Significant changes have been implemented in terms of orientation, on the job training, employee engagement activities and IT setup for new hires. Onboarding of course has become entirely virtual, during these testing periods. The first day and the first week are very essential for every new hire and onboarding process. I believe that the first impression is a lasting impression. That’s why we need to pay close attention to the smallest details.

Here are some tips that will help interested applicants, and others:

Virtual Interviewing

We use MS Teams as a platform to meet our applicants. There are a lot of online meeting platforms out there too. However; MS Teams stands distinctly apart on most fronts.

 It is helpful to have an introductory  meeting with the interested applicants to set expectations of how the interview process will work at Netwoven.

Virtual interviews are no different than in-person interviews. Though it may seem more casual, it’s important to treat them just like you would at the office. We made sure our interviewers cut out all the distractions, chose quiet space to avoid any disturbances to the candidate, gave the candidate undivided attention and make direct eye contact if it was a video call.

Making Job Offers

The hiring team spends time interviewing on behavioral and value fitment, apart from just job role requirements. It would also be good to ensure the potential candidate’s ability to work, communicate and deliver effectively, when Working from Home (WfH) for prolonged periods of time. An extended and exciting opportunity exists for strategic hires, especially now that many companies globally are churning their talent pool.

Just as the interviewing process, job offers are made and onboarding is virtual too.

Virtual Onboarding

The process stays the same, the procedures and means have changed.

Create connections

Traditionally on an employee’s first day, they would be shown around the office and introduced to their coworkers and new team members. We foster these connections by introducing and welcoming the new employee to all team members via Yammer and email. We also pair up the new employee with team members they will work closely with, to create virtual mentoring – so they can kick-start connections with other employees and limit any feelings of isolation new hire might have.

Adjust the current onboarding

We rolled out all typical information given out on the first day at a slower pace. We made sure the employee gets enough time to complete the documentation, ask questions as remote environments can get overwhelming if the new hire comes in with certain expectations. It is a good idea to consider making changes to the online onboarding process as it will give the new employee time to absorb the information and ask questions as needed.

Establish check-ins

It is important to keep new hires engaged, motivated and connected. We have managers complete weekly check-ins with our new employees. The key is to help develop a regular schedule for interaction and open the line of communication, so no one feels alone or lost in their new role. This will help create a path of success for the future.

Organizations and individuals were forced to quickly adapt for a prolonged WFH situation. Post lockdown, both companies and employees will be looking to take advantage of the benefits of WFH while balancing them with a ‘back to normal’ routine to deal with the disadvantages. Organizations with robust abilities to hire, train, engage and retain a remote talent pool will lead the growth in terms of capability.

View current openings

The post E-Recruitment – An Emerging Reality During COVID-19 Crisis appeared first on Netwoven.

Netwoven would like to express empathy for all of us affected by the current COVID-19 crisis, especially those who have lost loved ones or seen family and friends fall ill. We are very grateful that to date our team has stayed healthy and is continuing to support our customers around the globe.

We’d like to reassure all of our stakeholders—employees, customers, partners, and community members—that Netwoven is strictly complying with all local, state, national, and WHO guidelines as an organization and as individuals.

The Future Interrupted?

The growth of the global economy over the past ten years or more—following the overall trends in modern history–has been exhilarating, enabling people across the globe more opportunity to participate in that economy and reap the rewards of doing so.

This growth has been driven by several factors, including the technological tools driving what is now termed Digital Transformation.

As we’ve seen recently with COVID-19, there are risks associated with modern life in global society, and threats that would once be contained in some pocket of the world now pose a greater threat of being unleashed upon all global citizens.

Fear and anxiety are understandable, and so are responses of our institutions, organizations, and individuals.

Despite the current challenges, Netwoven maintains a positive outlook and faith in human drive and ingenuity to come out on top after our temporary setback as a global society. We’re still in a great position to keep building the future.

A New Normal?

Netwoven is a global enterprise with substantial operations in both the United States and India. Our US operations have been largely remote since our founding in 2001 and have developed remote working as a core skillset; however, our Indian workforce regularly collaborates in person at our offices in Kolkata and Bangalore, requiring some adjustments for our dedicated staff there.

While adoption of remote productivity and collaboration technologies continues to sharply increase, many of our customers and partners and those in the larger communities we share have been used to a greater degree of in-person collaboration at physical offices.

In the world of COVID-19 and other possible man-made or natural disasters, these patterns have now changed drastically over the last weeks and are likely to change some aspects of our working life for the foreseeable future.

Today’s Challenges

Adjustments have not been easy for everyone. Many households must adjust to temporary school closures and attendant childcare issues, adjustment of travel plans, disruption of professional, family, and worship activities, etc.

Critical workers in healthcare, public safety, sanitation and more remain at their posts to keep protecting the welfare of our global citizens.

