For a long time, I didn’t bother to create a FB profile, because it is the same people I would be saying hello to once again. I had done all my ‘chaddi buddy’ search in Orkut itself and my list had gotten exhausted. However, out of curiosity about its growing popularity, I decided to check out FB.

FB looked good instantly. The interface was certainly far better than that of Orkut. The tools were certainly more advanced. But it took some time for me to figure out where the “wall” was, or how I could send private messages.  It felt more complicated than Orkut. Adding the same old friends didn’t make much sense to me, so I decided to stay away from FB and stick to same old!

Slowly, I noticed that Orkut was beginning to make changes to its interface by the hour. Tagging in photos, unlimited photo uploads, profile themes, whole lot of games and other applications, what not. It was facing great competition from its counterpart, FB. Very few of the changes seemed to be winning user hearts. What I made out is, while FB had become hugely popular in the US, Orkut had a major chunk of the Asian social networker population in its kitty. I am guessing that FB’s popularity among the US immigrant student crowd from Asia might be a reason for its initial attractiveness here.

FB and Orkut have one basic difference with regard to social networking – commenting. FB is all about other’s updates. One can stay in their home page and look at what is happening with everyone else. Not only look, but one can provide instant feedback without necessarily visiting another’s page. That’s the idea.  So, whether somebody has uploaded a picture or changed his status, won a game online or read an article, you can always say what you want, right from where you are now. On the other hand, Orkut requires one to visit the other’s profile page and leave a scrap or visit their album and comment on a photo.  Networking was seeming to take more time in Orkut.

This fundamental difference in interface, I feel, has made FB stand more true to its purpose, Social networking.

People like me, wouldn’t really want to leave Orkut being thankful for introducing the social networking concept to our lives. However FB looks like the one that will remain the window that will be maximized/minimized the most number of times on our desktops.

I have a voter’s id and I’m eligible to cast a vote; however, I have never exercised that right. I somehow never felt the urge. Its not the voting lines, or the summer heat that bothers me. The problem is simple,  I do not know whom to vote for. I have tried many a times to come in terms with the political news; but it just keeps getting all the more confusing! By the time I come to understand how two parties differentiate themselves based on their ideas, the next thing I know is they have either joined to become one, or they have further split to four! I simply dont understand, how all of a sudden,  one can team with his opponent who shares totally opposite views or how two people with the same strong views can disagree for the rest of their lives! Well obviously, Power is the underlying keyword, but as a voter, what is in it for me?

I was fortunate enough to be in the US during the Obama elections period. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that the process would absorb me so much into it. I have not paid attention to a single Election event in India. But I spent hours watching political debates between the Democrats and the Republicans, reading party information on the Internet, keeping track of Senate seats, subscribing to campaign websites and praying for swing states to swing to a certain side ! I couldnt vote, I had nothing to do with the American economy, I had no interest in knowing what would happen to their future, still, the fact that politics can be comprehendable for a change, pulled me close to the whole affair.

It certainly was confusing in the beginning, where Democrats, Republicans and all the associated names and ideas never made sense. But I remember the day I started showing interest to their Election process – a simple look up at the Wikipedia explanations for the Democratic and Republican Ideology. Thats it! It made life easier thereafter. There were clear differences. I knew what each party stood for, what core values each of their partymen gaurded and believed in and what stand they are expected to take in some of the most relevant issues, everyone knew!

A political party’s foundation is based on its Ideology – what it believes in. Partymen must be proud of this and should realise that is what they stand for.  I guess that kind of clarity and visibility is ideally what should help voters relate to a certain party and take a certain stance. In our country, I feel parties try to capitalise on the diversity and make divisions more evident. Sadly these divisions enforce only the faith, financial status and castes rather than values of its people. Hence, a new party sprouts everytime one finds a new way to divide the people. This makes ‘wooing the voters’ of a certain kind much easier. When will this change? When will we be ‘tough to persuade’, when we stop voting?

