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1) MBA no longer a passport to a successful career, B-school grads struggle to find good jobs ET 24 July The MBA is no longer a passport to a successful career. Almost two-thirds of graduates passing out every year barring the handful of top B-schools, including the IIMs - are struggling to find meaningful employment, according to multiple estimates. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to back this up. Even the IIMs took longer than usual to place their entire batch this year. Less than 4 lakh students sat for national-level B-School entrance tests (MAT, CAT, XAT, CMAT etc) in 2012-13, compared with a 2008-09 peak of 5 lakh plus, according to AIMA. It also said some estimates suggest that 400-odd startup B-Schools have shut shop during the past year or so.With the economy in a prolonged slowdown, there is hardly any new job creation in many sectors. But that's not the only reason MBAs are losing sheen. Several surveys suggest the enormous gap between the top MBA colleges in the country and the tier-2, tier-3 and tier-4 colleges in terms of access to research, quality of faculty and their linkages with business and industry. Training and development firm Elements Akademia, which studied 4,000 students across 200 tier-2, 3 and 4 MBA colleges in 20 cities in April this year, found poor corporate interaction, inexperienced faculty members and dismal placements at these institutes. Read More 2) Labour crisis hits 36 % of construction projects in Saudi PTI/Financial Express 23 July Nearly 36 per cent of construction projects in Saudi Arabia have been hit by labour crisis following the Gulf Kingdom's decision to introduce a labour law, according to a report. There was 250,000 registered construction project contracts in Saudi Arabia before the first grace period to legalise expatriate workers ended on July 4. However, 90,000 of these registered contracts, belonging to various small contracting companies have since been cancelled, the Arab News reported. The newspaper quoted Raed Aqeili, a member of the National Committee in Saudi Chambers, as saying that most big projects were affected by the decision (to introduce Nitqat law) because they relied on small companies for employment. The 'Nitaqat' law makes it mandatory for local companies to hire one Saudi national for every 10 migrant workers. As a result, a number of people from foreign countries who were working without valid work permits and runaways have come under the scanner. Saudi Arabia has completed regularisation of nearly four million foreign workers in the last four months as part of its 'Nitaqat' programme, with 1.18 million expats choosing to change their profession. Read More 3) Candidates embrace mobile recruitment Personneltoday.com 23 July 56% of UK job seekers are using their mobiles when job hunting, according to a recent poll by leading job board CVLibrary. The findings highlight that it's more important than ever for recruitment businesses to stay ahead of the game and ensure their services are mobile friendly. The Development Team at CV-Library have focused on mobile innovation throughout 2013; launching an updated mobile App, configuring the mobile site with Dropbox to allow candidate's to upload their CV straight from their mobile and rolling out mobile responsive pages across CVLibrary.co.uk. Lee Biggins, Managing Director of CV-Library: "Mobile innovation cannot be ignored, especially within the online recruitment industry where candidates and recruiters continually require instant and easy access to a pool of jobs or CVs. As job seeker behaviour continues to change it is the responsibility of the recruitment industry to stay up to date as we have done in the past. Read More 4) iGate gives large retention bonuses to top executives TNN/ET 25 July iGate has given large retention bonuses to five of its executive officers. Each will get $1,50,000 on June 30, 2014, and $1,00,000 on December 31, 2014, provided they are still employed in the company on the applicable payment date. The board approved the retention bonus plan on July 17. Srinivas Kandula, global HR head, Derek Kemp, head of sales for EMEA, Asia & Australia , Sean Suresh Narayanan, chief delivery officer, Sujit Sircar , chief finance officer, and Sanjay Tugnait, head of North American sales, are the beneficiaries . It's not clear what has prompted the move. The company could not be contacted for a comment. On Tuesday, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), iGate said, "On July 17, 2013, the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors of iGate Corporation approved a retention bonus plan in order to ensure that the key members of the company's management team remain with the company and stay focused on growing the company's business. This retention bonus