Why difficult to be a Product Manager

I came into Product Management, because of my own interest.  I always wanted to define what to do.  I used to dream of defining the work, when I was actually doing a defined work.  As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, my Director gave me the opportunity and I jumped into this new role with lots of excitement.

But, believe me.. it is not easy to be a Product Manger.  Apart from the most commonly known skill, "communication", two important skills, one should work hard to have/acquire are :

Reading:  One of the toughest tasks on the earth, huh??  Any school-boy or college-girl agrees with me.  One should be reading a lot about the market -- blogs, articles, emails, e-books, client-issues, competitors etc.   

• Your task is not just to merely read the sentences.   Obviously, you will have to understand every bit of it.
• You can easily get carried away with this reading task, if you don't pay enough concentration.
• You tend to assume that you understood it, though you did not go through it completely.
• You don't feel like reading certain articles.  You feel that they are boring.
• You cannot become a good reader, on day 1.  It needs some time and patience.  Keep trying it and you will get there.
• Do not go through lot of things on the same day.  Have certain time in your calendar dedicated for it.
• If you did not understand or if you are not able to concentrate on a certain topic, flag it for future and continue with the next one.

Listening:  This is not easy either.  Hearing is a physical thing, where your ears can hear anything which is audible.  But, listening includes mental-work of understanding what you are hearing.  There are different sources of information, Software Engineers, Quality Engineers, Customers, Customer-representatives, market researchers, other Product Managers, etc.

• No matter what, you should listen to each and everything that is conveyed to you, as part of the product improvements/suggestions.
• If you pay too much interest in noting down what you are hearing, you may lose to listen it properly.
• If you come to a conclusion OR if you start to think about the solution -- while discussing an issue, you are not doing a good job of listening.
• Repeating whatever you have understood in your own words, is a very good idea, if you have even 1% of doubt in your mind.
• Preparing an email and circulating it across all the participants, is another good idea to confirm complete understanding.

QR codes - introduction

A QR Code is a specific matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) that is readable by dedicated QR bar code readers and camera phones. The "QR" is derived from "Quick Response," as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL, or other data.

QR code for URL: http://kenexa.com

It was invented in 1994 by Denso-Wave, one of major Toyota group companies, and approved as an ISO international standard (ISO/IEC18004) in June 2000^**. Initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users - mobile tagging. QR Codes storing addresses and URLs appear in magazines, on signs, buses, buildings, business cards, or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone's browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlinking or object hyperlinking.

Features:

QR Code provides the following features compared with conventional bar codes.

 

High Capacity Encoding of Data: While conventional bar codes are capable of storing a maximum of approximately 20 digits, QR Code is capable of handling several dozen to several hundred times more information. QR Code is capable of handling all types of data, such as numeric and alphabetic characters, Kanji, Kana, Hiragana, symbols, binary, and control codes. Up to 7,089 characters can be encoded in one symbol.

 

Small Printout Size: Since QR Code carries information both horizontally and vertically, QR Code is capable of encoding the same amount of data in approximately one-tenth the space of a traditional bar code. (For a smaller printout size, Micro QR Code is available.

 

Dirt and Damage Resistant: QR Code has error correction capability. Data can be restored even if the symbol is partially dirty or damaged. A maximum 30% of codewords can be restored.

 

Readable from any direction in 360°: QR Code is capable of 360 degree (Omni-directional), high speed reading. QR Code accomplishes this task through position detection patterns located at the three corners of the symbol. These position detection patterns guarantee stable high-speed reading, circumventing the negative effects of background interference.

 

Structured Append Feature: QR Code can be divided into multiple data areas. Conversely, information stored in multiple QR Code symbols can be reconstructed as single data symbols. One data symbol can be divided into up to 16 symbols, allowing printing in a narrow area.

 

The business case for QR Codes

 

QR Codes provide a number of interesting potential use cases. These codes work best when used as a means of providing additional information about a product or service, but can also serve as a great method for distributing coupons.

 

Video: QR Codes that lead to videos can provide additional information as well as a unique experience for those who scan the QR Code. Video based QR Codes can be effective in many business areas, but are most effective with print advertising. Adding video content to a print ad can help bring your product to life. A print ad with a car can be interesting, but adding a

QR Code with a video can bring that car to life.

 

Mobile Website: QR Codes that lead to mobile websites can be a great way to provide additional information about your product to customers looking for more information. A mobile website allows you to display relevant information, as well as engage with potential customers/clients in a new way. Mobile websites accessed via QR Code are valuable for almost every industry. The possibilities range from providing additional information needed to make a buying decision, to using them to provide digital users manuals. This can be valuable before the purchasing decision as well as after.

