One Question to rule them all

Lately I have been interviewing, especially people with technical skills. One question that lingered in my mind for sometime is that of "the" question which would help me get the maximum out of an interview. How about one "big" question, that provides me all the layers of the candidate. It's like an elevator pitch version of interview question.

Out of all the questions I iterated through, I found one. One elegant question. One question to rule them all ;-)

Question - What are three things in your career till now you are proud of ?

Why I believe this is the elegant question :-

1. It proves that the candidate works for purpose

2. It proves the candidate is ambitious, risk taker and values his / her contribution

3. She / he cares for the work

4. Being proud of one's career highlights does not just translate to achievements or successes. It could manifest into learning points, experiences, impacts and influences.

5. The candidate thinks 

6. The candidate is upbeat, optimistic and reflects on the learnings of past.

I think this will be my question of choice in any interview - be it hiring for tech guys, managers, security guards, chefs etc.

What is your question of choice ?

TED : Gift to the World

How many of you have heard about TED : The premier
conference on Technology, Education and Design,
bringing some of the most creative and expressive
people around the world, and giving them the stage
for 20 min only. I am a TED addict. Watched hundreds
of TED presentations from last 2 years and still
craving for more. What delights me in each TED
talk, is the sheer passion and creativity that
the speaker tries to portray in order to make sure
his thoughts are spread around the world in less than
20 min. TED talks are freely available for anybody to
download, and they have a growing user base, where you
can share, express and exchange your TED tidbits.

And what more can I ask. TED is coming to India, this
November at Mysore campus of Infosys.

Check out www.ted.com and experience the power of changing
the world.

SAPNET and the story behind it

SAPNET was started in the year 2005 by enthusiastic team from Sapthagiri College of Engineering, Bangalore. Its initial agenda was simple: To empower students to create the next big thing in Technology.

We conducted programs, workshops and seminars in the college as well as allow some of our members

to spread the word to other institutions. And we did amazing work no doubt.

The present avatar of SAPNET has a different purpose and its agenda has changed to :

Contributing to the advancement of technology through collaboration.

Keeping this thing mind, SAPNET organises weekly meetings around Bangalore where group

members come and share their passions in technology and entrepreneurship. We host Brain-storming sessions, Code demos and technology discussions. Also as a part of the new initiatives, we are creating start-up teams to come out with innovative ideas and implement them in limited time. Then these implementations are carried forward through our contacts into the general audience. This initiative already has a team working on a solution to solve Traffic Snarl in Bangalore through Social Networking and Collective Intelligence.

We are marching towards this new phase by getting new people who are excited to work with technology and have a passion to create outstanding solutions for the world.

Now coming to the problems that we are having in the regular operations of SAPNET :-

1. Firstly most of the members are Engineers employed by IT MNCs and are running short of

time to participate every week in the meetings of SAPNET thanks to gruel some Deadline issues in their

respective projects.

2. Previously we used to hold the meetings at our college premises which was easy and convenient

for everybody to attend. Now as we moved out of the college premises, Space is one issue that is

holding us. But we have some support in the form of some temporary establishments where we hold

our meetings.

Apart from the above two issues, the others are minor to describe. We are trying to find the solutions to

above problems by either holding our meetings online through Web Conferences.

On the web we run a blog which is open through membership :-

http://riseofphenix.blogspot.com/

Thanks and Regards,

Vivek Juneja

Chief Co-ordinator, SAPNET

India