agreement is supplemental to, and does not impact, other compensation you are entitled to as an employee of the company." The committee has also granted each of these executive officers 40,000 restricted stock awards. Read More 5) Aspirants prefer job profile, brand image over fat pay: Survey PTI/ ET 25 July When it comes to employment, many aspirants give more weightage to the job profile and brand image of a company than the salary package, a survey shows. The survey by Firstnaukri.com, a portal for campus hiring, also found that BE/ B.Tech IT students prefer IBM for employment, followed by TCS and Infosys. "Job profile and brand image of the company continue to rule the choice in comparison to salary package during placements," according to the survey. The findings are based on questions e-mailed to jobseekers registered with the portal. It covered BE/B.Tech, BBA, BCA, B.Sc, non-IT engineers, finance and computer science graduates and post-graduate students. "Infosys, TCS and IBM still remain the big giants in campus placements for IT students. It is interesting to note that the students are keener for a good job profile rather than a fat salary package," Firstnaukri.com Business Head Deepali Singh said. For non-IT engineers, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and L&T are the most preferred brands, followed by Tata Motors and Tata Steel, the report said. Among MBA and MCA students, it said that Coca-Cola and Bharti Airtel emerged as the preferred employers, followed by Pepsi & Samsung. Read More

6) NSDC to train 10 lakh youths in 2013-14: MD PTI/ET 28 July The National Skill Development Corporation is all set to train 10 lakh youths in various aspects of skill development in FY 2014, a top official said. "We will be training one million youths in skill development on various aspects in this financial year," said National Skill Development Corporation ( NSDC) MD Dilip Chenoy, while speaking on the sidelines of a programme here. However, there are challenges in achieving the target of one million youths in this financial year, Chenoy added. "The aspiration level of children to get a degree in comparison to vocational training is more. Secondly, the recognition of skill by people of the industry has not reached maturity," he said. "There is no distinction between an unskilled person and a skilled person who has received training. Unless we make that distinction and make the skilled person receive more payment, there are challenges," Chenoy added. Read More 7) Hiring by TCS, Infosys and Wipro falls by more than half in June quarter - PTI/ET 28 July Hiring by TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which account for a major chunk of job opportunities in the sector, slowed down by a hefty 60 per cent in the April-June quarter as the big three hired only around 3,400 persons. In the April-June 2012, these three companies had hired over 8,700 persons on a net basis. The country's largest IT company TCS added 1,390 persons in the June quarter this year, against net addition of 4,962 persons in the year ago period. Infosys hired 575 persons during the quarter against 1,157 net additions in the same period last year. Wipro added 1,469 people to its IT services division in June quarter compared to over 2,600 people in the year ago period. In the January-March quarter, the three companies had hired over 16,500 persons. While TCS and Infosys saw gross additions of 10,000 each during June 2013 quarter, net addition subtracts the number of people leaving the company from the gross additions. Experts consider the net number as a better indicator of actual increase in staff count. "IT companies are cautious in their hiring plans currently. They are hiring on requirement and project basis," Uday Sodhi of job portal Head Honchos said. Hiring in the sunrise sector has been sluggish as the outsourcing industry is under duress amid clients cutting back on IT spends fearing a further weakening of the economic conditions. Read More 8) Most Indians think experience trumps education in job hunting PTI/ET 29 July More than nine in 10 people in India believe experience is more helpful than education in securing a suitable job, says a report by staffing and HR services firm Randstad. According to Randstad Workmonitor Survey Q2 2013, education alone may not be enough for people who are on a lookout for a suitable job and this is true for both young as well as matured workers. In India, 91 per cent of the respondents feel that experience counts more than education in finding a suitable job, which higher in comparison to the world average of 81 per cent. In case of younger people, 82 per cent of the respondents said experience weighs harder than education as compared to the rest of the world's 69 per cent. "Organisations and job seekers are keen to find a right mix between