4 Fundamental Principles For Building Alumni Value Proposition

Taking cue from my previous post, I would like to extend the concept of Alumni Value Proposition (AVP) a little further. There is a framework for building AVP, which is simply based on four fundamental principles:

• Hire the best into the organization
• Let them build the organization
• Proudly Brand what they build
• Alumni constitute our extended organization

Hire the Best. Since people like to associate with likeminded people, if organization has good people then it will attract other good people. Anybody who gets selected to join such an organization considers it a privilege that he/she is getting the opportunity to work with other good people who would make a huge difference in his/her life.
Correspondingly it becomes organization’s responsibility to follow very high hiring standards to avoid dilution in the quality of its people, and secondly ensure that word gets around loudly that this organization is built with good people thus ensuring that good applicants pool continues to grow exponentially.

Built by the Best. Once organization has hired the best employees, it should let these employees take complete ownership of building the organization, and also have them take pride that their contributions is what makes this organization great.

• Let employees define the criteria for selecting right people for this organization and how to bring them onboard.
• Let employees take charge of inducting and mentoring new people into the organization.
  Let employees build a continuously learning organization by defining a culture of complete knowledge capture and sharing across the organization. Requiring everybody to document their learnings from projects and other activities they undertake – developing a strong habit and capabilities in employees to communicate well – extensively using tools like Blogs for external and internal publishing of contents.
• Let employees recognize what they are best at and then take pride in training others in the organization to be good at that.
• Let employees be the navigators who understand the tides of industry and the world around the organization, and then counsel others in the organization to mould their careers to be successful in rapidly changing tides.

Branding. As the organization does these great things it is equally important that it gets the word out. It should be proud of what it built and we must let others know how good it is from inside. Employees and Alumni are the true carriers of brand message. They should be encouraged to use blogs, message boards, trade magazines, conferences etc. to spread organization’s brand message.

Treat Alumni as part of extended organization. Alumni are a great asset for any company as they take companies message in their new companies. If that message is strong then it greatly benefits the company in attracting more good people. Organization must strive to stay connected with its Alumni and simultaneously create strong reasons for alumni to stay connected with it. To facilitate this it must use tools like Alumni website and newsletters.

Building Alumni Value Proposition based on this framework is our joint responsibility and our primary mission for 2008.

Posted by Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX Corporation

Mission 2008: Alumni Value Proposition

Companies that create a strong Alumni Value Proposition for their employees successfully attract and retain best people. Aah!? You might wonder. Employee retention and Alumni in same sentence, isn’t that an oxymoron?

Ok, let me try to explain why I made above statement with couple of examples. McKinsey and Solomon Brothers are two companies that are considered most coveted companies (in their respective domains) by every jobseeker. Although if you talk to any employee at any level in these companies, he would tell you that his jobs is extremely demanding, he works almost 16 to 20+ hours a day 7 days a week, often for lower pay than his counterparts in other companies.
So if it is not the money, and if it is not work-family life balance, then what attracts jobseekers to these companies that they always consider them as dream companies to work for.

After speaking with a few senior people at McKinsey and other organizations I realized that it is the Alumni Value Proposition (AVP). When a company tries to create AVP it is no different from what good universities do to attract best students and give to its students when they become Alumni.

So is there a framework for building AVP?

It starts with building a comprehensive process for selecting the best, because first pillar of building AVP is to have best people in the organization. And if you have good people, they connect with former colleagues, locally and globally, build a positive environment about the organization, attract smart people, and, eventually, inspire them to join and build the organization. Also, these very people help peers in career building by counseling and mentoring them properly and adequately.
But, what if these very good people opt to move on to some other organizations. You would be pleasantly surprised to know that it is Alumni who eventually become a great asset for the country.

How? Let’s find out.

