And Vijay Says…

A good part of my time is spent spotting new talent and grooming leaders in my team . And since we have a lot of demand for talent at the moment – I am spending a lot of time interviewing candidates . Several folks have reached out in private to ask me what it takes to do well in such interviews .

First – it is easy to impress me . So don’t stress out on that  . I don’t bite (and very rarely even bark) . Second – impressing me alone doesn’t get you a job . We have a systematic screening process to eliminate bias . It’s not perfect perhaps – but it lets me be me and my colleagues be themselves and yet we end up collectively as a good evaluation team . And third – because we know each other through social media doesn’t automatically make you more qualified . 
So here we go 

1. Be pleasant 

We hunt in packs normally – whether it is sales or delivery . If you are not pleasant to be around on interview day , I doubt you will survive in a high stress customer engagement where several of us need to depend on each other to get to a successful end result . Dress for the job you are interviewing for – there are no bonus points for looking extra sharp . 

If you prefer working alone – do tell me upfront . Occasionally there are jobs that can work with people working in a lone wolf fashion . But it’s better we discuss that upfront because vast majority of roles in my team will need you to be part of a team .

2. Be honest 

Don’t tell me anything you can’t back up if I push back . Especially on your actual project experience . I am a hands on techie myself . If you claim that you are an expert programmer , I might push my MacBook to you and ask you to debug a piece of code , or write a small program or something . My intention is not to get you to a “gotcha” moment – it is more about understanding if you can debate back and forth with me on a topic , technical or otherwise . But in the process if you prove to be dishonest – you won’t get hired by me ever again . 

I don’t expect you to be an expert in all aspects of the job . But I do expect you to know enough on the key skills and prove to me that you have a willingness to keep learning all the time . 

I once interviewed a programmer who claimed to have done some complex program for a customer I knew . He explained clearly every design point and I really liked him . I asked him if he wrote the code or if he just maintained it . He assured me that he wrote the original code . I didn’t hire him despite his excellent tech chops – because he was being dishonest. I wrote that original code ! It was just his bad luck that he ran into me with that story – but that is what happens when you are dishonest .

3. Explain with examples 

For example – If I am hiring you for sales , I expect you to tell me exact figures of past accomplishment . Don’t just tell me “I killed it” ! Explain to me how you overcame specific buyer objections . Tell me about your good years and bad years in terms of quota coverage and explain what made them good or bad . 

If you are a developer or Ops person – show me your code contributions and give me specific examples of both good and boring stuff you have done . 

Do expect me to challenge your claims and I might choose to role play as a customer . I will need you to provide references and I do check all references . 

Many years ago – I was interviewing a young lady for a BI Architect job in my team. She had impressive tech skills . And then she told me “I will need to work from home when I have my periods . I cramp a lot at that time and I will get easily irritated”. I didn’t exactly know what to say ( my wife was pretty stunned too when I told her about it later) , but I hired her . I did set the expectation with customer and my team about this and she totally hit it out of the park . 

4. Explain what makes you interested in the job 
Do some research before you talk to me on interview day  . What is it about the job and the company that interest you ? What are your apprehensions ? What support will you need in terms of training , Presales support etc ? Why is this different from your last job ? What makes you excited and what makes you bored ? Are there things like travel restrictions etc that I should know ? What is the growth you expect drive for yourself , the company and the customer ?

Remember – the more information you give me , the more is my ability to find a suitable position for you . You might not be the best fit for my team – but at any given point I know other open positions that I can refer you to. 

Couple of months ago , a young technologist from Silicon Valley was interviewing with me . His skills were such that I really thought he would not take up a job in my team and would join one of the local startups . I asked him about that and he replied “I don’t want to build consumer toys – I want to change the world of enterprise data”. I hired him ! 

5. If you have questions, ask me 

You should be evaluating me and other evaluators just as we are evaluating you . If you have questions for me – please ask me . Interview days are penalty free zones with me . Ask me anything . I will tell you everything I know about that – and if I cannot say something for confidentiality reasons or something , I will let you know . 

Don’t ask me questions you can find out answers by yourself easily by looking at company’s website or on Internet in general . Also if my answers are not satisfactory – push back on me . If we need to work together well – we need to hold each other accountable and this is a good test for you and me both .