 

Contact Form: QR Codes that lead to contact forms can be a great way to get opt-in contact information from customers interested in your product/service. This can be used as a way to send them additional information, product release information, etc. Combining a contact form with a mobile website or video can be even more effective.

 

Mobile App: QR Codes can offer an easy way to have people download a mobile app. If you've developed a mobile app and want to make it easy to access, a QR Code on print material can provide an easy way for customers to download and try your app. This can be a very easy yet powerful distribution method.

 

Coupon: Mobile coupon use is on the rise, and QR Codes can help increase that use. The code can be associated with a mobile coupon site. Scanning the code could bring up a mobile coupon that could be saved on the customer's mobile device. This gives the customer an easy way to keep the coupon and makes them more likely to use it because it's always with them.

 

 

Business Benefits

 

Analytics: QR Codes offer a level of data tracking that's unavailable in print media. These codes (when properly set up) can allow you to track how many total scans a QR Code gets, how long the average person spends on the site as well as the general location of those who are scanning. While the code itself can't give you specific user information (phone number, email address, etc), it is easy to include a contact form to collect opt-in user data, and with a compelling offer (coupons or additional information for example) many people are more than willing to share their information with you. The ability to track aggregate data (i.e. total scans) gives you the information you need to help improve your marketing efforts.

 

Better Advertising: Adding videos and specially designed mobile pages to advertising, with the use of QR Codes, allows you to engage with your customers better. These elements help you enhance your advertising, and help you stand out from competitors. Better, more effective advertising improves your advertising ROI.

 

Conclusion

 

The number of people with the ability and desire to scan QR Codes is large and growing. These codes allow an unprecedented means of engaging with both prospective and current customers. They can add an extra dimension to print media and strengthen a marketing campaign. Most importantly, QR Codes help improve marketing ROI and strengthen brand loyalty.

 

^** Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Standards

For more information visit:

A range of QR code readers can be downloaded from:

http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-software/

Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites like

http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ 

If you don't have a mobile that can read a QR code and assuming you can capture one as an image, then this website will read the code:

http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

http://www.denso-wave.com/qrcode/aboutqr-e.html

Social Sourcing - what benefits and which networks

What are the long term benefits?

The current hiring process is depicted by the following graph which shows the degree to which a candidate was actively looking for a job when he/she took up the current job opportunity.

This demonstrates that the current hiring process is set up to recruit candidates reactively, not proactively. “It is easier to deal with applicants who come to you then try to seek out new applicants. Without doubt, that is why actives account for such a disproportionate percentage of hires.”

Another reason for the disparity may be that top-quality candidates regularly move between the active and passive realm, even exhibiting behaviors of both candidates depending on the job market, the economy or individual needs. In the following diagram, the dashed lines illustrate the open boundaries between candidate statuses.

A successful recruitment marketing campaign must utilize a complete media mix to cover the full-range of candidates in the job market as they move throughout the boundaries. “With the right message, a strong advertising campaign will reach active candidates immediately. However, a successful branding campaign will also resonate with passive job seekers when they enter the market.”¹⁵

Advertising is another way to get the passive job seeker's attention. About a third (30 percent) of all passive candidates who responded to the WetFeet.com survey said they had investigated employment opportunities at a company after seeing an employment-related ad. Almost as many (28 percent) had investigated employment after seeing a general, non employment-related ad.

Finally, a quarter (24 percent) of all passive candidates who responded to the WetFeet.com survey said that they used news media to learn about potential employers. Therefore, a corporate PR initiative focused on getting positive news about your company into the media could have a significant effect in attracting not only customers or clients to your company, but passive job candidates as well.

 

Which Social Networks?

 

A June 2010 study by Jobvite revealed that 73.3% of surveyed companies turn to social networking sites to recruit and hire new employees.  Nearly 60% of companies surveyed for the study also reported having successfully hired a new employee found through social networking websites like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Here’s the breakdown of which social networking sites companies are using for hiring as reported by eMarketer:

·         LinkedIn: used by 80% of companies recruiting through the social Web.

·         Facebook: used by 55% of companies recruiting through the social Web.

·         Twitter: used by 45% of companies recruiting through the social Web.

As you might expect, the success rates that companies report from those social network recruiting efforts reflect the demographics of the primary user audiences of each site:

·         LinkedIn: 90% of companies that recruit through social networks have successfully found candidates on LinkedIn.

·         Facebook: 27.5% of companies that recruit through social networks have successfully found candidates on Facebook.

·         Twitter: 14.2% of companies that recruit through social networks have successfully found candidates on Twitter.

