How has Sales transformed in the last couple of decades    Gone are the days when Sales was all about knowing your own product and making sure your potential client knew it too, and in fact, was never able to forget it thanks to repeated follow-ups from you.    "Today is all about Solution Selling instead of Product Selling"   With an increase in service businesses, especially led out of software, it is important to know your potential client’s problems and offer your product as a solution that....

The season of lamps and lights, online sales and gift distributions is here. It is that time again when many employees either want to go home to be with their families or simply take time off to partake in the Diwali festivities.     If we were to ask what is the biggest challenge you, as a business owner or a manager leading a team face during this time, then handling multiple leave requests during festive season could be high on your list.   Handled incorrectly it can result in disgruntled....

Today we want to talk to our finance whizkids. Are you a finance professional looking to return to work in the near future? Want to know what skills are in vogue today? Read on.   Today morning we posted a blog about the broad finance space, where it is going and how to upskill yourself. Now let’s talk about what these skills are. Below are some of the ones that we come across on a regular basis. We will give you a very short teaser of each, and you can do your own research on them too.  ....

As a part of our Industry Expert series, meet Anshika Srivastava, Digital Marketing Manager, FlexiBees who is responsible for developing, implementing and managing marketing campaigns. She plays a major role in enhancing brand awareness within social media space as well as driving website traffic and acquiring new leads/clients.    Read on to learn how she has built her career as Digital Marketing professional while working from home.     1.     Tell us about your experience, and your role as a....

This month was HR month for us. That means that this month, we created messaging and communication around hiring HR talent via flexible models for your business. We realised a while ago that every function has its unique nuances that unlock differently, and if we want to create a world where nearly all roles can be carried out flexibly (flexi-time, part-time, remotely), then one approach is to do it function-first.              This has led us down a fascinating road, where we have to get into....

Content Marketing is all the rage, and rightly so.    With the roti-kapda-makan trifecta rapidly turning into roti-kapda-makan-internet, a phone and a data connection is all one needs to become a consumer. Of news, views, reviews, memes, polls, ads, articles, listicles, gifs, videos, etcetera - by no means an exhaustive list and every year, more get added to this mind-boggling array of formats and channels.    If you are a brand whose consumer is spending increasing amounts of time online, you....

Yes, but how Many of you will answer that question in the affirmative. Who doesn’t want good marketing, which not only creates  a unique voice for you, but also by creating awareness & visibility gets you business.   But isn’t marketing talent expensive? Yes. And rightly so. Branding, positioning, consumer insights mapping, all tried and tested concepts in the marketer’s toolbox, don’t come easily. It takes years of working with brands - doing research, deciding strategy, executing campaigns,....

Hello ladies,   Hope you liked what we put out this week i.e. tips & tricks on updating your social media profile, to land your dream job.   If you could not catch it, then go here to learn how to make the best use of LinkedIn to boost your profile, here to know what immediate actions to take on social media to catch the attention of recruiters, and here to read what our Industry practitioner, Illustrator and Graphic Designer par excellence, Debjani had to say about how to go about using Social....

In the second of our Industry Experts series, meet Debjani Bhattacharya, freelance Graphic Designer who works for several high growth businesses! Read on to learn how important “Social Media presence” is for her field, how she makes the best use of “Social tools” to showcase her work and source new work. Social media presence is important not only for Graphic roles, but all roles in general such as Marketing, Digital Marketing, Technology, Content Writing etc. If you are interested in making a....

Once you are ready to return to work or even half way there, start putting yourself out there via Social Media, especially LinkedIn. In our blogpost from yesterday, we speak on how to create a fantastic LinkedIn profile to land your dream job. Read it here. But once you have created that profile and presence, and are looking for jobs, know that LinkedIn provides a set of tools that can be put to great use to help you in your quest.   Some of those are -   1# Open to recruiters   Go to the....

