‘Live wire’ in campus

Being a generalist HR at TAFE, with end to end responsibilities, Kamala Manohari brimmed with knowledge and energy. She deals with as wide a bandwidth as Recruitment, Learning & Development, Employee relations and MIS. Life is so easy when we have a single shop housing all that we need. Likewise, she was one such ‘go-to’ personality to address the HR varsity students. The interaction kicked-off focusing on training that included technical and behavioral parameters.

Unlike the general notion that the gap between academics and industry is quite large, Kamala urged us in getting the basics right- from books. For instance, “Iceberg” model emphasizes on understanding the behavior that are explicitly not visible. This will need to be imbibed well within to appreciate and implement any form of Performance Management. It thus becomes imperative to learn all that comes in through the academic route, which can ultimately be customized per rigors of life and business.

Ratios and SLAs are so integral to organizations. “Job Change Index” was one such ratio we came across, providing an absolute check on the stability in one’s career. To be precise:

Job Change Index (JCI) = No of Job Changes/No of Professional years of experience

It goes without saying that this needs to be minimal while gauging an individual’s resume for recruitment. ‘Cycle Time’ was yet another SLA Kamala dwelt on. Negative Cycle time was one surprising element highlighted, bringing out the intuition element of HR, the Predictive Recruitment.

And the critical paradigm in HR is to handle misfits and related disorders. She brought out the implications and ways of handling such situations with her own experiences.

Sourcing, Competency mapping, Reports on recruitment and manpower, open house/get together and fun at work…the list seemed to be mindboggling, yet what a challenge for a young professional to take on! Kamala’s session reaffirmed the pride of being a HR and handling the intangible elements in a workplace.

Contributed by Balaji MS, HR Varsity, CBS Batch-4 (2009-10)

She came like thunder, went like lightning. And yes, we did get drenched with all those vital industrial awareness.