If you are someone who wants to get connected in the professional world, the first platform that comes to mind is LinkedIn. While statistics are quite varied, about 80% of recruiters are said to use LinkedIn for their sourcing needs. Not too bad eh?

I, for one, was not particularly please with LinkedIn over the past few months. Don’t get me wrong, a LinkedIn account is a must have for everyone but it was more towards the admin side of things that LinkedIn clearly wasn’t up to par.

• Slightly over a month ago, I had to work on LinkedIn to reinvigorate a LinkedIn group. First step, get details of members. Second step, cross verify with another database to see whose missing etc etc. The convoluted process aside, even the simple task of getting details of members in the group was impossible. For starters, LinkedIn’s policy of not allowing even group founders/admins to not have any level of control over membership list (a list where anyone joins by choice) is just ludicrous. Then there was the whole issue of pagination, where i could only see 25 pages (each with 20 members or so if I recall correctly) – that is only 500 members at max! My group was 838 members and counting. So much for that!
• Customer service was slated to be nonexistent (which I personally found was quite untrue). As search on Google for LinkedIn customer service leads you down a path of horror stories and communication silence. With this trepidation, I thought I’d try reaching out to LinkedIn using their “Contact Us” form. And lo and behold, I did get a reply from the LinkedIn team, albeit an answer I was hoping not to hear but that’s besides the point.
• Now the LinkedIn mobile apps page isn’t the best in my personal opinion. There are clearly marked sections for the iPhone and the Blackberry but none for Android. Android, being this huge new upcoming platform and all, I reckoned they might give it a separate section (Yes I am slightly Android biased at this stage in my life). Now I admit, I didn’t spend a lot of time meticulously reading everything on the page but I was fairly certain there was not even a single mention of the word Android on that page. They even had a separate section for Palm-Pre (sorry, no disrespect intended). So I tweeted about this apparent lack of love towards Android and within minutes I got a response telling me I could download a beta version of the app. Now, pray, tell me why couldn’t you have put that info on the website, so we could save eachother’s time? Nevertheless, they did respond and acknowledged my suggestion to include it on their webpage. Fair enough, kudos for listening. The only line for the other platforms was

“And for all other phones, just visit m.linkedin.com from any mobile browser to find all your LinkedIn basics in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese (simplified and traditional)”

• And then there is today, when LinkedIn released LinkedIn Today – an attempt to keep you informed on stories from industries (customizable to your preferences of course). While I haven’t spent a whole lot of time playing around with the system, I must admit that if its any good, this might be a reason why I might stop by LinkedIn more than when i have to update my profile.

On the whole, I think LinkedIn is a marvelous platform/service and I’m certain to use it for years to come (unless something better emerges). Sure, there are those of you out there who read this and say “Why are you complaining, you ain’t paying a dime to use it”. Agreed, but sadly in this age of the Internet freemium / subsidized model, I don’t think that’s even a valid excuse anymore.

You know you’ve scored one when you’ve put a smile on your loved ones faces

After my brief air travel, my friend secretly whisked me off to my home in time to meet two very unsuspecting parents (secretly hoping they didn’t decided to go away somewhere) On the way however, a few things caught my attention

1. I think I might have slightly missed the chaos of people forgetting everything about lanes and traffic laws and gun it straight towards you. Although, some people just mock and brush aside the chaos as nothingness (maybe I took a toned down pic, I’m not sure)
2. When you are abroad especially in the US and/or Europe everything is just pristine and has a glossy upkeep finish to all the surfaces and buildings. However in India, its like the whole aspect was deliberately turned down a notch – and frankly I think its adds to its character
3. There’s been a lot of construction in the 3 years that I have been away and boy is there still more being done.

A very awesome surprise session and a slightly frustrating phone wifi setup later I was all set to go take a road down reminiscing lane. Its been 3 years since I took a ride on a two wheeler and the feeling of the wind against my face was pretty awesome (even though we weren’t going nearly as fast to qualify as a ‘thrilling’ ride).

While my town doesn’t yet have a Starbucks, Gloria Jean’s or any other fancy name you can think of, we do have Cafe Coffee Day – a joint where countless hours, rupees and coupons were spent.