If you have clicked on this article, you probably are aware of WHY you should use Social Media, especially LinkedIn, to attract recruiters when you are on the job hunt. But in case you are on the fence about it, do these statistics below help make up your mind?   2 mn job-seekers have landed a job via LinkedIn so far AND 89% of recruiters have hired someone via LinkedIn   So there you are. LinkedIn is used by at least 500 Mn people, and has around 10 Mn active job listings. Moreover, not only....

Introducing the second of our Industry Experts, Shipra Sonthalia, Recruitment Head - FlexiBees, who along with her team owns the entire recruitment effort for FlexiBees, entailing hiring from across industries and functions. Read on to know what she has to say about her role, what techniques she uses to evaluate candidates, and the advice she has on writing eye-catching resumes for those of you who want to return to work. And if reading this makes you want to apply to for a second career, apply....

As part of our I-RISE series, we speak on the 5th step - E-update. The article below covers the very important aspect of updating one’s resume to get back to work.   **   Taking a career break is one of the most difficult decisions that women often have to make. On the one hand is the beautiful feeling of starting a family, but on the other, there is also the worry about the repercussions a career break would have in your professional life. And if the break needs to be extended, there is also....

Welcome to the last step of I-RISE, our 5-step plan to help you become technically ready to return to work. Now that you have gone through the first four steps, and hopefully feel more ready and confident, the big question is, how DO I get back?   Well, there is no one answer. You will have to repeat the first four steps; for example, networking yields results only over time, so if you started getting back in touch with your industry colleagues as per Step 3 - Interact, it will take more than....

This week we have been speaking about the Human Resources profession, trends, skills needed, which you can read here and here. Today we will be talking about how one must go about brushing up one’s skills in HR. And if you are already there, and want to start exploring what your second career holds for you, wait no further, and start applying today.   Ways to brush-up skills in Human Resources   Become Active on LinkedIn: While understanding how to use social media as a whole is a desirable....

Of course you do.   Now here is another interesting question: is there such a thing as a part-time Investment Banker?   Yes.   Well, we were surprised too. When we got our first requirement, for a part-time Investment & Research Associate, we worked hard to fulfil it (and we did; it was a roaring success and the client not only extended the association to a more permanent one, but also recommended us to a bunch of other similar firms). When we got our second such requirement for an Investment....

Human Resources is a vast field with many different specialisations and facets. Yesterday we spoke about some of the trends in this space, which you can read here. If you were an HR professional before your career break and are looking for a way to re-enter, these below are some of the skills you could brush up on. But like we always say, don’t wait for perfection, but attain it on-the-job. So start applying today to get into the groove and back into the game.   1) Enhance your Digital....

After covering skilling for Marketing, Digital Marketing, Finance, Technology, Sales, Content, Graphic, this week we will talk about yet another function that many of you might be interested in - Human Resources.   While we will speak this week about the new things happening in this space, skills of today and the future, our sincere recommendation is that you don’t spend time perfecting these new skills, since that could take time and you would be losing out on precious on-the-job experience.....

Introducing the first of our Industry Experts, Merril Diniz, Head of Communications - SHEROES, and Writer at Heart! Read on to know what she has to say about her role, what keeps her going, and the advice she has for those of you who want to make a career in Content & Communications. And if reading this makes you want to make a second career in the field of Content & Communications, apply to us today! (*details given below).   *********   1. Tell us what your role at Sheroes is, and what are....

Yesterday we asked you Are you a Graphic Designer? Read on to know what new is happening in this area and promised to come back with tips to help you navigate these waters.   So here we are. So if you have always been the artistic type, used to walk around with a sketch pad when you were younger, and have a keen eye for color and detailing, then Graphic Design might well be the profession for you. Here is how you could brush up your skills.   How should you skill-up for a thriving career in....

Last week we started talking about Content - trends, skilling, examples, myths - about the various facets of Content i.e. Content Development, Creation, Strategy, Management and Writing. Why did we speak about it in detail? Because Content today is the most universal components of all businesses - whether you are a start-up trying to generate demand for your product, or an MNC wanting to engage in Influencer Marketing, Content is critical to both of these.   This week we will talk about yet....