Companies are having so much success in finding new employees through social web tools that half of the employers included in the Jobvite survey reported plans to increase spending in that area and decrease spending on traditional job boards and employee recruiting firms.

Key Finding is that Linked In, Twitter and Facebook are successful networks for Social Resourcing

Why use Social Media in recruiting?

Social media provides recruiters with a large audience of ideal prospects - any effective sourcing tool requires a global audience that includes a large number of qualified prospects, and social networks are both large and growing. In addition, the proper composition of the audience is also important. The majority of sourcing tools focus on the active job seeker, which generally makes up less than 25% of the people trained in any field. In contrast, the social media audience is quite broad and in fact is dominated by users who are currently employed and that are not actively looking for a new position. The ability to reach those that are “not actively looking” (in addition to actives) makes this a powerful recruiting tool.

A WetFeet.com survey of more than 3,000 experienced professionals conducted in August 2000 showed that more than a third of respondents who were currently employed were open to accepting a new position in the next six months.

 

How the Total Experienced Professional Population Breaks Down Currently "between jobs" (unemployed), seeking employment 2% Currently employed, seeking new employment 9% Currently employed, open to accepting a new position in the next six months 36% Happily employed, not open to accepting a new position in the next six months 53% Base: experienced professionals (n=3371)</< td>

Source: Recruitment Marketing Strategies: Building Employer Brands That Attract Talent © 2000 WetFeet.com

A recent survey sponsored by Yahoo! reached over 3,700 people aged 18-64. It found that just 17% of the population-fewer that one-out-of-five people-was actively seeking a job.

This finding correlates well with an earlier study attributed to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It found that just 16% of the population was active job seekers.

The key benefits of using social media as a recruiting tool are:

1. Broad capability - social-media-empowered recruiting has the broadest array of capabilities of any existing recruiting tool, by a large margin. In addition to the obvious direct sourcing capability, social media has the capacity for multimedia messaging, brand communication, conducting market research and for building sustainable longer-term recruiting relationships. Social media sites allow you to go beyond the traditional resume and gather information that can be beneficial in accurate candidate assessment.
2. Creating Brand Image - Ability to brand and market a business organization on popular social networking sites is a strategically sound recruitment method that will provide business organizations the capability to accommodate the incoming professional workers wants and needs (Jacobs 2008). Branding the business organization creates a compelling and unique perception in the minds of target candidates to describe what it feels like to work for the organization (Jacobs 2008). Branding a business organization should include: highlighting opportunities available, emphasizing career growth, flexible work schedules, telecommuting, and other employment perks can be included and will set apart the organization from its competition to inform and attract viable candidates.
3. Ability to mine & reach out to prospective candidates - The key success to using social networking lies in the ability of the business organization to embrace a new way of interacting. Use of social networking is critical to connect with current and future job seekers. Expanding an existing recruiting network permits a business organization’s to target and reach candidates they would not otherwise. The use of social networks allows for professional connections to be made, and using professional connections to reach candidates through alternative methods is known as knowledge mapping. Knowledge mapping represents who knows whom, who knows what, who knows how, and who knows why. As illustrated in Figure 1, when using social networking through knowledge mapping connections, business organizations can rapidly expand by reaching candidates through other avenues.

                   

4.       Relationship building — most sourcing tools are really just “job posting tools,” and as a result, they do not support you building relationships. Social media provides numerous opportunities to build trust relationships based on common interests with individuals who simply wouldn’t respond to anything related to a new job opportunity. Building a relationship over time almost guarantees that you will have a high offer acceptance rate.

1. Low cost - in most cases, social media allows for no-cost messaging, job posting, and relationship building. There are some fees for some features that you may decide to pay, but overall, it is an extremely low-cost platform.

6.       Leveraging employees -there is never enough “surplus time” for recruiters to do all of the sourcing and branding that needs to be done. As a result, an important power factor for rating any recruiting tool is the extent to which the recruiting workload can be shifted to others, especially employees. Advanced social media leaders use their recruiters primarily as coaches and educators, so that your firm’s employees can carry the bulk of the social media prospect identification and relationship building.

1. Prioritized applications - many sourcing tools fail to produce superior results because the last step is formally applying for a position using the firm’s corporate website. A long tedious application is fine for active candidates, but it is not user friendly enough for non-jobseekers who have recently been convinced to consider a new position. Fortunately, well-designed social media strategies automatically route employee-generated contacts from social networks through the more “candidate friendly” employee referral program.

 

1. Better Performance in Recruiting/hiring candidates -

The four performance objectives include:

(a)   hire the best possible candidate,

(b)   establish a candidate pool pipeline,

(c)    improve the existing recruiting process, and

(d)   Cost-to-hire.

