Retail

• Shoppers Stop: Raheja Group retailer Shoppers Stop will open 12 flagship stores in the next three years. It will also start 4-5 new Crossword book stores this year. Owing to this, Shoppers Stop will generate job opportunities for around 1,000 people in this fiscal.
• Aditya Birla – More: Aditya Birla Retail, which runs supermarket and hypermarket chains under the More brand, will launch 18 More Megastore (hypermarkets) in two years. It will hire about 200 people on front-end for each store.
• Spencer’s RPG: RPG Group that owns Spencer’s Retail is also looking to expand over the next three years and will hire new staff for the stores.
• Pantaloon Retail India, Provogue and Titan Industries will also hire new staff as they expand their number of stores.

BPO

• Teleperformance global BPO major is to Ramp Up India Headcount in a bid to make India one of its important operation centres. Teleperformance will increase its Indian headcount to 8,000 by 2010 from current strenth of 4,500 people in India. Teleperformance has also moved to Jaipur – their third location after Gurgaon and Indore.

Other sectors

• Domino’s Pizza is planning to hire up to 1,800 new employees during this fiscal to service its new restaurants.
• Volkswagen AG plans to increase headcount from 1000 to 2,500 workers in India over the next two to three years as the company boosts production at its factory in Chakan near Pune, where it expects to reach full production capacity by 2012.

Recession is out folks – start increasing your rates …

The countries which are least affected are Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Brunei, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon where job losses are not significant.

Have you lost your jobs in recession in any country abroad? Were you forced to relocate back to India due to recession? Share your story with us by writing in the comments below.

Wipro’s chief and IT czar, Azim Premji had suggested to the Karnataka government to charge more tax from the tech pros to improve the ailing Bangalore infrastructure.From the Azim Premji’s statement all the IT Professionals got a very big shock and are in a very bad condition to face the situation of what the Azim Premji decided. Mr. Premji’s statement had made lots
of IT Professionals mind to think What’s next? Because since last 5 months IT field is in very bad condition. The software boom is not ok.Every New morning has became a new tension for them that which kind of news they are going to hear after going to office.And now the Premji’s statement again put the IT Professional in tension that,in reality if the tax for the IT Professionals are increased then what would be their condition.

The IT Professionals express their feelings from Premji’s statement as :
But the IT Professionals think the decision taken by Premji is not correct because this decision should be applicable to al the employees in India. Everyone think that IT Professionals earn Handsome salary but they don’t think how much they struggle to earn that.If IT professionals should to be taxed more, then why spare the same IT companies. Let’s follow a similar policy i.e. more profits, more taxes. IT professionals are earning handsome salaries but for how long. Are all the IT jobs guaranteed? How long is this boom going to last? They earn salary and save for the rainy day.

Why is it that the class salaried person should pay the tax? What about all the businessmen and others who drive Mercs, wear Rolex and live in villas?. It is simple for them to buy everything on the company’s name and save on tax. Government should do something to bring them in the tax net.Mr.Premji earns billions and he does not want to pay taxes for that. Moreover he wants the taxes reduced for IT Products.

Because of the hefty pay packets It Professionals are already paying more taxes.As taxes is just a percentage of the monthly income. If taxes are raised, many of the IT Professionals want their salaries increased accordingly to absorb the extra tax. If hefty pay is taxed it should not be with IT professionals alone. It should be with a lot of managers in Manufacturing, FMCG, Banking, and other companies who receive hefty pay packets as well.

Why should a particular profession be taxed more? Executives in the other sectors don’t earn less. Kindly refer to the list of highest paid executives. What about the sacrifices that IT professionals have to make on the personal front due to typical nature of their work. The government babus should be completely removed, who sit all day in office doing nothing, but just sipping their chairs or spitting paan across the office aisle!! After all the IT Professionals who works 14-15 hrs in the office has a higher responsibility towards the upliftment of the country, and also to share the substantial part of the pay-packet of the netas, the bureaucrasy etc.

IT organizations and the business barons who are making millions through IT should be taxed heavily. Not the IT professionals who earn a tiny fraction of that by working morning 9 to evening 10 throughout the year.

“Recession” is the reason for everything that is happening to me!

Are you among those who think like this? If you think like this then you need to rethink about your thinking.