Content today is one of the most universal components of all businesses, whether for a start-up trying to generate demand for their product, or an MNC wanting to engage in Influencer Marketing, Content is critical to both of these. Content Writers are crucial to businesses today, and if you want to make your second career as a Content Writer, then these below are some of the skills you need   1# Research A lot of business writing today is done to help potential customers get acquainted with,....

Yesterday we spoke about the 5 trends that had changed the world of Content and promised to come back with tips to help you navigate these waters. So here we are. If Content is what interests you, and you have a flair for it, then read on to know how you could brush up your skills.   How should you skill-up for a thriving career in Content   This week we are speaking largely about Content Strategists, Managers and Writers. We will come to Graphic and Video artists next week. So here are some....

A quick refresher, we have been talking about the I-RISE plan since the past few weeks. I-RISE is your roadmap to Technical Readiness for Returnship and to know about it, go here. As part of the 4th step, Skill-up, this week we shall talk about Content, Content Development, Creation, Strategy, Management and everything to do with it, in some detail. Content is one of the most sought after skill-sets in this new economy, and if you plan to continue or start your second career in Content, read....

An extended maternity break and her mother’s diagnosis of terminal illness, led Deepa Narayanaswamy, co-founder FlexiBees, to quit her full-time career. Later, when she was ready to get back into the workforce, she realized that there were limited opportunities for qualified women who wanted to return to their careers on a flexible basis. It was this lack of meaningful flexible opportunities that led Deepa and her batchmates from IIM Bangalore, Rashmi Rammohan and Shreya Prakash to set up....

One of the things that Akshatha’s son is the proudest about is the fact that she is a former Air Force officer.   Akshatha is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) who is currently working as a freelance content writer. One of the things that her 10 year old son, Saksham is the proudest about is the fact that she is a former Air Force officer. Though Akshatha had completed her tenure at the Indian Air Force much before Saksham was born, he is still very curious about it. “Saksham keeps asking me....

Motherhood was what prompted Nithya Kalyani, a Post Graduate in Mass Communication to quit her job and opt for a work-from-home profile, instead. However, Nithya also credits motherhood and all its accompanying ups and downs, for helping her become a stronger person. The mother of two - eight-year-old daughter Harshita and four-year-old son Harshavardhan - has carried forward her own mother’s strong will and determination to never give up, and hopes to pass it on to her children.   The mother....

A hands-on mother, wife, a dutiful daughter, a foodie and a passionate recruitment manager, Akshatha Padar wears many hats on any given day. Akshatha’s life has become even more beautiful over the past five years, since her daughter, Ishana, was born. “My proudest moment was when I first held Ishana in my arms and she was able to make out my voice and touch. She would stop crying the moment I would hold her. This journey has taught me so much - to appreciate the little things in life and the....

Sayantika Adak, who describes herself as a ‘stay-at-home-full-time-working mom,’ has handled many profiles across industries, but the one she enjoys the most is being the mother of five-year-old Tishaam, aka Pickle. And, while quitting her job was never in the pipeline, the happiness that she derived from being around her tiny bundle of joy, the fact that her husband's job required him to be away for more than half a year and the dearth of good opportunities in the city she lives in, made the....

First of all, you might ask, what does flexible Sales talent mean?   Well, it means on-demand sales talent, that works with you in a flexible approach - could be part-time or fully/partly work-from-home or both, with very clear deliverables and incentives that are linked to those deliverables.   Now some of the benefits of this model are clear; of course, clear deliverables, and KPI linked incentives will drive performance, and every business needs that. But what may not be as clear is the....

We have spent the last few weeks now talking about trends and skilling in functions like Marketing, Digital Marketing, Finance, Technology. Now for the most interesting of them all, Sales/Business Development.   One might think, what could possibly have changed in Sales? Once a good salesperson, always a good salesperson. Isn’t that true? Well, that is true, Sales people never really lose their gift. But in order to compete well in the hyper-competitive world of Sales, they do need to freshen....