Call it curiosity or joblessness, today I decided to spend few hours looking at the Dow Jones Index data for the last decade. I have no stake in any US stock, but my objective here is to understand the magnitude of impact of any event on the stock market. Though doing this exercise on the Sensex would have made more sense to me, I figured that finding data and information on something that is US based is probably faster than its Indian counterpart.  

Thanks to MSN, I got the Dow Jones Industrial average data for the period Oct 1998 to Oct 2008 within seconds. I marked all the major high and low points in the graph (in blue). And a mouse over feature on MSN helped me find out the dates and correspoding closing values of the index. That data, in turn was used to create the left side of the table below the graph. 

The right side of the table shows information collected on the events that coincide with the corresponding high-low points. These events have been gathered from google searches which resulted in articles and news reports relevant to the months/indices in question.

The first row of the table shows an important event that is not marked in the chart. 1997 saw turbulence in the Asian market that affected the world markets. The major event was the fall of LTCM hedge fund and default by Russia which led to a major financial crisis. Prior to that the US economy, since 1992 was on a Clinton Bull Run. The Dow was at around 4000 when Clinton took office and went on to hit 12000 by 1999.

Bush took office in 2000 and for the next 3 years a series of major events of all kinds – social, economic and financial, resulted in a very erratic market behavior. During that period, Federal interest rates were cut multiple times resulting in very cheap credit. Slowly, the housing mortgage market began growing. Internet and technology companies continued seeing good boosts and grew at phenomenal rates.

The Bush Bull Run from mid 2003 to 2007 was initially marked by the capture of Saddam Hussein. The same period saw tax cuts and rise of internet giants like Microsoft and Amazon. General confidence in US market started growing and companies across industries did well. The Industrial average index saw new Tech companies being a part of it. The year 2005-2006 saw setbacks that had impact on oil (in the form of hurricanes Katrina and Rita) and uncertainty (due to change in Fed Chairman). However those were minor and the general trend was bullish.

The subprime mortgage credit crunch that we talked about in previous posts, characterizes the major dip since end of 2007. As you can see, the fall till date is a very steep one. And every other day marks a new record of historic importance. The past year has seen a tumble of about 7000 points which is more than the points gained in the Bush Bull Run.

While there is no particular conclusion I can or like to draw from this post, I am wondering if I can do something with this and my earlier post about technical analysis and make some predictions. Well then, I guess the agenda for the next post is set and if it doesnt work, I’ll go on and do the Sensex version of this one!

Before we get into the events, it is important to understand certain basic terminology and mechanisms.

Mortgage backed securities – Banks have two primary functions. Accept deposit and lend loans. When a borrower approaches a bank for a loan, the bank (after due diligence of the creditworthiness of the borrower) lends him money from the funds it has accepted as deposits. The bank charges a rate of interest for the time the borrower takes to repay the loan.

Given this simple mechanism, the bank may face a problem when the market rate of interest fluctuates or when it may run out of funds for further lending at a certain point. 

In order to solve these problems the concept of mortgage backed securities was introduced. In this system, the bank issues bonds against the loan and sells it to investors at a rate of interest that is equal to the interest payable by the borrower on the loans.

For e.g, say X borrows $1,000 for a home loan at 8% interest p.a from Bank of America. The bank may sell 100 bonds worth $10 each to an investor promising an interest of 8% on the amount. This way the interest payable and receivable are cancelled out by the borrower and the investor. So basically whatever the borrower pays as interest goes to the investor as his return on investment. The problem arises when X defaults his interest payment.

Subprime lending crisis – Check out my earlier post, Crash, boom, bang!

Credit crunch – A situation in which there is a sudden reduction in the availability of loans or increase in the cost of lending by banks and financial institutions. This is usually caused when banks and institutions have suffered losses in lending and have bad debts.

Bankruptcy – A legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay their creditors. This is also known as Chapter 13 in financial circles.

Bailout – A situation where a bankrupt or nearly bankrupt entity, such as a corporation or a bank, is given a fresh injection of liquidity, in order to meet its short term obligations. Often bailouts are by governments, or by consortia of investors who demand control over the entity as the price for injecting funds. 