The first performance objective is to hire the best possible candidate for the position. Social networking increases candidate pools of qualified and desirable applicants enabling HR and staffing professionals to hire a viable candidate. The second performance objective is having a candidate pipeline that helps fill in the “just-in-time” job opening. A candidate pipeline is an established pool of candidates that can be easily contacted in time of need. The third performance objective for hiring efficiency is improving the recruitment and hiring process. Implementing a social networking system will help aid the recruiting efficiency allowing business organizations to search by key words and/or qualifications. The final performance objective for hiring and recruiting efficiency is to limit the cost-to-hire. The cost of using social networking platforms pales in comparison to advertising and social networking enables the business organization to find and attract candidates while decreasing the man hours to fill open positions.

Six Degrees of Separation and Social Media

Six Degrees of Separation is the theory that promotes the concept that every human being on earth is connected by the approximate average of six degrees. This theory is also known as the Human Web, which emphasizes that the world, amidst the difference in cultures and geographical obstructions, is a small world after all. Now, with new technology tools such as social networking, the world has gotten even smaller.

Go on Facebook or Twitter and type up the name of your favorite actor on the search space and you will most likely find a fan page or a verified account through which you can catch up with and, most importantly, connect with your idol. These days, it’s normal to receive updates from your favorite personalities as if they were sitting right next to you and telling you about their day.  

The results of social networking development have revolutionized the way people connect with each other. Now, when you are on one of these social networking sites, there’s no excuse not to know what’s going on with your friends and family, nor is there an excuse to forget birthdays and other events. There is also no reason for you not to know how to get involved and help out in times of emergency.  In addition,

social networking development has provided a venue not only for people to connect and to be updated with current events, it has also proven to be an effective medium for political, environmental, and social campaigns. 

The rapid progress in social networking development has also created an effective conduit for businesses to reach their clients and vice-versa. This contributes to a harmonious and productive relationship between manufacturers and consumers.

 Social networking development in the recent years has perhaps made the six degrees of separation closer. The already shrinking world is shrinking even faster, and there are no signs that this would slow down soon.

Active and Passive Candidates

Demand and Supply

One of the challenges facing Human Resources industry is the demand-supply mismatch.  Organizations should find ways and means to balance supply and demand of talent for its success.  They need to equip their HR Managers with effective tools to identify the right talent for the right positions.

Labor supply analysis identifies the availability of staff required and determining supply begins with the identification of the capabilities of the current workforce.  Balancing supply and demand is met by developing tailored HR programmes to expand or reduce the workforce. Control and evaluation procedures provide feedback on the success of HR programmes in meeting labor demand.

Active and Passive Candidates

Some may simply define an active candidate as “one who is ‘pro-actively’ looking for a new job”, while a passive candidate is “one who is not ’pro-actively’ looking for a new job”. In practice, though, there are “degrees of passivity” which must be considered in order to label a candidate appropriately (please refer to diagram below). An individual, for example, who keeps an updated profile on a job board or a social network may be considered to be somewhere between the two extremes.

DIAGRAM: Degrees of Passivity

Truth be told, Active Candidates will apply for positions. The most active will visit a corporate website and register an interest. Slightly less active may register a resume on a job board, or via a contingency recruiter.

Why Care About Passive Candidates?

 Typically, a passive candidate will be harder – and more costly – to recruit. Passive candidates are highly skilled, happily employed individuals who are not actively seeking new job opportunities. And because most are happily employed, these candidates are also considered more loyal and more stable (on average passive job seekers stay with a company three years and seven months, compared to only 15 months for active job seekers1), therefore more valuable, than active job seekers. They have a job in which they have already demonstrated ability to make a contribution, potentially translating into a higher chance of success within your organization. As a result, they are extremely hard to target.

¹ Source: Recruitment Marketing Strategies: Building Employer Brands That Attract Talent © 2000 WetFeet.com

Means to attract Passive candidates

Passive Candidates need to be identified and approached. They will not apply for jobs, nor register on job sites. Therefore, recruiting technology is required to support the Sourcing Process (Name identification) and to build relationships with those individuals who are targeted.

Building a talent pipeline involves identifying where a corporation might need to hire in future, identifying those competitors which over perform in those areas, and then mapping out the individuals and teams responsible for that over performance at those competitors. A true talent acquisition system will allow Sourcing teams to do just this. It will do this in part through research techniques which allow users to search corporate websites, social networks, and news sources to identify names, and partly through the ability to record and understand the structure of these targets – through organization charts and relationship diagrams.  Social media sourcing is one of the most effective tools to attract passive candidates.