Technology changes every 2-3 years if not sooner. The good news is that today we have a pretty fair idea of what the next 2-3 decades hold for us in terms of the broad areas that will lead the change. So if you plan to be a part of this industry for the next 2-3 decades, you need to understand what these areas are, and how to prepare yourself for it.   But before we begin to get into tomorrow, let’s talk about today. As a person aspiring to return to work after a career break, to get back in....

Are you a techie looking to return to work in the near future? Want to know what skills are in vogue today? Read on.    Yesterday we spoke about the broad Technology space, where it is going and what skill-sets it needs. Today let’s talk about today’s skills. Below are some of the ones that we come across on a regular basis. We will give you a very short teaser of each, and you can do your own research on them too.   Front-end Developer: The skills/languages popular today are HTML, CSS,....

A few days ago we spoke of the ways to kickstart your upskilling journey for marketing and digital marketing. You can find the article here. Today we are going to talk about Finance and how you can upskill yourself for the new-age Finance industry.   What skills does the finance industry comprise Few functions are as diverse as finance, with a wide variety of sub-skills and specialisations. In fact, it can be seen as a matrix of hard skills and industry segments. Hard skills like Accounting,....

Last week, we spoke about the need for skilling, and followed that up with starter resources on how to know which skills are relevant for you. You can read this article here. This week we are going to break it down into different functions, and also touch upon how to go about acquiring these skills.   Why Marketing needs skilling-up? This time our subject is Marketing, which is nothing but the science to creating and communicating products and ideas to your consumers. The consumer of today is....

Never has the need for skilling been more acute. Technologies are changing every 2-3 years, which is disrupting not just the way we work, but entire business models. Companies such as Uber, Swiggy, Amazon, PayTM, Google, Facebook, Tinder, are changing the way we travel, eat, shop, pay, read, socialise, date and much more. These and other tech breakthroughs have given birth to a host of new functions, job roles, industries and sub-industries.   In fact the need for reskilling applies to people....

  This husband-wife team have pooled in their individual, yet complementary, skill-sets, talents and strengths to take their experiential event management company, Seventeen Events, to where it is today. Seventeen Events provides unique experiences in every event they conduct, and helping them in this endeavor is FlexiBees consultant Ruchi Jain who has been working with the company as a Business Development professional for the past ~1.5 years as an integral part of the team.   In a....

Getting back into the work think mode means refreshing your connections and going out and conversing with more people. This is Interact : the third step of ‘I RISE’, the 5-Step plan to Technical Readiness. It is one of the most crucial phases of your journey, and entails reaching out to people - your bosses, your peers, work colleagues and acquaintances, and start connecting with them in general or even on work specific topics. It’s a great way for you to accelerate the building of your body of....

A crucial part of the Returnship Journey is Readiness, and a huge aspect of Readiness is Technical Readiness. Technical Readiness has many facets but they can all be summarised in one word: I-RISE. That’s right, I-RISE means Introspect, Research, Interact, Skill-up and (E-)Update. Today we are here to speak about the second step i.e. Research - why it is important and how to go about it.   The first step i.e. Introspection connected us back to our professional selves. You will see that simply....

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” - Carl Jung   That’s right, the objective of this step is to awaken your professional self - think about what you were before your career break and where you want to go after it. Think about the work you used to do, the skills you built while at it, whether you liked doing it or not. A second career can be the change in professional direction you wanted, so think about what you would like to do going forward - what skills you would like to....

“Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.” - Maya Angelou   I rise, you rise, we all rise when women achieve their dreams. Technical Readiness is a big part of achieving that dream, of ensuring you become fighting fit. No wonder then that our 5-step plan to attain technical readiness is called I-RISE.   I is for Introspect: Look within, gauge your skills, talents, likes & dislikes R is for Research: Look around, see what new....