Housing Bubble – Is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets. It is characterized by rapid increases in valuations of real property until they reach unsustainable levels relative to incomes and other economic elements.

Foreclosure – Is the legal proceeding in which a mortgagee, or other lienholder, usually a lender, obtains a court ordered termination of a mortgagor’s equitable right of redemption.

So… what just happened?

7^th September 2008 – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac takeover

Fannie and Freddie are two very large mortgage companies that are sponsored (but not run) by the Federal Government. Their primary business is to guarantee the mortgage bonds to the investor in case payments are missed by borrowers. They also create a fund(as in insurance) to make up for losses in cases of default. This fund is created by taking a certain percentage of the payments or from sale of the house.

Since Fannie and Freddie, the Government backed institutions provided guarantee, the mortgage securities industry flourished.

When the subprime crisis started in 2007, all the defaults, bad credits and foreclosures largely affected Fannie/Freddie’s business. The two have more than $5 trillion in outstanding mortgage backed securities. The share prices hit rock bottom.

The Government had no option left but to take over the two companies and infuse money from the treasury to clean up the mess.

14^th September 2008 – Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch

ML is a large investment banking and financial firm that incurred billions (app. $51billion) in losses due to investing in mortgage backed securities that went bad during the subprime crisis. The company was recently acquired by its rival, Bank of America.

15^th September 2008 – Lehman Brothers bankruptcy

Lehman Brothers is a 158 year old global financial services and investment banking company. It had ventured into mortgage backed securities and during the subprime crisis, one of its firms was closed. The company lost huge sums in the form of goodwill and its share prices tumbled. Neither Bank of America nor Barclays who were called for deals to buy the Lehman, made a bid. The Government also refused to bailout the company from bankruptcy.

16^th September 2008 – AIG bailed out

AIG, the largest insurance company in the world is being bailed out by the Government. The problem is the same; loss due to subprime crisis resulting in bankruptcy. AIG’s main line of business is insurance services but the company had diversified and entered other areas including mortgage backed securities.

The Government decided to bailout AIG due to its enormous funds (trillions), public stake, global ties across industries.

 17^th September 2008 – WaMu Auction

Washington Mutual or WaMu is a former mutual fund company which later became the third largest mortgage lender. In 2007, the company suffered huge losses in its home loan divisions due to the subprime crisis which resulted in layoffs and affected stock prices. Now the company has hired Goldman Sachs to take care of its auction.

Why this happened?

As you would have noticed by now, the answer to the ‘why’ is quite clearly the subprime crisis. Let us drill down further.

In the early years of this decade, in order to remove the sluggish nature of the economy, the Federal Reserve lowered the mortgage interest rates. This resulted in a trend of rising housing prices. Unlike traditional loan diligence, the borrowers were given loans without looking at their creditworthiness. Instead, people who were lower on their creditworthiness rating were charged a higher rate of mortgage interest. Because of the housing bubble and the high demand for loans, banks and financial companies didn’t waste their chance to make a quick profit out of the situation. Loans were endlessly given out. Very high rates were charged. These loans were in turn sold as mortgage backed securities to investors. This business picked up across companies in the financial industry and everything seemed to go well until the bubble burst.

When the interest rates reached a level where it was too high to afford by many borrowers, lot of the loans went bad. This in turn had an impact on the investments in mortgage backed securities. The demand for Fannie and Freddie guaranteed securities decreased. Foreclosures increased, house prices plummeted, and lenders incurred huge losses unable to value assets resulting in liquidation.

A major argument and an increasing realization is that there was very less regulation imposed on the financial instruments by the Federal Reserve/ Government.

Who gets affected?  

The real estate crisis infected the financial markets. This led to enormous job losses and money losses. The financial institutions were unable to lend money to business that really needed it to grow. This is leading to a snowball effect and is slowly hitting every industry one by one. This, coupled with the rising and highly fluctuating gas prices is resulting in a huge economic recession instead of what was hoped to be only a slowdown in the US.

