Some call them discreet reference checks, some call them back channel checks, some call them ghost reference checks.They're growing rapidly, and recruiters are leaning on them like never before. In this week’s episode, host Sneha Vakharia takes you behind the scenes into why they’re growing, how they’re done, and what you need to do about it. 

Cost to Company

The rise and rise of discreet reference checks

This time last year, companies were giving away eye-popping rewards to retain talent. From BMW bikes to sponsoring vacations, they did it all to lure top talent. Times were good. Talent was scarce. And start-ups and companies were flush with money and endless capital. But, not anymore. On today’s show, why retention has gone from broad-based to focussed, open to hidden, and most importantly – equal to unequal. Companies are applying focussed strategies only for select top performers who are crucial to the bottomline. Retention has become extremely targeted, discerning, and most importantly, triaged. Employees are often unaware of the goings on in the HR department, but they can definitely sense a shift. This episode will help you identify what’s changing and where you stand in your company. In fact, it will help you answer the question: does my company want to save me?Credits: Written and hosted by Akshaya Chandrasekaran, produced by Anushka Mukherjee, and engineered by Rajiv CN. Also check out Brady’s brand new newsletter, Present / Future, out now.  Subscribe to The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business news platform. 

'Are you a Lion or a Pig?'

The situation has changed. And the equation has too. If the past two years were all about throwing money to attract top talent, 2023 has seen a general sobering up of appraisals and job switch hikes.  In a strange turns of events, some employees are okay with taking a cut on their annual compensation in exchange for ‘stability’, in this highly volatile job market. I speak to Saaquib Dawoodani (Head of Talent, Revolut), Abha Khurana (People Success Lead, inFeedo), and Shashank B. (Writer + creative consultant, an international OTT giant) to understand the new math of careers. Which is more than just the numbers. The First Principles episode featuring Gaurav Munjal of Unacademy releases on 11th May. Subscribe to First Principles and get notified when a new episode drops:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/first-principles/id1639125773Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Rou1kKH8CQYoDDaHavaw1?si=ca8662215b5c4a18Cost to Company is a careers and workplaces podcast from the The Ken’s newsroom. The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_epThis episode was written, hosted, and produced by Shreevar Chhotaria 

The 'job switch' hike isn't a wise decision anymore

This week your host Sneha will take you inside businesses at war, through the voices of those fighting in the trenches. We’ll hear how the same war — the war against inflation, a funding winter and shrinking markets — is being fought differently in different businesses. We’ll see how war sharpens, and sometimes disfigures, a business. We’ll see what is martyred and what is protected. This is what a business fighting for survival looks like. Tell us, is your business fighting for survival?

Is your business at war?

MBAs – love them or hate them, but you can’t ignore them. Over the years, they have taken over every business vertical – general management, sales and marketing, growth and strategy, human resources, and even product and technology. Name it, they have been there and done that.  But there was one bastion that remained unconquered by the MBAs for the longest. One last holdout – hardcore finance. Sitting at the apex of this pristine castle were the chartered accountants. Crunching numbers and calling the shots, out of reach and beyond attack. Or at least so they thought. Compliance used to be the moat for CAs, but companies need finance chiefs to see more than just the account books. They prefer proactive risk analysis, strategy, and financial planning. So, the generalist MBAs, with microscope in one eye and telescope in the other, look more attractive for the job. The MBA army has arrived at the CFO gates. The attack is real and from all sides – on curriculum, on relevance, and on pay packages. Will the accounting purists be able to hold the fort and defend themselves against the mighty army of MBAs? In this episode, I spoke to the best and brightest CFOs in our country, especially the ones who have done both a CA and an MBA – PayU India's CFO Arvind Agarwal; OYO's CFO Abhiskek Gupta; and co-founder and CFO of Cars24, Ruchit Aggarwal – to get an on-ground perspective. Tune in to find out more. This episode was written, produced, and hosted by Akshaya Chandrasekaran. Write to her to become a part of Cost to Company. 