It is alumni that take companies message to their new companies, and if that message is strong then it greatly benefits the company in attracting more good people. In today’s fiercely competitive knowledge-driven market, only those companies can thrive which believe in and create AVP. To stay connected with their Alumni, companies need to leverage tool such as Alumni network website and newsletters that enable them to

• Connect with former colleagues, locally and globally
• Communicate and expand social network via live and online events
• Collaborate on special projects or pilots, find a job, a candidate, a supplier, or generate new business contacts

Further, companies need to work on Knowledge Creation, which has been widely recognized as strategically important for organizational learning and innovation, requiring employees to document their learning from projects and other activities they undertake – developing a strong habit and capabilities in employees to communicate well , using tools like Blogs, social community sites, external and internal publishing of contents, etc.
Teamwork plays an important role in AVP, where people own responsibility collectively. It is teamwork that motivates employees to take pride in mentorship and coaching other employees (old or new).

To add grist to the mill, companies let employees take ownership in building the organization, let have them take pride that their contributions is what makes this organization.
Don’t you think that their contributions to recruiting process play a big role in bringing the best into the company.

Branding is one exercise that companies need to do constantly to deliver the message clearly, confirm the organization’s credibility, connect with your target prospects, motivate the audience, and, most importantly, create a positive environment for the company across the industry. Apart from PR activities including media coverage, seminars, webinars, etc, employees and alumni are the carriers of brand message.

And, now, let me conclude that building Alumni Value Proposition based on this framework is our Mission 2008. On the sheer strength of AVP, I look forward to the future with a goal of attracting the best people, creating a niche for OutworX. Alumni represent the company, peers will look up to you for career counseling, and alumni will help establish the future strength of our company. The journey has begun…

Posted by Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX Corporation

Can Facebook be Built in India?

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on outsourcing, titled – Building Facebook in Bangalore: Outsourcing 2.0 – it had a good mix of panelists – one early stage investor, couple of entrepreneurs, and one CEO of a boutique outsourcing firm. Entire discussion was focused on panelists’ perceptions on differences between culture of Indian engineers and the culture of Web 2.0 companies – and at the end their conclusion was that it is very painful, if not impossible, to build Facebook kind of services in India.

I do not subscribe completely to the conclusion drawn by our panelists. I believe that some of the most attractive and sustainable consumer oriented Web (2.0) services can be built by engineers sitting in India. And, I argue that three cultural traits of Indians, i.e. diversity, adaptability and entrepreneurship, make the Indian minds rightly suited for doing so.

Cultural diversity has never been new to Indians. A country that is built with democratic fiber, rapid globalization, and a very successful and unshackled media, has exposed Indians to far reaching global cultural diversity. Adaptability trait of Indians has trained Indian minds to always listen, understand, and adopt the alternate viewpoints, much more easily than other countries, once this exposure is made. And finally, entrepreneurial Indian mind is always looking for ways to make a “useful” enterprise out of everything new they learn through this exposure.

This makes Indian minds lot more similar to Silicon Valley minds that start and build great Internet businesses.

However, having said that, there must be some reason why panelists’ with their experience with outsourcing were converging on the conclusion that they did. Yes, there are a few reasons, most important of all is picking the Right set of people and motivating them to do work for them. Often people go into outsourcing with misplaced convictions, some of them were clearly resonated by panelists – “I would save 80% in labor cost”, “I would not hire engineers with top school education because attrition is very high in that group” etc.

Second important factor is attention deficiency disorder in Indian engineers. This often goes hand in hand with entrepreneurial trait as well as competitive job market in India. Indian engineers work very hard to reach the 90th milestone but after that their minds often get attracted towards other new things, and they do not give same rigor to last 10 milestones- often referred as “finishing touches” or “final packaging” – this is where their American counterparts building consumer products are clearly differentiable – Americans understand very well that packaging plays a huge role in attracting consumers to products even in a crowded market.

At OutworX, we strongly believe in building the right teams. We hire the right people, and motivate them to highest levels. We do not believe in conventional thinking and do not let misplaced convictions distract us from our goal of building the right teams. We train our engineers to understand that race never ends on 90th milestone, it just gets more competitive in final 10.

We recognize the above three cultural traits of Indian minds, we create an open environment in the organization that exploits these three traits to fullest and further nurtures them in the minds of our engineers.

Yes, Facebook can be built in Bangalore. But what is more important is whether your idea, that is generation ahead of Facebook, can be built in India?

My answer is resounding Yes. Talk to any OutworX engineer to see for yourself how.

Posted by Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX Corporation