stock, which was not immediately taxable, rather than cash.

While the comptroller’s office estimates that bonuses were up 17 per cent from 2008, Alan Johnson, a Wall Street compensation consultant, said the payouts were in reality about 30 per cent higher.

“For the city of New York and the state, this is good news,” Johnson said.

After the billions in taxpayer bailouts, the numbers highlight the divide between Wall Street — where the recovery has been stronger than DiNapoli’s office had expected a year ago — and the rest of America, where growth is slow and unemployment remains high.

But even as pay recovers, the switch to stock awards from cash is hitting the amount of taxes flowing to the state because bankers do not have to pay taxes on their deferred awards immediately, although some choose to do so. DiNapoli said the dent in tax revenues was worth it if the result was better behaviour on Wall Street and an avoidance of the unsustainable “highs and lows all of us went through”.

Even so, the comptroller’s report said, the rise in bonuses added an extra $600 million to the state’s coffers over a year ago, and an extra $75 million to the city’s.

As to the question of when the rest of the economy would benefit, he said that previous studies found that for every job created in the securities industry, three jobs were created elsewhere in the state’s economy.

Employment on Wall Street fell by 31,500 jobs between November 2007 and August last year. But since then, the industry had begun to recover, if only weakly, creating 3,900 new jobs through December, the comptroller said.

The report issued recently found that compensation at the biggest brokers rose faster than at smaller institutions. Compensation at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the investment banking operations of JPMorgan Chase rose 31 per cent last year.

The average taxable bonus across the industry rose to $123,850.

Source: New York Times News Service

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IndiaSkills is in good company. IndiaCan, another such endeavour between education company Educomp Solutions Ltd and the UK’s Pearson, the world’s largest education services provider, has forayed into vocational education and training (VET). It plans to build a national network of more than 600 vocational training centres.

And Career Launcher, a higher education services provider, has tied up with the UK-based Learning and Skills Network (LSN) for “training its trainers” at over 200 new VET centres. Last but not least, international human resources provider Ma Foi Randstad is offering vocational programmes in retail, sales, information technology and business process outsourcing across India.

All these symbolise the sudden flurry of VET activity in the country. With the recent government emphasis on the development of skills — the goal is to have a skilled workforce of 500 million by 2022 — top private education providers are drawing up ambitious plans to impart employment-oriented skills to millions of people. What’s more, they are also tying up with international trainers to turn India into a global talent pool.

“We need both government and private players in VET to turn India into the ‘world’s largest pool of trained manpower’,” says K. Pandia Rajan, managing director, Ma Foi Randstad.

Adds Saugat Mukherjee, regional director (east), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), “The government has taken significant steps to convert the demographic dividend into a global leadership advantage, and this includes the establishment of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).”

Launched in November 2009, the NSDC is a unique public-private partnership with a mandate to foster private initiatives in order to bridge the skills gap in high growth sectors (see box: Talent Crunch).

“It’s heartening to see that we have awakened to the need of VET,” says Anup Sinha, professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. “Thousands of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) that were formed decades ago have failed to deliver the skills required by the new economy.”

Commenting on this, Pandia Rajan says, “Everything is tangled in bureucracy vis-a-vis the ITIs. Had they been able to develop employibility skills among the rural youth, the latter wouldn’t have been lured into insurgency and terrorism.”

But bureaucratic hurdles, poor infrastructure and outdated curriculum are not the only reasons why the ITIs failed, feels Sinha — the poor perception of VET among Indians is also to blame.

“Blue collar and ‘skilled’ work is not ‘respectable’, and this notion steers people to seek higher education,” Sinha adds.

Agrees Hari Menon, CEO of IndiaSkills. “Our biggest roadblock is our mindset. Indians aspire to acquire degrees, not skill sets,” he says.

Deputy chairman of Pearson India Khozem Merchant explains the pressing need for vocational training. “To continue the growth story, India needs to focus on both services and manufacture. Look at how China has transformed itself into a global manufacturing hub. It’s time Indians learnt to value craftsmanship skills,” he says. Too many people are chasing expensive degrees in business management, which doesn’t always make them employable, he adds.

The nation’s growing economy is constantly throwing up challenges in the form of new jobs that did not exist when the ITIs came up in the 1950s. That’s why private companies such as Educomp, Career Launcher and Ma Foi Randstad have been roped in.

“In addition to traditional modules in carpentry, masonry and plumbing, we offer courses in air-conditioning and refrigeration mechanics,” says Arindam Lahiri, director of Career Launcher. “We are helping upgrade the ITIs as well as open new VET centres.”

IndiaSkills too is poised to offer programmes in skills proficiency. These range from electricals and painting to video editing and phone banking.

“We lay emphasis on soft skills training, keeping in mind emerging areas such as banking, finance, IT and retail,” says Sharad Talwar, CEO of IndiaCan.

Kalyan Kar, CEO of the Calcutta-based IT company Acclaris India, too feels the importance of soft skills in the hard world of business. “It’s not just proficiency in English, there’s a big shortage in skills such as negotiation and presentation as well.”

According to CII’s Mukherjee, soft skills are most essential in the present situation because India needs to make its human resources globally competitive.

“Millions of skilled workers in the age group of 16-40 will be required globally in the next 25 years. And India can play a major role here,” sums up Nikhil Indrasenan, head of Ma Foi Academy, a career training division.