Thats not all. Most of the afore-mentioned companies operate globally. They have presence in all continents. And in this global economy, a financial meltdown in the US market is bound to have far reaching impact on world markets.

Solutions?

The current Wall Street crisis is touted to be the biggest since the Great Depression that hit the US economy in the 1930s. It has been a chain reaction with people across industries suffering. Though the Government has been working on immediate short term relief like the economic stimulus package, it is very obvious that the economy needs a long term sustainable solution to get out of this mess.

The 2008 Presidential Elections will certainly be one of the most important of its kind in a very long time. And the policies, ideas, determination and resolve of the next President will be the crucial factors determining this election.

references

www.wikipedia.org ; www.nytimes.com ; www.spiked-online.com  

The time I spent researching travel to Alaska, really paid off when I came across a video by Clark Mishler on some tips and tutorials on photography.
Clark Mishler is one of the most sought after photographers in the US. He was a National Geographic photographer and his photos have been published in a whole range of books and magazines. Clark has traveled extensively and for the past 30 years he has been living in Anchorage, Alaska and exploring the beauty of the state. While searching for travel info about Alaska, I came across this exceptionally well-maintained site, www.alaska.org. The site is very informative, accurately updated, reliable and totally reader centric. We got every teeny bit of detail we were looking for. And my favorite part was a section called photo tips.

Alaska is a haven for nature lovers and photographers; and with all the SLRs, long-range lenses, camera gear and wear – “hunting and shooting” (pun intended) is what it is all about!

Visiting Alaska may not be a regular opportunity for people, given the distance, weather, cost and time required to spend in this beautiful state. So making maximum use of one’s photo and video cameras becomes imperative. And so, this section by Clark on photo tutorials on the website is extremely useful.

This 13 minute video called “Elements of Photography” features 20 “elements”.

According to Clark the use of these elements can really differentiate a good from a great photo. He explains each of the elements in simple words illustrating them eloquently with the help of his own photos.

I jotted down the points in a small paper and now regularly carry it in my camera bag. Not that I have to refer to it whenever I click but quickly running through it, during long journeys has been refreshing and has certainly made a difference.

The list of elements is given below. I have found that taking a look at the video is helpful in remembering their usage

1) angle of view                                          11) frames
2) use of backlight                                     12) silhouettes
3) diagonals                                               13) scale
4) motion                                                   14) negative space
5) s curves                                                 15) dark-light-Dark
6) patterns                                                 16) human element
7) selective focus                                       17) crop
8 ) contrasts                                               18) camera tilt
9) color                                                       19) rules of Thirds
10) stop Action                                           20) humor

Happy clicking!

In my attempt to keep track of Web 2.0 trends, I came across a wide range of terms that have adopted the 2.0 series. There is Office 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Blog 2.0, News 2.0, RSS 2.0, Community 2.0, and guess what, I even found a blog titled Everything 2.0; I guess that’s the easiest way to put it!
I am not sure whether all these terms are in use officially or informally, but the clear indication is that all media types have a new implication and a new meaning to their users in the Web 2.0 era.

Out of these, Enterprise 2.0 is a term that I read in a McKinsey article illustrating a survey taken on the use of Web 2.0 by enterprises to run their businesses. The term was also found documented in Wikipedia.

We know that Web 2.0 is being widely used by individual users through applications like Facebook, eBay, Wikis, and social networking sites. Enterprise 2.0 is the usage of Web 2.0 applications in a company or corporate environment. That is, when individuals in a company use applications to share knowledge, information, ideas and expertise in a way that may benefit them in a professional and intellectual level, it also enhances their functioning in the company. This in turn helps the company leverage the benefits by building a competitive workforce to achieve its goals.

Does this strike a chord somewhere? We have heard and worked on something similar in our work environment, right? Yes, Knowledge Management. A simple contrast in this context will help understand the distinctive features of Web 2.0 from 1.0. KM is a classic example of a Web 1.0 practice in a company’s internal environment. KM involves imparting company practices, industry trends, processes, knowledge and expertise. This is done in a structured manner and the employees are only at the receiving end. So it is a “read only” application.