The more senior the role – the more are my expectations on what questions you should be asking . For executive hires – it’s mostly going to be you asking me great questions and less about you answering my questions . 

6. Don’t take the job if you are not FULLY sure this is what you really want

If you join my team, I expect you to do so with full excitement with little to no apprehension . So use the interview and hiring process as the time to get rid of your apprehensions . Talk to your family and friends before you take the job to make sure your job is aligned to your personal life and goals .  If you have even a tiny bit of doubt that this is not the right team for you – do yourself and the team a favor and don’t join . 

As some of you know , after spending a few years in software industry , I am back in my old stomping grounds . The question I have been asked the most is whether anything has changed in the time I was away , and what I see as the future . 

Plenty of things have changed and none of that surprised me . What has surprised me is the velocity of change – some things have changed way faster than I thought , while others have not moved an inch . Here are some observations and “predictions” for what they are worth. As always – all of this is strictly  my personal opinion, and not that of my employer.

1. On premises ERP is mostly a maintenance business now 

There are still some big projects , but not as much elephant hunting is left in SAP and Oracle lands for huge new projects . Customers are mostly sweating existing assets and some are moving to best of breed cloud . Plenty of maintenance work remain for integrators . Business opportunity is all in bringing new value out of existing investments . I haven’t yet seen any kind of mass exodus out of on Prem solutions to cloud in ERP space – just more of a cost containment play . 

The few big ERP projects that remain are mostly on M&A deals where multiple systems get consolidated . A lot of customers seem to be in a holding pattern even for relatively less expensive upgrades . 

SI community knew this was coming and were planning to change their business models all along . What has caught people by surprise is how soon this happened – probably in less than half the anticipated time 

2. Plenty of custom build and SaaS work to go around 

Many IT organizations have swung around from packaged solutions to custom built solutions . This will need significant retooling from SIs to adapt . I also see an interesting conflict happening between infrastructure software vendors and SIs in this field .

In newer technologies (especially opensource) , the consulting arms of software vendors have better skills than SIs. However when it comes to end to end work needed to make a production quality system , SIs have the upper hand . Rather than working together – I often see a battle for account control trumping the needs of the customer . Hopefully this changes quickly 

The other kind of work that is seeing volume is SaaS implementations and associated integration work . These are significantly low in ASP compared to large ERP projects of old days. They also need a fresh new approach . SI world – barring few exceptions – hasn’t learned to do this at scale 

3. Open source has arrived , but it is largely confusing 

Compared to three or four years ago, enterprise customers are all generally happy to work with open source software in production . Skill gaps are getting addressed too to some degree. What is not getting addressed adequately is education on licensing .  Vast majority of customers are confused – and I get confused too from time to time – when multiple open source and propreitory tools are needed to be licensed in same project . And there are still plenty of customers who think open source is free – both amongst customers and within SIs. One SI even has a “platform” built of community versions of several opensource systems that they claim to have put in production, even though there are no security features in many of its components .

4. Most customers and many SIs are not ready for “outcomes based” and “as a service” type projects 

I am a big fan of “as a service” model . The current situation frustrates me to no end and a lot of inefficient cycles are spent both in Presales and post sales  . With LOB buyers , outcomes based conversations are easy . That is because they do their daily business that way too with risk and reward based on performance . But when this conversation happens with IT and procurement , there is stiff resistance . A good majority of third party buyers agents are also stuck in the past on this topic . Even after they buy an “as a service” model , some customers get upset when they see a different person solving their problems each time even though all SLAs are met . 

What is also hindering its adoption is a set of SIs who are not capable of offering “as a service” projects using significant FUD to keep customers in a time and materials mould . 

5. The transition from one humongous project to several small ones is stressing out many SIs

Large SI businesses have traditionally been built on the idea that most of the revenue comes from a small set of large projects every year . This is shifting to the opposite end of the spectrum in a hurry . The disruption this causes to SIs is significant and many are not coping well with having to redo their org structures , pricing , methods and tools , recruiting and so on . Customer spend in aggregate remain more or less the same – just the mode is different . 

6. Plenty of consolidation will happen in the SI world 

Every large SI is buying smaller shops now, in SaaS and BigData spaces especially . And the valuation is pretty low – about 1 to 2X of annual revenue in most cases . This makes me believe that a lot of small companies will get bought out in the next year or so. I also expect larger SIs to more transparently engage freelancers in their projects in a big way in near future . 