It has become fashionable to blame recession for everything that is going wrong. I lost my job because of recession. I have to work extra because of recession. My sales is down because of recession. Blaming everything on recession is an easy excuse.

But is that truth? Yes we accept that there are some who are genuinely affected by recession – but there are more than that who just got the “recession bug” and complain about recession in everything  they do and assign the reason of their failure on recession.

Remember – it is easy for anyone to do good in the good times – those who have got stuff – do good even in bad times. The real test of how good you are is not in the times of extreme growth but it is in the times when the going is tough.

So if you are a good salesman – do not blame recession for drop in your sales revenue. Go out and sell! Do not sit assuming that due to recession there are no buyers.

If you are a good production manager – do not stop producing as nobody is buying. May be look for the ways to reduce the product’s production cost and pass on the benefit to buyers – al lower price they may buy!

If you are a good IT manager – look for ways to improve information efficiency and make your organization competitive in the changed scenario.

What else is mark of a real professional. If you keep sitting, doing nothing you will keep getting the same results – no action – no results.

As a job seeker even if you lost your job – do not get overwhelmed by the figures of unemployment – they are just statistics and they are there because we are making them. Keep trying to find the opportunity – never stopping your effort – and you will get the results. Meanwhile try for alternative occupations in the time you have and make the most of it.

Key is to ACT and do not make recession as an excuse for inaction!

• Average salary hike in India in 2009 will be 8.2% (the highest in the Asia Pacific region hoever first time in six years that India is likely to see single-digit salary increases)
• Projected salary hike is lower than the increase of 13.3% seen in 2008
• The hike higher than China (8%) USA (3.2%) and Japan (2.3%)
• Sectors expected to see the highest raises are FMCG, durables and telecom.
• Healthcare is sector that is doing well globally and in India. In 2008, hospitals had awarded the lowest salary increases but have been placed among the top five sectors for 2009.

With inflation well below 5.5%, an average increase of 8.2% can be considered as a good raise.

To read more about this on Hewitt website – click here

• Employees at the junior manager, professional and supervisor levels are expected to receive the highest increases.
• About 16% of companies in India are considering retrenchments
• More than 60% are still hiring
• Nine out of every 10 companies still giving promotions
• Only 0.83% of companies are resorting to salary cuts

Now compare this to USA – 55% of companies in the US, 30.6% in China, 32% in Australia, 20% in Thailand and 17% in Japan are considering laying off their employees to cut costs in the face of economic recession

How Indian companies are facing recession

• In India, most companies face the downturn by drastically cutting down on luxuries and discretionary expenses such as non-billable travel and entertainment, with greater focus on prudence and productivity with the intent is to avoid layoffs.
• They are redeploying human resources and making largescale realignments to the organization

Make yourself irreplaceable: Be very clear about what you responsibilities are, and make sure you are meeting them.

Pick up additional responsibilities / Go beyond: Make sure your supervisors and colleagues are aware of your capabilities. Continue to build your skills. Look for opportunities at your company and elsewhere. Look for ways to go beyond what you’ve been told to do. Volunteer for additional tasks (bu be careful do not ask for more than you can handle. Create an impression of task master who gets the job done well.

Don’t seem paranoid or anxious: Keep working at your current output level, and try to focus on getting the job done. Even as businesses trim around the edges, some departments are at lesser layoff risk, and there won’t necessarily be cuts across the board. Workers that contribute directly to revenue may be safer. For example, a telemarketer selling product usually stays around.

Find related jobs within organization / Improve your skill set: If your role is likely to go – find related jobs within organization. For example new project development has stopped – try moving to support of old projects. If your your skills obsolete? Take extra
classes to brush up the latest skills. If career improvement seminars are offered at work, attend them. You want to show your employer that you are still viable in the workplace, and that you have the necessary training to continue doing a good job.

Come up and suggest ways to cut costs: If you see areas of waste at your company immediately recommend ways to improve efficiency and cut costs. Do not ask for huge investments in your projects so keep the suggestions to low investment options.

Suggest ways to increase revenue: If you can see a potential new revenue stream that requires a low (preferably zero) investment, recommend it. Companies appreciate an employee who is innovative and consider them more valuable. Idea here is to strech resources rater than to consume resources.