Workers in other roles and industries are just as essential to ensure our powerful global economy remains strong during this temporary disruption; industries need to keep producing physical goods and intellectual services to ensure the financial health of all individuals, organizations, and institutions when the most recent challenge has been defeated.

Netwoven’s—and Humanity’s—Response

Netwoven has embraced technologies of the Microsoft Cloud such as Office 365, Teams, SharePoint, Dynamics 365, and Azure, and has helped our customers in the Fortune 500/1000 and smaller organizations do the same.

These are components of what the industry and press have termed the Digital Transformation. We have seen demand for these and similar technologies spike exponentially recently, with no abatement in sight.

Nothing can replace raw human talent and creativity, but we should consider ourselves lucky to live in an age of Digital Transformation where not even the most daunting challenges can hold humanity back for long. These technologies can enable and enhance us to do our best work, including in the face of adversity, themselves leveraging another of humanity’s marvels, the global telecommunications network and the Internet.

The same Digital Transformation technologies that have made Netwoven and our customers more efficient, more responsive to our customers, and more agile are now helping us keep our employees, customers, partners, and communities safer.

All of us in the global business community can take the opportunity now presented to cut costs, scale back, eliminate jobs, and diminish a collective vision for what life can be like as we progress into the future. Or we can instead take the opportunity to start reinventing our businesses, organizations, and institutions through Digital Transformation to make them more resilient to shocks such as COVID-19 and whatever follow-on challenges are thrown at humanity.

Decisions we collectively make now can not only make our employees, colleagues, customers, friends, and families safer in the short term, but also can make them safer, more secure, more creative, more collaborative, and more ENABLED, for the long-term.

The Future—Starting Today

We don’t want to diminish the very real challenges facing the globe—and every individual—this very day. But we at Netwoven have seen and continue to see every day the determination of our employees, customers, and partners to make our businesses and our lives a little bit better.

The human spirit, combined with the ingenuity of tools of Digital Transformation we’ve created, will ensure this continues to happen, no matter the news today or tomorrow. We trust the news will be better next week, and if not, the week after that, at the very least. Then we can move ahead and keep building the future together.

In closing:

Stay healthy. Keep your friends, family, and communities safe.

And please—reach out to me and any of my colleagues at Netwoven to discuss how we can keep building the future together. Starting today.

Sincerely,
Niraj Tenany,
CEO, Netwoven, Inc.

The post We Can – and Should – Keep Building the Future; Let’s Start Today appeared first on Netwoven.

Work-Life Balance

As our team members work in different time zones; work-life balance is very important for us. Working hours at times exceed than the normal shifts; it is no brainer that releasing stress and remaining rejuvenated is equally important for each team member.

So, we have been consistently and relentlessly working to enhance a culture of Organic fun; team building and engagement which is driven by the “Team” and not the company.

Building a culture of fun also means employees enjoy their workplace, laugh and strengthen the relationships with colleagues and foster a culture of an extended family. No wonder that, this in turn results into enhanced thinking, nurture problem solving skill and boost productivity.

No matter where our Offices are located, we try to weave a likeable culture. These are fun definition and destination as well; with facilities added to the floor.

If that was not enough, we also created an engaging and vibrant “Cafeteria” that adds to the aura.

Shifting Gear

Recognizing achievements and contributions is integral to our culture and these are special moments to be cherished. Then we have Birthdays and work Anniversaries to celebrate!

Occasional Team Dine outs gives the team ample room to relax, enjoy the company of fellow teammates and foster greater bonding. We follow this mantra, quite often.

Annual Day out extends a day long, fun filled experience for the team. An outing that rejuvenates all team members; brings out the hidden talent; whether it be sports or music the day encompasses it all leaving team members wanting for more. So, to make it even better, we go out twice, almost every year.

The Journey Continues

Life at Netwoven is a journey which is exciting, exhilarating, rewarding and devoid of monotony. Teammates continue to contribute where years of association become milestone!!

Join us

The post Netwoven: The Fun Place to Be In appeared first on Netwoven.

I have been working with Microsoft products for over 30 years. My entire Software professional career has been with Microsoft going past several inflection points in the journey. I have summarized my journey and association with Microsoft below:

1988 – 1991 – DOS Era

I first worked with a startup back in 1988 for 3 years that had a 5 in 1 package for MS DOS similar to Microsoft works in Windows. I was a hardcore DOS Programmer. The company went out of business as Windows took over the world.

1991 – 1998 – WINDOWS Era

I then became a Visual Basic programmer and built many large applications for small and large companies for many years.

1998 – 2001 – WEB Era

I joined Microsoft to lead their database consulting team as SQL Server 7.0 was hitting the market and as a consulting manager acquired the first few initial customers on SQL Server 7.0 for OLTP and Data Warehousing.

I built some of the initial click stream analytics software for Microsoft customers

I was part of the Digital Dashboard team (which formed the initial components of SharePoint).