Enterprise 2.0 would a Web 2.0 version of KM where everybody participates. It is also termed as a “social software” which has no pre-determined structure. There will be sharing by everyone from all sides, in the form of RSS, Wikis, Blogs, Networking sites, Podcasts, etc. In this case, the company’s objective would be to bring about a culture of learning. Rather than imparting or training what the company knows and believes in, it is giving a chance to its employees to share their knowledge and opinions. This way, people get more involved, there is innovative thinking, zillions of ideas are thrown up, and each day employees learn at least a thing more than what they already know. Hence the word “sharing” in this context is being replaced by the buzzword “collaborate”.

 
Like any Web 2.0 application, for this concept to work well, there has to be maximum participation by employees. As we know, it is mainly the users and not just the technology that makes sites like Linkedin, Technorati or Amazon successful. So there has to be an effort from the management to not only make the interface attractive enough, but also to get employees involved. It is not an IT department responsibility; of course, they provide the support; but the initiative has to come from all business units. It is an enormous task and the results don’t come quick. It not only involves setting up of infrastructure and latest technology but also deciding the boundaries and limits.

In this context it is worth mentioning that apart from internal applications, Web 2.0 can also help in interacting with customers, by knowing what they want, how they want it and thereby fit the marketing strategy of a company. Similarly, it can help in the operations side as well, in terms of interacting with suppliers on a regular basis to ensure overall efficiency and effectiveness.

At the end of it all, when carried out well, Enterprise 2.0 promises to develop and instill a culture of learning in the organization. In a global economy with tremendous competition, only the fittest can survive; Enterprise and Web 2.0 incorporated in an organization can help breed the fittest.

I am probably the last Dilbert fan to find out. If I am not, then check out this cool feature offered by www.dilbert.com, the official Dilbert site. It is a widget called ‘today’s strip’ that can be incorporated/embedded into any application be it facebook, wordpress, typepad, blogger or a load of others!

Isnt it a great way to help you start your day with a smile? Surf their website to explore more fundoo features. Also, check out the Dice ad(featuring Dogbert) on the foot of the widget. Now that’s what I call Web 2.0!

I am quite certain that once in four years, many of us Indians have little pondering sessions that last at least for a month. There is this one more topic that we are bound to add to our list of general discussion items. Evidently, we get pretty passionate about it during this brief period because we are not going to think of it for the next four years! If you are thinking like me, you have guessed what I am talking about, Olympics and Us! Well, I would rather like to put it as ‘Sports and Us’.

Thanks to my pressing need to blog every week, today, in light of the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing, I gave the topic a lot more thought than usual. This year’s Olympics can teach us many more lessons, simply because it is hosted by China.

India’s participation in the Olympics is undoubtedly pathetic. But in this piece, I don’t want to elaborate on things we already know or have been debating about time and again, like our lack of societal and parental patronage or government backing, an average Indian’s physical and mental toughness, whether we were ordered to be an unathletic nation by God and so on.
In earlier attempts to argue and counter argue with myself, I had always concluded that we have the potential but not the infrastructure or financial backing. A little bit of research about China has convinced me that we lack the most vital factor – Passion. No matter what other reasons we debate and come up with, unless there is soul-backing, there is no point.

So instead of looking at our failings, lets for a change look at how we can reflect from China’s experience. After all China is a developing country too. They have a 1 billion plus population. They export goods just like we export our services; they have a growing middle class similar to us. They have corrupt politicians too, who are not even Democratic! And both China and India have been competing fiercely for the tag of “next super power” or “emerging economy” or whatever you like to name it.
Then what is different? The Chinese are relentlessly passionate! They are working their souls out to emerge a super power in every sense of the word and the entire nation thinks sports and games is an inevitable part. In their country, every soul is backing.

