By Kanchana Dwarakanath, Timesjobs.com Bureau
Recently a new trend has been observed in technology companies. Employees have been called by the HR to answer several personal questions which have often been looked at unrelated to work.
Charanjit Singh joined a well known telecom firm six months back and, recently the HR called him and a career coach asked him a list of questions, with the aim of handholding and help him build his career within the organisation.
Some of the questions asked didn't seem relevant to career at all.
Some of these include:
* What is the story you are telling yourself about you? * How can you simplify your life * Do you stay grounded and confident, regardless of circumstance? * How do you create a legacy of your life's work?
These questions have been asked in surprisingly several start ups as well.
Take the case of Srinivas Rao, after working in a Chennai-based gaming company, he was asked to answer a questionnaire which had questions like:
* How do you feel about your relationships? * What is your spiritual practice? * How can you nurture your body?
"None of these questions seem related to work, they made me think about myself no doubt but beyond that they seemed very intrusive," says Rao. " I doubt my wife of over a decade knows these things off hand."
HR managers and industry experts however feel these are few of the basic questions that the HR need to know to help the candidate build his career within the company.
"Increasingly the HR is being expected to be more like a facilitator and a source of information about candidate skills and team-fits and even referrals," says Vishnu Sarja, HR head, Uniprof Technologies. "The idea is to assist the employee to assess his/her strengths, personality, interests, motivations and areas for improvements by discussing even behaviourial traits to help enable this process."
Often even training programs are also developed in case a large number of employees point out a lack or desired skill.
"With increased team efforts and global associations, it has become essential for organisations to ensure candidates have not just suitable skills-sets but also appropriate mind sets within the company. These when identified are nurtured, mentored and even molded so as to leverage optimum performance," says Puneet Aggarwal, HR head, eNT Data Management Solutions.
So what about the questions that Rao had to respond to?
"His response to these questions tell us how stable his background his, which has a big impact on his work; How he will survive a stress situation and how committed he is to his career, by taking care of his health," says Sarja. "Quite often these questions or questionnaires set the candidate thinking and all you need to do is listen and be a mere facilitator who connects him to the right group or mentor within to nurture the skill or even talent."
So next time you are asked to fill in a very detailed form about yourself or required to answer what you might consider irrelevant questions …Watchout…your career might actually be chalked out based on your responses!!
Recently a new trend has been observed in technology companies. Employees have been called by the HR to answer several personal questions which have often been looked at unrelated to work.
Charanjit Singh joined a well known telecom firm six months back and, recently the HR called him and a career coach asked him a list of questions, with the aim of handholding and help him build his career within the organisation.
Some of the questions asked didn't seem relevant to career at all.
Some of these include:
* What is the story you are telling yourself about you? * How can you simplify your life * Do you stay grounded and confident, regardless of circumstance? * How do you create a legacy of your life's work?
These questions have been asked in surprisingly several start ups as well.
Take the case of Srinivas Rao, after working in a Chennai-based gaming company, he was asked to answer a questionnaire which had questions like:
* How do you feel about your relationships? * What is your spiritual practice? * How can you nurture your body?
"None of these questions seem related to work, they made me think about myself no doubt but beyond that they seemed very intrusive," says Rao. " I doubt my wife of over a decade knows these things off hand."
HR managers and industry experts however feel these are few of the basic questions that the HR need to know to help the candidate build his career within the company.
"Increasingly the HR is being expected to be more like a facilitator and a source of information about candidate skills and team-fits and even referrals," says Vishnu Sarja, HR head, Uniprof Technologies. "The idea is to assist the employee to assess his/her strengths, personality, interests, motivations and areas for improvements by discussing even behaviourial traits to help enable this process."
Often even training programs are also developed in case a large number of employees point out a lack or desired skill.
"With increased team efforts and global associations, it has become essential for organisations to ensure candidates have not just suitable skills-sets but also appropriate mind sets within the company. These when identified are nurtured, mentored and even molded so as to leverage optimum performance," says Puneet Aggarwal, HR head, eNT Data Management Solutions.
So what about the questions that Rao had to respond to?
"His response to these questions tell us how stable his background his, which has a big impact on his work; How he will survive a stress situation and how committed he is to his career, by taking care of his health," says Sarja. "Quite often these questions or questionnaires set the candidate thinking and all you need to do is listen and be a mere facilitator who connects him to the right group or mentor within to nurture the skill or even talent."
So next time you are asked to fill in a very detailed form about yourself or required to answer what you might consider irrelevant questions …Watchout…your career might actually be chalked out based on your responses!!