An unannounced visit enables you to connect with friends and family in highly entertaining and surprising ways. All the ‘guess who’ and prank calls are super fun. At one point I swear I almost convinced a friend I was a forgotten undergrad college mate. Priceless!

Oh and most importantly, I seriously did miss my king size bed

The Brand Mentoring program at Hult International Business School Dubai aims to help select students understand more about the art of branding by conducting “field trips” to companies that take their branding seriously. One such brand is Burjuman.

Burjuman opened Dubai’s first shopping mall back in year 1992 and was, and quite arguably is still, one of the best shopping experiences around. The “mall boom” in Dubai has seen audacious projects like the Dubai Mall and the Mall of the Emirates all cropping up within a distance of 10km of each other. These new ‘super malls’ get their fair share of advertising done through the government. However, amidst all these challenges Burjuman has still maintains it luxury status.

We spent our afternoon with Sabina Khandwani, who gave us the grand tour and proceeded to tell us exactly how Burjuman has evolved its marketing strategies to stay ahead of the curve during its 18 years of existence. We got a court side view on how Burjuman always came out with really innovative marketing ideas (both ads and campaigns) that helped retain the brand name amongst shoppers.

Rarely do people, even marketers, understand what they are doing. Most people tend to just follow the crowd and do stuff because the herd does it. Not these guys. The marketing team in Burjuman seems to have gotten it down. They know precisely what they are doing and why they are doing it – and this is the very requirement of success. With great plans set for the coming months, Burjuman is just entering a new chapter and is here to stay no matter how many new big sprawling malls crop up.

A friend of mine gave me a box of Triple Chocolate Fudge cookies and I threw my “healthy eating” plans right out the door (at least till the cookie stash gets depleted). But after eating my daily ration of cookies I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why they called it ‘Double’, ‘Triple’ and so forth. For a slightly similar question on the web regarding the lack of ‘twice the chocolate bits’ the answer was “You’ve been ripped off. Take your cookie back to the store”. Humorous, no doubt. Eventually I did figure this out and here is what I believe it means.

Double Chocolate is when your goodie is both chocolate flavored AND has chunks of chocolate (in any form i.e. bits or chunks) as well. Thus there are 2 variations of chocolate and hence the ‘double’ connotation.

Using this same logic, Triple Chocolate then means that there are 3 variations of chocolate within the same item. First it is chocolate flavored, second it has dark chocolate, and third it probably has another variety of chocolate (maybe white chocolate) in it.

Now, I know those of you like me are musing

“Hmm if this is the case, what is quadruple chocolate?”

Quadruple Chocolate requires there be 4 variations of chocolate in the mix i.e. chocolate flavored dough, dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate perhaps?

So how far can this numbering go?

According to Wikipedia, there are 6 main types of chocolate (not including sub-categorization). This means that one could theoretically make a ‘Sextuple Chocolate’ item or if they are even crazier (as I would presume they are at this point) they could add in all the sub-varieties of chocolate and make an ‘Octuple Chocolate’ item? And no, there is no such thing as “too much chocolate”!

Now I can eat my cookies in peace.

Beyond the obvious advantages of being associated with a top ranked school, Hult provides opportunities for  us (the students) to participate in giving back to the school and the community (more on the community in a future post). In each of the campuses that Hult has, there are positions called “Fellowships” that are essentially like part time job opportunities we can take up. Make no mistake, this ain’t your average ‘first-come-first-serve’ deal, its a proper selection process where you have to send in your resume, get called for an interview and get grilled by a panel etc etc. Oh did I mention you can get fired for not doing your job properly?

Hult, currently has the following Fellowship Roles available

• Academic Fellow - help the professor out with things he/she needs (drummed down version of a Teacher’s Assistant)
• IT Fellow – resolve technology issues faced by the students and work with the global team on future strategies
• Resident Fellow - this is for the campuses that have Hult provided accommodation (Shanghai and Dubai) and irons out issues at the residences
• Marketing Fellow – work with the Hult Marketing Department on initiatives

The Marketing Fellowship position was just incepted this year and yes moi is the first ever Marketing Fellow for the Dubai campus (aren’t first ever positions really cool?). My job is fun and challenging at the same time a) cause its never been done before b)it involves everyone in the campus c) I get to work ‘hands-on’ with marketing while studying (the important emphases on “while studying”). There are some killer initiatives on the books and hopefully I can help translate them into reality. I’ll definitely be writing about the cool projects that we get to do in the weeks to come.