In Indian cities, how many people do we see walking, jogging or working out unless they have a health problem, want to reduce weight or feel they are getting old? A recent study in China showed that 60% of their urban population is fitness conscious.
The Chinese Government has been working on a 15 year long program to promote fitness, sports and games among their people. In 1995, they adopted a Physical Health Law. A survey conducted 10 years later showed that about 40% of their population exercise regularly and almost all of their students meet their National Physical Exercise Standard.
There are more than 6 lakh gymnasiums and stadiums across the country, which are open to the public. All schools have excellent trainers and infrastructure is not only confined to schools and colleges but also to every neighborhood and community.

So where does all the money come from?

Since 2001, China has been conducting what are called sports lotteries. All the proceeds from the lottery participation go to building public sport facilities. Since the prize money is attractive and the cost of each ticket is very less, the people’s interest in betting is high. And given the population of China, the total money earned in proceeds is phenomenally high!

It would be amazing to note that all the spending doesn’t go to one sport or game like cricket but is distributed among a wide range of them. Lot of new sports that are mostly followed by Western countries is being taken up in China.
The life expectancy of an average Chinese has gone up in the past few years and people have been channeling their household spending to health related activities. Even the decision of hosting the Olympics has totally worked in favour of the Chinese in spite of the enormous spending because for the last seven years it has united people for a common cause and brought in a lot of team spirit. The Government has directed a lot of spending for infrastructure build up, which will not only please its visitors for now but will create a lot of brand image for their economy in the long run.

A very determined nation indeed!

These days a lot of things are just a click away, your credit card payment, money transfer, a movie download, gifts to loved ones, some porn and even some bad manners.
 

Remember how we spent all those classes in school learning how to write business letters? And remember how we struggled to memorize the letter format of from, to, date, dear sir, subject, body, salutation, name and designation? And no matter how well we learnt the formal letter format, our hands still trembled when it came to writing real letters to Principals, Teachers or job applications.

We were still confused – “do ‘from and date’ go to the right?” “Should I include ref: after subject?” “Should the subject be underlined?” “Does the salutation at the end come to the right or left?” “Do I say thanks or regards or thanks and regards?” “Are all these formats just fancy stuff they teach in school or do we really have to follow them?”

But we took them pretty seriously. For me, the worry of losing marks in an exam paid off in real life situations as I always had this habit of referring back to my textbooks before I wrote a formal letter, just to make sure!

I guess things changed quite a lot as we got introduced to the Internet and emails. With all the smileys, font colors and sizes, bolds and underlines, the letter writing act became a lot lighter, ‘kooler’! J Making spelling mistakes became a part of the style and lingo. Using ‘…’ instead of commas or semi colons became the in-thing.

No doubt emails are known for their speed, reliability and versatility, but are we forgetting that it is just a modern version of letter writing? Don’t we realize that formal letter writing is still needed for impressive business communication?

From what I see at work, not many companies are training their staff on email etiquette. Sometimes we fail to understand that what we communicate is a reflection of our feelings, and expressing everything we feel is not exactly the best way to do business. Because written communication is a risky affair; we are not sure if the receiver reads our bit the way we want him to. And emails and all the options that come with it, makes the process all the more tricky!

I know, we cannot be perfect, but we sure can learn a great deal from keeping note of the certain things that annoy us in emails we receive and the certain things we learn from annoyed receivers of our mails!

These are my top 7 annoying factors in a work mail -

1) Using capital letters in messages

2) Using red color fonts

3) Using multi-colored fonts

4) Adding “…..” as fillers

5) Very long subject sentences

6) Using too many abbreviations

7) Using high priority all the time

Even Scott Adams has put a good spin on email communications thru Dilbert. Check this out -

I know business schools lay stress on communication which involves emailing but I am not too sure if our high schools have updated this as a part of their written communication lessons. I think they should. Emailing has become such a common communication tool even for school goers that learning the Netiquette at an early age can help strengthen the basics to a great extent.