experience, education and job match," Randstad India CEO Moorthy Uppaluri said. Uppaluri further said that "though current recruitment practices are increasingly aligned towards relevant experience, as India moves up the value chain, there will be quite a few roles requiring specific skills backed by relevant education and training." Read More 9) Tapering growth forces companies to lay off staff, job market is likely to get much worse ET 30 July While fresh hiring has already taken a hit, thanks to the slowing economy,India Inc has for the first time acknowledged that large-scale layoffs are already underway and the job market is likely to get much worse if growth isn't revived fast. "Layoffs of contractual staff have already started and this could soon move to permanent employees," Ficci president Naina Lal Kidwai has said, warning the government of "a grim employment scenario" unless growth is revived urgently. "With the slowdown becoming more discernible, fresh hiring is already taking a hit. Unless the growth trajectory is reversed, we will be facing a grim employment scenario," Kidwai said ahead of the meeting of the Prime Minister's Council of Trade and Industry on Monday evening. Estimates indicate that about 10 million people join the workforce every year; however, there remains a yawning gap between the skills acquired by these new entrants and skill set required by the employer. An internal note of Ficci reviewed by ET states that the job market is 'gloomy' with sectors such as auto, IT and banking seeing thousands of job losses, while most companies have imposed a hiring freeze. Read More 10) US fast food workers walk out in organised strike against low wages 29 July Guardian.co.uk Thousands of fast food workers went on strike in cities across the US on Monday as part of a campaign for better wages. Employees of selected branches of McDonald's, Burger King, KFC and Wendy's walked off their shifts at various points throughout the day. In New York City more than a hundred workers marched to a McDonald's in Union Square, chanting for the restaurant to "supersize" their wages. The Fast Food Forward campaign is calling for workers to receive a minimum of $15 per hour, more than double the federal minimum wage. "A lot of the workers are living in poverty, you know, not being able to afford to put food on the table or take the train to work," Jonathan Westin, director of Fast Food Forward, told New York's 1010 WINS radio station. "The workers are striking over the fact that they can't continue to maintain their families on the wages they're being paid in the fast food industry." Fast Food Forward began as a New York-specific campaign, but has spread across the country as workers campaign for better pay. Walkouts were to be held in Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St Louis, Kansas City, and Flint, Michigan, as well as New York City. Earlier this month, New York City workers walked out of a McDonald's after they were forced to work in record-high temperatures without air conditioning. Read More

H HU UM MA AN NR RE ES SO OU UR RC CE ES SF FE EA AT TU UR RE E Five ways to focus on healthy progress among teammates

A competitive environment is crucial for a high-performing team. However, often the competitive spirit of a professional could be perceived negatively as an 'I-win-you-lose' mindset. ET suggests how you can be competitive without spreading negativity among teammates. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-07-26/news/40815163_1_mindset-helping-othershr-director

Sources: 1. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/mba-no-longer-a-passport-to-a-successfulcareer-b-school-grads-struggle-to-find-good-jobs/articleshow/21287812.cms 2. http://www.financialexpress.com/news/labour-crisis-hits-36-of-construction-projects-in-saudi/1145501 3. http://www.personneltoday.com/blogs/press-release-service/2013/07/candidates-embrace-mobilerecruitment.html 4. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-07-25/news/40795357_1_sujit-sircar-srinivas-kandula-igate 5. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-07-25/news/40795569_1_job-profile-brand-image-firstnaukricom 6. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/nsdc-to-train-10-lakh-youths-in-2013-14md/articleshow/21422713.cms 7. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/hiring-by-tcs-infosys-and-wipro-falls-by-morethan-half-in-june-quarter/articleshow/21422118.cms 8. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/most-indians-think-experience-trumpseducation-in-job-hunting/articleshow/21455950.cms 9. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/tapering-growth-forces-companies-to-lay-offstaff-job-market-is-likely-to-get-much-worse/articleshow/21473098.cms 10. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/29/fast-food-workers-strike-wages