Don’ get me wrong, I love the Dubai Metro. I think its a Godsend and without it my life would be even more miserable (like that’s even possible!) I ride the metro sometimes at least once a day every weekday. And besides the occasional overcrowding I have only high praises for the still expanding system.

The Dubai Metro has two screens in every compartment to provide information to the passengers usually about the time and what station is coming up next. However, today instead of any information whatsoever, passengers were greeted by this

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m just hoping the entire Metro System isn’t working off of a Windows platform. The last thing anyone needs is to be stranded on the track in between stations cause Windows XP decided it wanted to restart. On the bright side though, at least this wasn’t the Blue Screen of Death!

So what is the world’s rarest production car? Its the 1954 Oldsmobile Rocket F-88 sold for $3,240,000. Too bad its now in the Gateway Colorado Automobile Museum.

I picked Hult International Business School to study at for a variety of reasons

1. Hult is globally renowned and reputed
2. MBA is  a 1 yr course, so I get back to the workforce sooner
3. Hult has a Global Rotation program where a student can rotate between their 5 global campuses [Boston, San Francisco, London, Shanghai and Dubai].

Its been 2 weeks since I’ve commenced my academic pursuit in Hult Dubai. I chose Dubai for a variety of reasons, but most of all because it was a cultural melting pot and more importantly a trading hub.

The 3rd week of academics just started after 5 days of religious holidays (which was much loved by all students). Today’s sessions were organized by Hult’s Career Services department and saw 3 external speakers talk about Marketing, Communication & Branding, and ‘Unleashing Your DNA”. All sessions were equally wonderful but here is something that really caught my attention.

Communication & Branding – Olivier Auroy

I find the discipline of  Communication & Branding completely fascinating. The ability to define, create, sculpt and control an entity’s persona is quite exhilarating and fascinating. The landscape is dynamic and the challenges varying and thus is not a job for those preferring stability in their line of work. One of the very interesting highlights of the session on Communication & Branding was this wicked idea of a new kind of sun-glasses. If you think there can be no innovation in a commodity as common as sun glasses, you’ll want to check this out.

bq (derived from the word burqa) is a brand of sunglasses that offer the perfect bridge between fashion and cultural traditions. The Middle Eastern countries have a rich heritage and changes in traditions have been swift with the advent of globalization. Women in these regions used to wear (and still do) burqas but as globalization sweeps through, more women have shifted towards wearing sun glasses as an alternative to the more traditional attire . bq aims at bridging these divergent forces by creating a new style of glasses that appeal to fashionistas whilst preserving a sense of tradition.

Here is a video on the product:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX-9W1n2xKU

We had a lively discussion in class with ideas on positioning and marketing being flushed out and a particularly interesting thought struck me. With sentiments in the West towards anything from the Middle East at an all time negative, wouldn’t it be meaningful to position this product in a way that would bridge the cultural divide? For example, one could call upon Miss USA 2010 to sport these sun glasses and when awareness of this product increases so will the attitudes towards the unknown change. If humans have used music and sports to set aside their differences and come together why not fashion? Fashion is global and the desire to look good universal! An interesting thought that warrants further exploration of course.

We had another brilliant session on “Unleashing your DNA” but I suppose at this juncture a new post is warranted

Week#2 has officially come to an end with the announcement of 5 days of holidays to follow (which most of us are eagerly looking for). Like the professor mentioned as soon as the hols were declared:

“This IS the best campus ”

Disclaimer: For those of you in the other campuses, this was just a joke!

While the grit portion of the MBA hasn’t commenced yet, the first two weeks have had their own fair share of surprises. For starters I realized I didn’t hate accounting as much I dreaded i would (Thanks Prof!). Also, unless in the right frame of mind, fluff stuff is rough!.

While the 5 days are a much welcomed breather, the upcoming schedules are not all that appealing (9 hrs of classes isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but i dare to cliche “only the strong will survive”). With team formations, cultural explorations, inter personal relationships and strains, it is quite the beginning for what is undoubtedly the most intense academic year ever.

All hail HULT!

The Habit Barrier