Transcript of Live Chat on How to be Ready to Return to Work (answered by Deepa N Swamy on 14th March 2019 online in the thriving FlexiBees community within Sheroes App)   Q: 3 years back I left my job and moved to Indonesia post marriage. Since then I took up freelance content writing. But it was a makeshift arrangement. I now want to shift to traditional marketing again. Can I do so by working remotely from Indonesia? Are there companies that entertain in such a situation?   A: First of all,....

FlexiBees now has a thriving community on multiple social platforms. Last week’s Live chat with our co-founder Deepa N Swamy, on one such platform, was all about Readiness to Return. Many of you came with questions around those, around skilling in particular. So we thought it was worth diving deep into, to bring forth the different facets of Readiness to keep in mind before actively starting to look out.   “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the....

Yesterday we conducted our first Live Session - a community chat - on Sheroes on ‘How to be Ready to Return to Work’, and it was an amazing experience. We loved interacting with you and feel enriched for having the conversations that your questions sparked. This below summary is our way to close the loop on the chat, but also a way to open a door for more such conversations that we will start very soon.   “One big reason for falling out of confidence is once out of work, we are also out of the....

“Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them” - Anonymous Last week was amazing for us - in the process of bringing examples of women to you who had achieved success in their returnship journeys, we got inspired ourselves. The idea we started with was to showcase the successful journeys of these women, but also to highlight the different paths they took across diverse functions and skill-sets to reach that destination. And that is the whole point of flexibility....

Mumbai-based Bansi Mehta’s story mirrors that of many other women. Armed with a Management degree in Sales and Marketing, Bansi was working with a credit rating company when she had to take a break after her baby was born. This break stretched on for eight years, as Bansi stayed home to be a part of her growing child’s world. “While I tried to continue with the company on a part time basis, it did not work out as the profile needed me to travel around. With little support at home, I could not....

Pune-based Management graduate and mother of two children, Franky Aggarwal has had a vast career and experience of over 14 years spanning multiple domains such as banking, telecom, technology, edu-tech and the hygiene and health industry, where she currently works as a marketing consultant. In telecom, Franky worked with two leading companies which saw her grow professionally and earn numerous awards and accolades. The birth of her second child, however, put a break on her career. “Both my....

Life had taken Shipra Sonthalia, Recruitment Lead with FlexiBees, through a number of different roles before landing the profile that was her calling – Human Resources Management. After her marriage, Shipra took an almost seven-year break from corporate professional life. “Over the years, I dabbled in a few things, which included a business selling decoupage products, when my daughter was a year old.”   While this fueled the creative side of Shipra, it did not satisfy her professionally and she....

Securing a fully-funded PhD position in Life Sciences from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, was not a challenge for the studious Dr Shruti Sharma. Armed with the PhD and a Post-doctorate fellowship in cancer biology, Shruti returned to India and over time, found a job as a Research Associate, where she discovered her passion for teaching and discussing science with her students.   However, as is the case with many working women, after her baby was born, Shruti took a career break. “My....

A woman has the most challenging role of all – as a mother she has to ensure that she is there for her family, supporting and nourishing it. As a professional, she needs to break the glass ceiling that she is often faced with. Life becomes a balancing act, emotionally and physically exhausting – and this often causes many women to quit the rat race.   However, you don’t always need to sacrifice one for the other- and that is something that Mohua Das, FexiBees consultant with a leading edu-tech....

FlexiBees now has a thriving community on multiple social platforms, and this week we are talking about the Returnship journey. This post below is an encapsulation of this week’s conversation, with the journey fleshed out. Read on.   The Returnship Journey   Returnship or returning to work after a career break, is no easy thing. It takes courage, some know-how of where to start, and loads of support along the way.   It is a return to the jungle you were once familiar with, that now seems....

FlexiBees now has a thriving community on multiple social platforms, and we recently published a series of polls to create awareness of the different aspects of flexibility in work. This post below is a continuation of that effort, with insights from the poll responses embedded in it. Read on.   Flexibility is the solution, it’s a revolution   Over the last couple of weeks, we have come to know you a little. And we daresay, you might have come to know us a bit too. We like to bust myths for....