Increase your visibility: In any recession – the first people fired are those with
a negative impression. The next to go are those that are unnoticed and therefore can be released. So the writing on wall is to get noticed in a positive way. How? Here are some tips – Make sure you reach on time to work and preferably work extra hours. You limit your vacation period. Make extra contribution to work, and ensure that it is noticed by management. Without being too bold, make sure that your boss is aware of what you are contributing to the bottom line of the company.

Have a positive attitude: This is no time to complain constantly. You need to be constructive enough to make the workplace better. Do not complain excessively or gossip informally. If you have a reputation as a complainer or morale-killer, may be you can lose your job. Employers in bad times try to get rid of people who pull the team backwards.

Despite all these suggestions no one can guarantee you that you will be retaining your job in economic recession. You can try but no matter how hard you try sometimes there may be a chance of bad news for you. So it is good to be prepared (in case?). Update your resume, get hooked to few recruiters. Network with your old bosses, coworkers, and business
contacts. You will get better results if you are prepared ahead of time. “Dig your well before you are thirsty”.

Till now in India the layoff by an Indian company were an hush hush affair. The layoff or pink slips (as they are called in western world) were thought to be a way of only companies from rest of world. This event was unlike the earlier layoffs which has been splashed in media like anything.

On the other side of world amidst the economic recession more than 750,000 jobs have disappeared from the U.S. economy this year. The workers face the prospect of plenty more layoffs to come as a continuing credit crunch and weak consumer demand hamper firms trying to maintain payrolls.

Now the big question before all of us workers is – “How safe is my job”? The answer is tricky but not difficult. You can now look for early warnings indicators for approaching layoffs. Here are seven signs (EWAs) that may signal your position is on the line.

(1) Other got fired in your company: If others are losing their jobs you may too, even if your boss says otherwise. Prepare yourself for that call to corner office and being handed over the pink slip. Note that in bad times even management may not have sense of things which may be affecting the business real time. In a globalized economy situations change rapidly. This does not mean that people are telling lies but them may not be aware genuinely. It may be the case of missing information, or circumstances change.

The basic pint is that you need to be aware of the possibility of a layoff. Workers at greatest risk of layoffs may be those who were most recently hired (although a lot depends on company policy). This was the case with Jet Airways layoff above. Other targets are workers who aren’t getting the job done. Middle management and highly paid top managers are also targets. The workers who are contract are also among the first to go.

(2) Freeze on New Hiring: Vanishing job postings (internal or external) and vanishing referral schemes are also send a layoff signal. You should look at whether colleagues are taking on more or less work, and whether some are being asked or told to leave.

The sequence of disappearance is typically started with the newly created or budgeted positions that have not been filled which are the first to go, then replacement positions that used to be posted and have disappeared, and then come the retirements that seem to be welcomed by management and are not filled.

(3) Training budgets cut: Even large companies may cut training budgets, a red flag that financial concerns could lead to layoffs. While there are certain critical initiatives or projects that need to go forward if a company wants to keep up production, workers should watch out when project spending slows.

From an employee’s standpoint, anytime they see an organization cutting back on its spending and cutting back on activities, as well as staff or initiatives around them, they need to think through the details and figure out at what point does it reach my position.

(4) New projects and events vanishing from scene: The new IT project or budgeted initiative has just vanished and no one talks about it now. Well, that is an indication of slowdown and probable cut in employees who are normally required for new projects.

(5) Office Grapevine: Conventional wisdom calls for taking office gossip with a pinch of salt. But sometimes it makes sense to listen to what your co-workers are saying and doing. It makes sense to notice what the talk is and to notice how people’s responsibilities or jobs are being redefined.

(6) Company is missing targets quarter after quarter: While some management may be less than forthcoming about missed targets for financial performance, workers can investigate a company’s health by checking out the budget. A major sign of approaching layoffs is a business that isn’t performing well. Especially at publicly traded companies, performance is critical, because firms that don’t perform to an expected level, even during recessionary times, will be forced to cut back.

(7) What your top management is saying in public: The top management speeches and statements in public are sometimes indicators of coming dangers. Like in case of Jet airways – a stress deal with Kingfisher airlines is announced a couple of days earlier and this followed by retrenchments.

Whatever may be the reason workers all over the world need to face recession and have to secure their jobs. Making note of early warning indicators may help in some cases.