Firms like MphasiS believe in an inclusive workplace, providing equal opportunities to all.
Companies say it helps them save on consultant fees and reduces the recruitment life cycle. Companies pay consultants close to 20 per cent of the annual package of a person provided by them as their fee; incentives paid to the company's employees for bringing a candidate is comparatively paltry. Besides, companies believe the buddy system gets them the right person who is in sync with their culture, which becomes more significant in turbulent times.
The ongoing downturn has forced firms to cut back on advertising expenses. The banking, financial services and insurance segment (BFSI) has cut advertising budgets by nearly 40 per cent.
Recruitment-related HR executives are being moved to other HR functions like training and development and other day-to-day HR functions, or being taken on contract. If things worsen, there could also be layoffs. Companies like Wipro, Infosys, TCS and iGate, too, have a mix of contractual employees in their HR team.
Talks between production houses, cine workers union inconclusive, no fresh content for broadcasters.
Indian political parties could learn a few lessons from the digital media campaigning chapters of the US Presidential elections.
Most travel agents in India have refused to levy the transaction fees of Rs 350-10,000 on air passengers.
TRAI's recommendation to allow news and current affairs on private FM radio, which is awaiting the formal nod of the I&B Ministry by the year end, has not brought much cheer to radio players.
Media-buying and advertising agencies are a worried lot. The last quarter was bad for them with overall advertising, across all media, dipping by 10-20 per cent.
Travel portals have started to tie-up with online shopping portals and offline retail outlets to jointly promote their value-added offers as shopping portals gather huge traffic around festival time. They reason it will help them tide over the current lean phase in the economy.
You can now download Akash Das photographs on your cell phone.
Channels register presence in cyberspace through their own social networking sites.
Companies lure users with prizes and gifts to get them generate content and ideas for brand promotion.
The concept is making a comeback with companies like Bajaj, Titan, Kingfisher, Nirma and Airtel using their old jingles enmeshed with new visuals.
Inflation is affecting consumer spending and advertisers say they will now spend only on media which gives them the highest measurable returns. TV, for instance, grabs the biggest ad pie due to its mass appeal and the ready availability of TRPs, used to assess its returns.
An Evalueserve study says that globally, the revenue from this sector is likely to grow from Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in 2006-07 to over Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion) by 2015.
Poor bandwidth availability and last-mile connectivity might have slowed the use of unified communications as a technology, but now it's emerging as a strategic tool with corporations for employee retention and going green. Corporations are encouraging the use of UC, helping them to curtail business travel. This, they believe, results in lowering carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere.
The US slowdown coupled with rupee appreciation, talent crunch and rising salaries, and the 2010 sunset clause on tax holiday for IT firms, is putting knowledge process outsourcing firms in a bind.
More and more companies are opting for outsourcing data centres. Data centre operators are also called managed service providers (MSPs). These MSPs include Reliance Communications (RCom), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Bharti, Netcore, and Ctrl S. The biggest outsourcers are enterprises, banks and financial institutions. IT managers in the Asia-Pacific region rely on outsourcing data centre operations more than their peers.
JobStreet India, a sister portal of JobStreet 18 -- one of Asia's leading online recruitment companies -- has revamped its job site with a 'Smart Apply' feature.