To add to our own 5 Steps to Success using Linkedin, my friend Yash pointed me to Guy Kawasaki’s list titled 10 ways to use Linkedin by Guy Kawasaki. It’s been compiled in to a pretty PPT on Slideshare.

PS: Check our list of Internet Tools for the Workplace.

• The Video Player at Howcast. I’d recommend you to check a video made by Howcast Studios.
• Warholizer, Motivator and other editing tools for digital photos at BigHugeLabs.
• The uber-cool UI of t-shirt search engine ShirtSeek.com.
• Cric Chat on Cricbuzz which makes following cricket on the site much like watching cricket at a pub compared to the plain-vanilla experience dished out on other cricket sites.
• Phulki, the Hindi/Tamil music search engine – It outclasses guruji.com and in.com with a cleaner and more intuitive design – Phulki uses the same browser window for music search and play without allowing the search to interfere with the continuous play of music.

The online recruitment business in India is sure to see some serious action soon. SimplyHired is going international and India is part of their expansion plan. While, it does not directly hurt Naukri or Monster, this is the best time for them to walk in and make an impact especially because of the forecasted shift in the jobseeker’s online behaviour. During the downturn, jobseekers will start using the job search feature rather than uploading their resume and waiting for recruiters to call.

Keep yourself updated to keep your career on the right track with yet another Workosaur Linkfest by Yash.

1. Hate social networks? Sick of people poking you on Facebook and asking for recommendations on LinkedIn. Suck it up! Your network will soon be your be a Job Qualification.
2. Marshal Goldsmith answers 2 relevant career questions on the Harvard Blog. a) Do you have any advice for someone who is just getting started in the stressful workforce? b. How to Overcome Discrimination and Get the Promotion You Want? The question was asked by an Afrian American woman in the workforce, but the response is just as relevant for anyway facing discrimination.
3. Anne Holland on how to survive and flourish despite marketing layoffs?
4. Sylvia Ann Hewlett on how the financial sector is maintaining gender diversity in tough times?
5. Too much competition among workers causes jealousy/envy among employees and reduces workplace productivity – University of Notre Dame Study.

This is a guest post by Online Marketing Specialist – Yash Asher.
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What do you do when you want to impress at work? You make a PPT. PPT files unlike a Word document are easy to navigate; they can be peppered with cool visuals and multimedia in the forms of images, videos, graphs and more. With the help of these you can really drive through your ideas and make a great impression.

Yet when it comes to selling ourselves, we still use the archaic word document CVs. One company is out to change all that – VisualCV.com.

A typical VisualCV looks like this (the founder Philip Merrick’s CV).

Some features we like:

• Add videos – a lot of what is judged in the interview is taken care of right here. If you get called for an interview after someone has seen your video on VisualCV, you have pretty good grasp on the job.
• Images- Pictures do speak a thousand words. They are far more impactful than the few words in bold.
• Graphs – Yes you can add these too.. what better way to impress than all lines in the right direction on a graph.
• PDF – For those who still need a document to file, VisualCV provides a PDF export form, and it looks really cool.
• Document Repository – A visual CV account allows you to create a document repository and upload and link documents and images to your visual CV
• Link – I know these are easy to add to any document, but we rarely do. Visual CV asks for these and presents them prominently.

The complete list of features can be found here.

As of now I don’t think too many companies will accept this as the only and official CV submission. The best thing to do would be to create you VisualCV and add links to your CV, Blog, social media profile etc.. It is also a great to impress when you want to network and works in any professional setting where you want o make an impact.

Why should the job seeker be the only one with a CV?
Companies can make CVs to attract the right talent. A good option for startups. They also have services to help you get started and manage recruitment. The good news, many of the basic services can be accessed free of charge. A complete list of features for companies is here.

PS: Check our list of Internet Tools for the Workplace.

This is a guest post by Online Marketing Specialist – Yash Asher.
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Many of us have a dream company that we would like to work for. Getting the right person’s attention requires some serious networking and even then there is a fair element of chance.