MBAarbarians at the gates

In the last few months alone, Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce announced that they were going to begin the process of flattening their organisations. That they were going to have fewer and fewer hierarchies in their organisations. Fewer hierarchies means fewer managers.The pattern here appears to be that in tough economic times, when efficiency becomes paramount, businesses are rethinking their need for managers. And concluding that they don’t need that many.Because managers are expensive, and then you need managers to manage managers. And people to manage paying, looking after, and hiring those managers. And if you have self-motivated, ambitious, and disciplined lower-level employees, why do you need managers to manage them? Are we not capable of self-management? Why would you layer on unnecessary bureaucracy that only slows a business down?We spoke to three experts about this. And learnt that hierarchies and layering are essential to a business based on its complexity. A more complex business will always need more managers, no matter the economy.And that the reason we are undermining the role of managers in this present moment isn’t because we need them less and less. It’s because all the managers around us are just so bad.This episode was written, produced and hosted by Sneha Vakharia. Write to her to become a part of Cost to Company. 

Amazon and Meta are wrong about managers.

You've heard about them. You've worked with them. You've thoughts around them. But have you really heard from them?In this episode, I speak to Kaavyya Kesarwani (Growth & Community, Juno), Sherina Poyyail (Policy professional, Ex: The Quint), Bhavya Narula (Founding team, GrowthX), Sindhu Shivaprasad (Chief of Staff, Obvious) and Shashank Baliga (Writer, a major OTT platform) to understand what the 'new kids on the block' think about careers, workplaces, and whatever else happens in between.Subscribe to The Ken: https://the-ken.com/Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

Vibe Check: Gen Z on what Gen Z wants

Here are some messages Cost to Company has received over the past months.“I believe working with GenZ is the toughest thing I do at work.  They look at their jobs as a means to the next job. This has dramatically reduced their qualitative output, even if their quantitative output is enough. ““Workplace hierarchy is its absurd with GenZs”. “There is an increasing gap between values of older generation and new generation of knowledge workers”. “There is a huge mismatch in expectations that millennials have in the workplace.”From this vantage point, It sounds like generations are tussling it out on the floors of workplaces, each resentful and angry at the other. We decided to dig deeper.  And we found that the real story hear is not about GenZ’s and millenials, but that many managers,  are struggling to manage a generation shaped by a pandemic. Anyone working with the newest, freshest interants to the workforce, is tasked with getting work out of those who were young and most impressionable thought some of the most traumatic moments in our collective history. In this episode of Cost to Company we talk to managers who are coping with these changes. We find out what would make their lives easier, what they’re looking for in their colleagues. If at the end of this episode, you can empathise better with your manager, and have learned how to work with them to get what you need, then we will consider this episode a success. 

Here's how to empathise with your manager to get what you want

A meaty part-time role may seem like the best of most worlds. Your workload is relatively lesser. You have more time to spare. The money might be decent too. One major downside of the part-time experience though is that you lose out on important benefits such as paid leaves and health insurance. Or... do you?In this episode, I speak to Saurabh Arora (Co-founder and CTO, Plum), Michelle P. (Communications professional + entrepreneur), and Naren (Independent software consultant) to understand why there’s been a rise in the number of part-timers, and why your new colleague might just to be a part-timer too. Subscribe to The Ken: https://the-ken.com/This episode was written, hosted, and produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

Your new colleague is a part-timer

In this special episode of Cost to Company, the tables turn. Snigdha interviews CTC hosts Sneha and Shreevar about how work and workplaces have changed in the last thirty weeks. The short version: they’ve changed dramatically.This episode is the long version of that answer. Sneha takes us into the evolving relationship between the employee and employer, into how power has shifted in response to larger shifts in the economy, just in the past seven months. And how that has changed the way we work. Shreevar talks about how careers have changed in response; and what a resilient, enduring career now looks like. If there’s one episode of CTC you listen to, this is it. 