I built excellent relationships with my Microsoft colleagues, and customers. Relationships that I cherish even today.

2001 – 2011 – WEB Era

I left Microsoft in 2001 with some of my Microsoft colleagues to form Netwoven, a consulting company focused on providing solutions using the Microsoft platform.

It proved to be a successful bet and Netwoven today is a thriving business. It allowed me to send my kids to college, save some for retirement, assemble a team of amazing Netwovians, deliver value to customers, and last but not the least to have fun.

2011 – Cloud Era

We moved our entire business to the cloud as Microsoft cloud began to gain mind share. This has again proven to be an excellent bet and we look forward to the journey.

I am sure many others have followed the same journey but here’s where the journey and impact may be different:

• Many of my family members bet with me on the journey with Microsoft
• Several of my kids, nephews, and nieces have all graduated from the Netwoven academy to move on to bigger and better things
• Some of my family members are now working at Microsoft doing great things
• Some of the other family members have started business similar to Netwoven focused on Microsoft technologies

I thank the leadership of Microsoft and the talented people for making building software and changing lives as their mission.

I thank my colleagues at Netwoven who decided to join me on this amazing journey.

I thank our customers for challenging us to reach greater heights and bestowing the trust in us.

I am not ready to retire yet and looking forward to many more years to continue to server our customers.

Wishing you a very happy holidays and a happy new year!

The post My Journey with Microsoft – 30+ Years appeared first on Netwoven.

1. Join the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Program

In the cloud world, customers purchase software along with some value added services.  In order to provide this, it’s best that Systems Integrators resell Microsoft software along with their own IP.

Netwoven has officially become direct provider of Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider program.

2. Develop vertical solutions

Services differentiation and developing vertical solutions have become necessity for a partner firm’s future. This might mean acquiring expertise around certain technologies or creating vertical specific solutions. As a result partners can sell high value managed services and move beyond deployment to help customers orchestrate their IT processes.

3. Make AppSource your best friend

Microsoft introduced AppSource at the #MSInspire event to create a new one stop destination to help business users find, try and use line-of-business Software as a Service (SaaS) apps from Microsoft and its partners. Users can also discover content packs and add-ins for Microsoft business apps  like Dynamics CRM, Power BI and Office and Azure.

Netwoven is working to provide some solutions in the AppSource.

4. Go all in with Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft is betting big on data and Artificial intelligence as part of their core business philosophy and making it a focus area along with modern workplace and business applications in its journey to $4.5 trillion digital transformation market. Microsoft’s AI tool is being integrated directly into a wide variety of products and features, from image recognition for insurance chat bots to better grammar detection in MS Word.

Netwoven has a vibrant Insights and Analytics practice that has worked with many Fortune 1000 customers to create Speech based solutions, and Text Analytics solutions.

The post My 4 Big Takeaways from Microsoft Inspire 2017 appeared first on Netwoven.

Also stay tuned for our SharePoint 2013 specific vocab list.

@Mention: a way of identifying a person in a post that lets the person know they were mentioned, usually by an @ symbol in front of the name, but Google Plus uses a + instead.

90-9-1 rule: 90% of users are “lurkers” that read and observe but don’t contribute, 9% of users contribute only occasionally, and 1% of users make the majority of postings in any one network

AstroTurfing: A tactic used by some to create a fake grassroots movement or buzz

Authenticity: Used to describe “real” people behind blog posts and other social profiles.

Avatar: An avatar is a name or image that represents a person on forums, social networks, and other websites. Usually a small picture or unique username.

Blog: A site updated frequently by an individual or group to record opinions or information.

Crowdsourcing: to harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of the crowd to contribute content and solve problems

Digg: A social news website that lets members vote for their favorite articles.

DM: A Direct Message is a private message from one person to another that others on Twitter cannot see.

Feed: In the social media world it applies to areas where information from your social network gathers and is presented.

Forum: also known as a message board, a forum is a site dedicated to discussion.

Geotagging:  Geotags are location-based tags attached to status updates, media, or other posts that gives GPS information

Hashtag: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet or post. Identical hashtags are then grouped into a search thread as a way to categorize messages.

Meme: A means of taking viral concepts and making them everyday lingo.

Microblogging: Short message postings from a social media account. Facebook statuses and Twitter posts are two examples.

Online reputation management:  ORM is the act of monitoring the social spaces for mentions of a company or person, often done by tools or applications that aggregate the networks.

Opengraph: This is an open protocol that Yammer, Facebook and other social networks use to enables a  web page to become a rich object in a social graph.

Tag: Indicates or labels what content is about.

Trending: A word, phrase or topic that is popular a given moment.

Tweeps: Twitter + People = Tweople.

Viral: Anything shared across social networks that get passed along rapidly. YouTube videos are a great example

Wiki: Simple web pages that can be edited by other users.

The post Social Terms and Vocabulary appeared first on Netwoven.