WORKFORCE SNAPSHOT

To tap the industrial boom and keep the growth story alive, a multi-collar workforce is required

● White collar: Salaried professionals such as pilots, doctors, IT professionals, lawyers, and employees in administrative or clerical positions

● Grey collar: Knowledge workers, not only for information and communication technology skills, but also such soft skills as problem solving, analytical skills, and effective communication skills

● Blue collar: A member of the working class who performs manual  labor  and earns an hourly wage. Work may involve factory work, building and construction trades, law enforcement, mechanical work, maintenance, technical installations or the service sector

● Rust collar: Skilled workers at the grassroots level (construction, agriculture and related fields). This segment covers the majority of the Indian population and comprises school dropouts with no employable skills.

Source: Skills Development Inititaive by Confederation of Indian Industry

………….

Here are some of the common types :

Sound ’’ fury
The screamer boss seems to think that he will get his way if he raises his voice to an unconscionable level. How does a screamer end up as a boss? Some clueless hiring managers equate screaming with managerial skills. All in all, screamers just want to know that they’re being heard, and they want recognition. If you can get along with your screamer boss, and gain his respect and trust, perhaps you can help guide him to lower tones.

Fear factor :-
People do what a “fearsome” boss says because they’re afraid of him, which actually encourages further intimidation. He always threatens, and he constantly follows through with that threat in order to keep his employees acquiescent. This boss has a high turnover rate as he fires employees to keep up the fear factor, and good employees leave him, refusing to work for such an ogre. A fearsome boss cannot last. Eventually, he will burn out every employee, and an organisation’s bottom line cannot sustain the costs involved.

The manipulator
Also known as the Machiavellian boss, this type is extremely intelligent and one of the most dangerous. The manipulator boss is highly focussed, very motivated, and always has a secret plan. He looks at people as a means to an end. The world is a giant pyramid and the apex is his. People he touches or runs over on the way to the top are casualties he writes off. If you work for a manipulator, watch your back. Your best bet is to be open and honest with him. Volunteer information. Your boss, who has long forgotten what truth is, will be left impressed by it.

Busy bee :-
He is someone who impulsively demands control over situations and then cuts off your answer in two minutes because he doesn’t have the time to discuss it. He frequently asks you to write reports on your progress, but will rarely remember that he’s asked. The two-minute boss constantly gives the impression that he is way too busy to bother with details. His head is always somewhere else — somewhere more important. Working for this boss is an exercise in the art of speaking concisely. Try to fit everything you have to say in a two-minute time frame, and see what happens.

Power crazy :-
He is a true megalomaniac. You’ll notice the engraved gold plate on his office door, desk, and chair proclaiming his rank. He might take outrageous liberties like having an employee clean his car. When you question him, he’ll just point to the gold plates. Rest assured that his cloak of power hides great incompetence. How to get along with a god boss? Humour him. Follow his rules, and create the illusion you’re doing things his way. Remember, he’ll never control your mind.

Mr Bumble:-
The bumbling boss is the dunce of the bosses. The best way to deal with a bumbling boss is to help him get promoted. When they get promoted, they are notorious for promoting people underneath them. Besides, sooner than later, executives will see your boss for the dunce that he is, and he’ll be shipped off somewhere else.

Source: The Telegraph ( Kolkata, India)

The cost of fame is $18.95. If you want it second hand, you can get it cheaper at $12.89. It’s not the real thing, of course. What’s going for the price of an upmarket haircut is the book Fame 101.

Written by Jay and Maggie Jessup, Fame 101 is “the sexiest non-fiction book for 2010”. It tells you all about “powerful personal branding for amazing success”. What does it take to become an Oprah Winfrey? Why is John Travolta, a late-middle-aged, overweight guy, one of America’s sexiest men, in the same class as our own Shashi Tharoor?

Says Maggie Jessup: “If there were a Fame School, where professionals learn to package, market, and roll out their expertise, Fame 101 would be the textbook for every course. As authors we try to give the readers a complete education in personal branding, thus the college-course sounding title.”

Fame 101 is not all about actors and stand-up comics. It is targeted at politicians and professionals too. Everyone wants his 15 minutes of glory; this book tells you how to make it last longer. Many CEOs make it to the top because of management skills or sheer nepotism. But they then find it’s charisma that counts. The book has lessons for women: don’t try to look too young or too fashionable and your hair is where it really matters. A bad hair day can be ruinous for your career if it becomes a bad hair week. It may even be better to be bald than bizarre. Bald men, meanwhile, can get by; some even look sexy. But beware of the toupee. It’s trouble, particularly if it falls off during a meeting.

Does all this have any implications for the regular office-goer, the man or woman who has no particular ambition of becoming the rage of the age? Fame doesn’t mean the world has to know you. In fact, it is often more important to be an icon of your environment. These are the people who are well adjusted. The folks who make it to top-of-mind status without having the necessary skills and abilities are actually sick men. How often have you heard that the advertising industry is made up of frauds? People there think you have to differentiate yourself in a myriad of weird ways to be thought creative and stand out from the herd. Why do most politicians seem to lack brains?

Can you acquire “fame” in the workplace ?

There is a word of warning, however. “Stay in line with office rules and policies to ensure you don’t get your 15 minutes of fame for the wrong reasons. Wearing provocative clothing to the office may make you popular around the water cooler, for example, but can have a negative impact on your professional reputation.

“True fame is when your colleagues in a different city know about you and react positively when you are heading there,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “Notoriety is when they expect you to bring not a new work culture but humour in the workplace. Would you rather be change agent or clown?”

HOW TO ACQUIRE FAME:-

• Spearhead or manage a campaign that will earn revenue, boost your company’s brand recognition or save the company money

• Go out of your way to help colleagues when you can. Arrive early and stay late to offer assistance during busy periods or when the team is busy with an important project

• Provide excellent customer service if you work with the public

• Stand out for your mediation skills

• Participate in an after-hours activity that will also earn you some positive press.

Source: eHow.com