This Woman's Company Will Help You Work Anywhere in the World: From Levo.com

I am an avid reader of Levo.com which publishes articles on women in the workplace. Their new series Women at the Helm" they feature newly founded companies founded and run by women.
Here is an excerpt from their latest article:

A few years ago when Meesen Brown was working and traveling in Shanghai she noticed that the coworking spaces she would go to were mostly full of men. Coming from a corporate finance background this was nothing new but it was a bit tiresome, especially when you are a woman alone in a foreign country. It was around this time that the wheels began turning for Brown on how she could make it better for women who wanted to work abroad. After meeting her co-founder, Thomas Maher, while traveling they both began brainstorming when they kept running into the same problems (bad WiFi, being the only woman in the room, etc.) and their company behere was created.

In simple terms, behere allows you to become the traveling digital nomad you have always wanted to be. For $1400 per month they not only find you a short-term apartment but also a gym membership and very importantly, a coworking space for women. They also host networking events for you to make connections with not only the local community but other ex-pats as well. So far they have 12 cities on their roster in Europe and Asia. This company will help you quelch your need for wanderlust and have a career.

When I talked to Meesen she was in Thailand working on getting behere established there before heading off to Bali to do the same. Quite a change of pace for a former financier from Canada. Even early in her career she felt quite constricted by the corporate structure. "There is just so much red tape. It was by men and for men when you are working 7 to 7," she said. After her energy could be drained no more she moved to Australia to work at a company that helps to educate leaders before she started consulting her way through Asia. "When you are working and traveling [alone as a woman] so many things come up," she said noting that in addition to just technical difficulties safety also becomes a big concern. She and her co-founder started working on the company and they launched last September.

People have always wanted to travel and the thought of being able to do your work from a beach in Bali or a Parisian coffee shop is many people's dreams (also not working on a beach in Bali or in a Parisian coffee shop is a dream but not a reality for most of us.) But Brown also believes it is the shift in work culture that also makes this the perfect time for a company like this. First of all, remote work is at an all-time high. There’s been a 115% increase in telecommuting over the last 10 years, and 43% of the U.S. workforce currently work remotely to some degree. And we are seeing this kind of flexibility emerge in industries where even 5 years ago it was unheard of to not be in an office every day.

And let's face it. Being in a different country, interacting with people you would never have met otherwise is priceless to many people, especially millennials. According to a study by Airbnb in partnership with market researchers millennials would rather spend their hard-earned money on a big exotic trip than on a mortgage for a house or apartment. "Being able to work remotely is a retention tool. People value experiences more than things. They don't want to buy houses and cars. They want to travel! There is a really interesting cultural shift happening," she said.

Brown said right now the majority of their clients are freelancers but more industries are starting to come pop up. behere also provides women with a strategy, including exactly what to propose to their boss to work remotely and the benefits of working in this capacity and tools they can use to help them do their jobs from anywhere.

The real benefit of behere (besides basically making you the living breathing version of Carmen Sandiego) helps women find that support network you absolutely need when you are in a new place. One of their most recent events in Asia had women from over 14 countries. "It is just awesome to have that feminine energy," she told Levo.

Agreed.

The full article is here.

Artificial Intelligence: How this can revolutionise the way companies are hiring (Published in Silicon India Magazine)

While AI has already started making a mark in sectors like banking, pharmaceuticals and retail, there is a growing crop of companies worldwide getting onto the AI-for-hire bandwagon. 

Companies like Hiq Labs use machine learning to predict attrition, and searching for the best fit to a Job Description, Entelo sifts through a database of 200 million to do so. Scout trails the web for bringing out passive candidates. HireVue, can predict the character of a candidate through audio, video and text data. HiringSolved has developed an interface which has conversations with both recruiter and candidate and produces insights.  Companies such as SpringRole, develop and execute hiring strategies. AI provides software that sifts through words being used to predict a host of behavioural patterns, Robotic hiring assistants, and software that builds hiring advertisement to attract your target talent.

Artificial Intelligence(AI) is vying to take on newer roles in many initial aspects of hiring. Most articles on the topic will tell you how AI will help cut the manual screening of resumes. This article will also address other key aspects where AI is soon going to make a huge impact.

1. Time saver:

Predictive algorithms and machine learning can sift through literally thousands of active or passive job seekers or even non seekers with social media profiles and bring out the top 2-3 %, who fit the job requirement. No human, however efficient, can match that.

2. Removing the hiring bias:

An interviewer is said to form an opinion in the first 10 seconds of the interview while the rest is spent in confirming the opinion. Unconscious or sub conscious biases may cause a company to lose out on good candidates because of human faultlines. AI does away with this bias, in some cases hiding the name and gender of the candidate till the final face to face interview.

Some start up founders we talked to, looking for co-founders and C level hires, have already trashed interviews. They give short projects to prove the mettle of candidates. They tell us it “is the only way to know how a person will do at the job, as opposed to talking across the table”.

AI can remove the first stages of interview altogether.

3. Grades and experience- not very important:

Test scores and educational degrees have been proven by Google’s research to be quite worthless as hiring parameters. Some of their teams have up to 14% people without formal college education.