Now it seems there is one more way out, some never say die souls are using their Facebook connections to help them out and they are not shy to advertise themselves, through Facebook ads.
Read more about it here.

Now I thought I would give it a shot myself to see how much it would cost. I mean come on, I never saw a newspaper ad for “Job wanted” or newspaper ads that look like Resumes right! That just costs too much!

Here are the results…

I can reach my target, 160 or so people from the top investment banks in the country (may not be the best time, but that is where I want to go…)

How much does it cost you?
For a relatively small price of about $25 (about Rs.1250/-), you can reach the right target audience about 100 times over. Or get each of the 100+ target audience to click you ad about 5 times.
There are very obvious risks, but it is definitely worth a shot if you want to really stand out!

Competition for workosaur.com is coming. Check this link.

A pre-launch research amongst senior professionals revealed the following:
1. 76% of those interviewed were not comfortable with putting up their resume on Naukri and Monster. They feel that the resume ends up in the hands of their HR department and strains relationships with the existing employer. (This is not surprising because because Naukri and Monster sell subscriptions of its Resume Database.)
2. 69% of those interviewed had found their jobs through their alumni community or yahoogroup – postings which were not found through Naukri or Monster.

These findings definitely indicated the need for a better ecosystem.

First, in case of Workosaur, I do not provide access to the resume database and so it is a more secure system for senior professionals seeking jobs.

Second, I actively source jobs from across the alumni communities and yahoogroups of top b-schools and engineering schools – and these jobs are generally not found on Naukri and Monster.

Third, if you log on to workosaur.com you would see the simplicity in the user interface – right from the search and browse feature to the forms. Users (both employers and jobseekers) don’t have to fill in more than 3-4 fields anywhere.

Lastly, usage of Workosaur is currently completely free for employers as compared to the huge amounts of money charged by Naukri and Monster.

Also, over the next 6 months you would see a host of features being launched each fortnight that will take it closer towards an optimal online recruitment solution for senior professionals.

With the recession snowballing over us, some common-sense lessons in cost-cutting are necessary to keep startups afloat. Here are some that I’ve learnt:

1. Don’t spend more than Rs. 10,000 (USD 200) for logo design. Go to 99designs.com or logoworks.com and get it done.
2. Don’t have a fetish for domain names especially ones that cost upwards of Rs. 5,000 (USD 100). There are enough and more domain names available for the standard USD 10.
3. Don’t have fancy laptops/desktops. I have worked with a company which bought Macbook Pros for managers under the pretext of creating better UI when >99% of their users are on Windows. To ensure that this did not get everyone talking, they dished out designers (way down in the hierarchy level) with iMacs. Even six months later, the designers are clueless about using these machines. So much for fantasy fulfillment.
4. Don’t dish out Blackberry phones to everyone – especially when guys are not required to do any kind of traveling.
5. Don’t rent out fancy offices. Trust me on this one. The feel-good factor of having a sea-facing office on the top-storey does not increase productivity.
6. Push your employees hard rather than downsizing just for the heck of it or decreasing their productivity with tactics like no air-conditioning for a few hours.
7. Get creative. Let the product do the marketing for you by creating unique experiences that create buzz. Use social media. Stop popping up banners across the Internet. Abandon ad networks.

While walking/jogging/running on the treadmill, I play different games around the available metrics to move from one milestone to the other. For example, I decided to do 7 km today. Till 3.2 km (2 miles), I had no problems whatsoever. Then I looked at the calorie count and it stood at 240. So I pushed myself for 250 calories. Then pushed for 3.5 km as the halfway mark. Next, I decided to play 2 fast-paced numbers on the iPod and run till they played without looking at the treadmill dashboard. Then back to the dashboard counts. Some more mind games and I finally hit 7 km. Am sure most people who use the treadmill would be using such methods to reach their final targeted distance. And it actually works. Come to think of it, I have been playing such games with my mind in academics and in my profession. Final target and achievable next steps that get you closer and closer.