Special episode: how work and workplaces have changed in 30 weeks.

Everybody is cutting costs. Not because they want to. But because they have to. A few months ago, edtech giant Unacademy announced that they were making frugality as one of their ‘core values’ to focus on profitability. But can you really be a frugal company if it’s not in your DNA from the very beginning?In this episode, I speak to Somnath Mukherjee (AVP Business, Zerodha), Rahul Deorah (Finance Lead, Dezerv), and Kavya Jain (Product Manager, FreeUp) to find out what its like working in a frugal company. And why every company can’t be frugal, even if they want to. Subscribe to The Ken: https://the-ken.com/Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

What's It Like Working For A 'Frugal' Company in 2023?

Internships are booming. Internshala has been reporting jumps of between 30 and 80 percent jumps in internships listed by businesses year on year, depending on which year you look at. The same data says that more and more businesses are offering paid internships. Demand for interns is going up. And if you ask recruiters, they’ll say that the number of internship applicants is also going up. Supply of interns is meeting its demand. Both sides of the market are growing.And because of this, workplaces and careers are changing. The fundamental lines we’ve always known and understood between education and career, university then job, those lines are blurring. In many cases, interns are almost indistinguishable from entry level employees, both to their employers and to themselves. This is making our workplaces younger, more innovative, and a little bit more prone to bursts of hormones, than ever before.

The interns are rising.

Gone are the days when unions were something that only caught the fancy of the blue collar workforce. After a slew of unending layoffs, white collar employees in the IT sector are finally waking up to the bells of unionisation. But it’s not without a myriad of unobvious roadblocks. The path to collective bargaining wasn’t easy. But no one knew it would be this hard. In this episode, I speak to Sreyan Chatterjee (Lawyer/Researcher; Ex-Reuters), Harpreet Singh Saluja (Founding Member, Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate) and Suman Dasmahapatra (National Convenor, All India IT & ITeS Union) to understand more about the treacherous journey towards white collar unionisation. This episode was written, hosted, and produced by Shreevar Chhotaria (@shreevz)

IT Employees Are Finally Unionising. But There's A Problem.

There’s a specific idea we have about moonlighting:  a trend that emerged in the pandemic.  Engineers tasked with sitting at home and delivering their product saw that their skills were so valuable, that it was possible to extract more money out of them by working in two places at once. So a person would either consult with multiple organizations on the side, or work in more businesses than one, using the skills they had already, to extract more income out of it.But this episode, what we’re talking about is entirely different. This is moonlighting not to extract more money for the skills you already have, but moonlighting to demonstrate new skills and new experience. This is moonlighting to stay relevant.And it turns out, even those with most professional experience find that they have to do it. To survive.  

Moonlighting, not for money, but to upskill.

What was once touted as the biggest work trend to emerge from the pandemic, is on its way out. Companies are slowly but surely realising that the 'work from anywhere' model isn't sustainable in the long run. Or even in the short run, in some cases. Meesho, for one, had announced an extravagant WFA policy in February 2022. They scrapped it only a few months later.But it's not just the employers who're putting the final nail in the coffin. It's the employees too.  In this episode, I speak to Joel D'Souza, (Program Manager- Culture and Talent at Headout), Aditi Agrawal (Management Consultant at a Big 4 firm), and Saurabh Deep Singla (CHRO, upGrad) to find out how the golden era of work from anywhere is over. Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

The Golden Era of 'Work From Anywhere' Is Over

Hear how your workplace is changing. Before you hear it on Slack. In this new weekly podcast, get answers to the biggest questions about how modern Indian workplaces are changing, often even before they become popular questions to ask. Sneha Vakharia and Shreevar Chhotaria take turns week by week with a fresh new story, fresh new voices, and a fresh take on the Indian workplace

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Cost to Company

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