Same goes for experience. An AI start up in US called Koru, proved that prior sales experience was not a good indicator of success on the job.

In fact, AI is proving what recruiters knew all along. Star candidates make less effective hires than mid level players, where teamwork is required.

4. Social Media

Social media and its effects on hiring is itself a recent phenomenon and hiring managers often don’t know what to do with all the information. Turns out, social media drunken photographs may not really be good indicator of a person’s success on the job.

On the other hand, what really matters, such as racism and attitude towards gender, can sometimes be revealed from social media posts. AI can protect companies from legal hassles by sifting through millions of pages of data and not bring up such candidates for consideration at all.

5. What does it mean for the hiring manager, job portals, and outsourced hiring firms?

AI is already taking over manual and repetitive jobs in industries such as banking. In hiring too, many repetitive jobs will be taken over by technology. AI is meant to augment the work of the hiring manager. The team can then focus more on strategy and building relationships.  With any new technology, necessary re-skilling itself creates new jobs.

AI is still just useful in the initial stages of the hiring process. Nothing can take the place of several deep and complex attributes that are displayed and detected through human interaction alone. Candidates still get put off by being interviewed by bots, and may hurt the brand in the long run. 

AI is different from job portals. AI is intuitive, and is more efficient. A sales role for an Automobile company can throw up profiles in the tens of thousands. In AI, the software itself will prepare the optimum key words based on the job description. In a job portal, one may provide key words to whittle down the search results and still be left with 5000 odd resumes to manage. Every time a recruiter gives the same search the algorithm of the portal will throw up the same 5000 profiles. AI on the other hand will record which resumes are being rejected, map trends and keep them out of the shortlist, getting a better fit every time.

For executive search firms this is cause for celebration. AI is an augmentative tool for executive search firms. With the phenomenal success of Linkedin, a lot of people thought executive search was on its way out. That did not happen, and for good reason.

AI is useful in lower level, high volume hires. At senior levels, top jobs, C-level hires, beyond certain behavioural aspects and mapping work efficiencies, AI still falls behind human capabilities. While AI can track and predict behaviour, understanding culture fit is still something very intuitive to the human brain.

Get Hired 4: Prepare a killer profile for 2018

This is a special time for technology, with our lives poised to be revolutionised by Artificial Intelligence in every sphere. So much has been said about how AI is affecting HR and a compay's search for talent. YOU are the talent. And companies are creating software to find you. So how can you be found. The resume is the first step in the process and the trick in 2018 will be to build your resume in such a way that you can beat the bot, so to say!
Here are some Do-s and Don't-s of a modern up to date resume which will refresh your profile for 2018.
Do

• Keep it short and sweet. More that two pages are too much.
• Keep the important information on top. Should contain yname, phone number, email id, linkedin id.
• A short mission statement is good, giving expertise and what kind of opportunity excites you. Example: "Media marketing expert looking for exciting opportunities in start up ventures".
• A short executive summary is desirous- about 5 lines. Mention: place of work at present, and in reverse chronological order: previous jobs, educational qualifications up to Graduation. Only specific expertise which sets you apart from others.
• To keep your profile robot-friendly, use key words customised for separate jobs. Match your profile with the required job description wherever possible.
• Write Experience details in reverse chronological order, starting with present position. In this order:
• From (Date) To (Date)
• Company
• Position
• Company information with url
• Responsibilities
• a.
• b.
• c.
• Achievements: add only if there are relevant achievements
• a.
• b.
• c.
• Write educational qualification from last to graduation. Add grade only if exceptional.
• Design is important. Use a font easy on the eyes, like Calibri or Arial. Font size 10 is good. Use bold only for headings, not all over. Please see Capitals are used in the correct places. A Resume which Reads like This is Very Difficult to go through. Use latest templates. There are many available for free download online. Use bullet points and paragraphs together to keep it easy on the eyes
• Keep Linkedin profile updated and well managed. This is where recruiters and HR managers go first to check you out.

Don't

• Use one profile uniformly for all job applicants. This may make Artificial Intelligence being used in company recruitment throw out your profile even before human eyes can touch it.
• Make it very word heavy. It may tire out the recruiter scanning your profile. Also it may make the AI software run over and reject your profile.
• Be dishonest: Write only responsibilities and achievements you can vouch for and give examples of.
• Write about college projects or summer projects unless you are a fresher
• Give high school scores/ percentages or exam details. Nothing before graduation required unless you are a state topper.
• Give too much information about experience more than ten years old.
• Provide marital or family details. It is not important or required at this stage. In some countries it is illegal.
• Use decorative font like comic sans. It takes away from the professionalism and seriousness of the profile
• Mention personal social media details. Only Linkedin is required and any professional or pertinent blogs which you may be writing. Facebook and instagram profile details are certainly not welcome and may also be misused.
• Let your Linkedin profile lay idle. As mentioned before, it will definitely be checked at some point. So keep that professional, attractive, relevant and interesting

If you require any further assistance or questions about your professional profile do write in to me. Happy job hunting.