Here are a few references I found useful -

http://www.emailreplies.com/
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA012054101033.aspx
So next time you hit the send button, pause for a moment and imagine yourself as the recipient. If you don’t get put off by it, chances are others wouldn’t either! Happy emailing!

Nowadays, I find that a large chunk of traffic to my blog comes from H1 job market related information searches.

First of all, I love this feature by wordpress that lists the traffic source and the exact search phrases if it is through a search engine. I guess most blog providers do offer this facility. Seriously, hats off to them! It helps a blogger know what kind of information his visitors seek and what percentage of his visitors seek that information thereby enabling him trigger his forthcoming posts in that direction. I had also received a comment from a visitor seeking more information on the current state of the IT job market.

Now coming to the point, it is really interesting to see how attentive people are, to events in the US and how concerned they are about the scheme of things that may have effect on their American dream.

In March, I had written a post on the IT contract job market situation in the US as a result of the slowdown that I (like many others) have been noticing. The past few months have not been the best for IT job seekers in the US, be it contract or permanent. The reasons certainly track back to the mortgage meltdown and the consequent slowdown in the American economy. The slowdown has affected many companies across industries that have led them to cut down in projects/project allocation and overall spending which in turn has been having its effect on hiring.

From my experience in marketing consultants, the situation does not seem to have gotten better yet. Like I mentioned in my earlier posts, we can see an evident increase in companies that prefer hiring people with skills and experience in multiple technologies thereby saving the cost of hiring multiple people. Not many people are prepared for this kind of a demand; hence, consulting rates have gone down.

On the other hand, because the number of H1 visas processed has been increasing on a yearly basis, the supply of resources for any particular IT position is generally high.

In the meantime, we are also seeing positions going on hold or hiring being held up for unexplainable reasons (unexplainable by recruiters/ outsourced hiring companies). I am guessing the reasons could be as I mentioned earlier, scrapping of projects or cost cutting initiatives.

I would not like to inject any negative feelings or approach that may hinder one’s decision on what future course of action they would like to stick to, because my post is really not worth that much. But I would like to inform readers about the factors they might want to take into account for making an informed decision in considering coming to the US for a fulltime or contract job.

As I would prefer doing, writing down or just copy-pasting the following 10 questions and trying to answer them might be helpful -

1. Why am I currently looking to move to the US? What could be the benefits as against staying back in India?
2. What is my current area of expertise/ technology?
3. Am I an expert? How can I differentiate myself against the hundreds of people in the same field of technology/expertise?
4. In the present market situation, what are the basic and additional skills being asked for by companies who are hiring people in this technology?
5. Which industries are hiring the most? Do I have experience in those industries? If not, in my area, are my chances good even if I don’t have industry specific experience?
6. Can I consider coming on an H1/L1 from my current company and then move when the market is better?
7. Does my intended profile require very good communication skills? Or does it ask for more technical certifications and versatility? Which should I focus more on? (Of course both are necessary for any kind of job, but the degree of compromise from the hirers may vary depending on the need and nature of the profile)
8.  What is my flexibility with regard to rate, location, working hours?
9. Do I know people who are in the US now, and are seeking jobs in the same area of technology as I am? Can I contact them for inputs?
10. Do I have an alternative option or exit plan in case things don’t work out as planned (that is, I don’t end up with a job until a certain period of time)?

I have heard from experienced people that at least a couple of years ago, one didn’t really need to think too deep into how things would turn out during their job search in the US. The market was doing so well that there was a confidence that things would fall in place sooner or later.

I can say for certain that it is not that easy now.

I am sure answering the above questions carefully after good research can surely help one make a more informed decision and build confidence in oneself about his decision. One can check out popular job sites like dice, monster and careerbuilder and do a detailed analysis of the jobs pertaining to one’s area of interest. Getting first hand information from friends or relatives who already are in the US will also help a great deal.

Of course, there may be more questions that may need to be answered. I will surely add more if I can think of any. Meanwhile, people who find the above information useful (or not), please feel free to leave your thoughts, suggestions and opinions.

Good luck!