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....

Last week’s chat with our co-founder Deepa N Swamy, 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 axe.” - Abraham Lincoln   Readiness is like that - it is necessary preparation that can make the....

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,....

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 the Sheroes platform, 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 populated....

FlexiBees now has a thriving community on the Sheroes platform, 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 one. And....

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....