Recap: Recently, FlexiBees partnered with Transformance Forums to organise a summit discussing the Future of the Workplace. The people attending were leadership from Human Resources, Transformation and Digital Teams of top organisations - all with keen interest and stake in kitting their organisations with new ways of working. The whole day was packed with insights, and my one strong take-away was that leaders across organisations are thinking about how to prepare themselves for what is to....

Throughout my career, I have been a business person - Sales, Marketing, Communications, Branding - believing these to be crucial to the growth of any organisation. But now, after having been immersed in the world of talent solutions for two intense years, I am happy to say my horizons have broadened (a big draw of being an entrepreneur by the way) and I cannot emphasise enough the role that Human Resources plays or can play along various aspects of what makes organisations tick. Especially....

As a small business trying to grow, my biggest learning over the last two years has been that there is no one big lever to making a company successful. It needs good direction, great talent, quick execution, the right partnerships, steady clients, some funding, and that magical something that is vision or passion or purpose that breathes life into it. Oh, and luck.   Phew!! Is quite a list.   But today, poised at the edge of the rollercoaster that 2019 is likely to be, let me make your day - by....

The world is going through one of the most significant periods of disruption, ever. In fact, the pace of change is so rapid that, as American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil had predicted at the start of the millennium, the next 100 years will experience 20,000 years of relative technological change. With digitisation, and artificial intelligence taking over the world, it is also shaping the way we work.   The world of work has been going through changes at a break-neck speed. When....

According to findings released by multinational staffing firm ManPower Group in June, this year, global talent shortage is at a 12-year high - out of almost 40,000 employers surveyed globally, nearly 45 per cent are struggling to fill in roles. The Talent Shortage survey also reveals that India is among the top 10 most affected markets in the world, with 56 per cent of employers facing difficulties in filling positions.   However, juxtaposed with these findings is also the fact that India has....

In today’s dynamic world of work, the flexibility to expand or contract your team based on the demands of the business, is one that is highly beneficial. This is where contingency hiring, also known as project-based or short-term hiring, helps. Here you recruit talent on a per-project basis, with the understanding that the relationship does not extend beyond the duration of the project, unless you wish for it to continue. This ensures that you are able to get your work done professionally and....

Companies today –  startups, SMEs, and large organisations - are all hungry for growth and looking for new ways to hire high potential talent. At the same time, the gig economy, a phenomenon which is also known as the ‘Uberisation of the workforce,’ is slowly becoming a reality around the world. This means that forward-looking companies are now going beyond the standard full time 9-5 talent, to explore more flexible options which include on-demand or contract basis, remote talent and those who....

A conversation that is happening around workspaces the world over is how to get the best talent – one that is productive, motivated and cost effective. Today’s world is inundated with startups – companies which are revolutionising all aspects of life, providing unique technologies and benefits to consumers and, in the process, creating interesting disruptive businesses. These dynamic companies cannot afford to hire talent in the same old-fashioned way where everyone is a full-time employee,....

In today's dynamic world, conventional hiring practices don't always deliver the goods. You need flexible, fast paced solutions in order to EXPERIMENT & GROW.  Are you a high-growth start-up needing lots of skill-sets but not having the budgets to afford full-time employees? Or a business manager in an MNC needing a high-specialty skill-set for a time-bound project?       Then come to FlexiBees. We provide flexible part-time talent for all your needs, as and when you need it.         So if you....

Work-from-home-mothers Shruthi Rao and Nithya Kalyani have a reason to celebrate – they have just completed a major milestone – one year with FlexiBees, a startup that provides on-demand talent and teams on a flexible/part time basis.   Shruthi, a B.Com graduate who is pursuing Company Secretaryship, always wanted to be independent like her mother – a working woman who managed her house and family, beautifully. Life, however, had other plans. As Shruthi embraced motherhood, she had to take the....