There is plenty of good news too . SI work is not boring anymore and we are able to hire some top talent . Cognitive /big data / IOT etc are all real now with actual products , and with live customer projects . We are now at a stage in the cycle where no two projects look the same – and that is good news for us consultants . There is never a boring day in my world off late . 

 

It’s been a difficult time – my father in law had been in and out of various hospitals for over a year , and couple of days ago he lost his fight . It’s hard to reconcile that we won’t be listening to his soft humming of old Malayalam songs , animated conversations with my daughter , the many trips a day on his scooter to the local grocer and all the little things we took for granted when he was alive . It’s not going to be easy – but knowing he is not suffering any more  is indeed a big relief . My family can’t thank enough the kind words and gestures of love and support from countless folks around the globe . 

Couple of years ago, while I was on vacation in India – I lost an aunt to cancer . We knew it was a losing battle but we spent a significant time at the hospital trying to do everything we can to make it a little less painful for her . To say it was extremely frustrating is putting it lightly . 

There were a few more incidents where loved ones had to spend time at hospitals in recent times . The common thread amongst all these episodes is the fact that hospitals in India have some serious and significant rethinking to do on how they care for patients .

I have the utmost respect for medical professionals. I am proud to have several friends and relatives who are members of that profession  . They are normal humans expected to do superhuman tasks on a routine basis . We generally don’t go visit them under pleasant circumstances – so they need to perform at superhuman levels in front of totally unreasonable clients every single day . In my day job , I am a professional Servcies provider – and I know how hard that job can get even when my clients are not stressed out . So it’s not just respect that I have for doctors and nurses and others in that field – I hold them in absolute awe ! 

I do think from the perspective of sheer skills and competence levels – the medical professionals in India are on par with their colleagues anywhere else in the world , and in some cases a little better too given they get exposure to hands on work a lot sooner in college . Where they have some catching up to do is on their “client facing skills”. 

In the field of medicine – How you do it is just as important , and maybe even more important – as what the outcome is for the patients and their families . Unfortunately the prevailing practice here seems to be that doctors and nurses dissuade patients and their family from asking questions . “Because I told you so” – is a terrible answer . I have experienced this first hand and I know my family has often feared that asking questions will piss off the medical staff to the extent that the quality of care may come down . So out of sheet fear – they stopped asking . 

I have a theory – I think medical professionals here are not trained sufficiently in how to handle the patients on the non medical issues like answering questions from family members , giving them options in plain speak and so on . So the younger professionals just do what their older colleagues do and being rude just becomes the norm . I am sure there are great exceptions to this norm – but the status quo needs to change and it needs to change quickly .
Then there is the actual hospital management . The big hospitals own a blood bank, some labs, a pharmacy and a canteen . You would think that , the hospital would figure out how to make it easy for the patients to get tests done , get food/Meds delivered on time and so on . But that is not how it works . 

There is a sign out side the critical care unit that reminds families that someone should stay there 24X7 to take instructions . A nurse would pop out from time to time and say “here is a list of Meds we need – go to the pharma and get them right now. If our pharma doesn’t have it – go find it from elsewhere. We need it next hour”.  And you have to do it while keeping some one else in front of the critical care because the nurse could come back in few minutes and say “go buy tea and biscuits for the patient and deliver it”. It’s totally common place to also ask for “6 bottles of O negative blood” without any instructions on how to do it or what options exist .

How is this acceptable behavior in a professional setting ? This is not hospital management – it is hospital mismanagement. Within hospitals and across hospitals – the administrators and medical professionals have more ability and skills to provide seamless care than putting the onus on patients and their families . How do you expect the patient’s family to figure out where in the state a rare drug can be found ? I shudder to think that someone will bleed to death if there is no one outside the CCU to go find enough people to deliver 6 bottles of blood . There is no excuse to keep doing this – hospitals should absolutely get their act together . 

Hospitals are not inexpensive . Insurance is not widely used yet . Many patients and their families are ignorant of their rights . And there are possibly a million more excuses why things are the way they are . It’s also possible that grief makes me look at things more harshly than usual . But in the end – the noblest of all professions need to live up to its billing , both literally and figuratively !