I am sharing few points which I have learned in e-mail communication so far.

– Take your time to compose e-mail, don’t write in a hurry.
– Do a spell check.
– Know when to use ‘Reply-all’ and when absolutely not.
– Avoid using fancy fonts; stick with basic fonts like Arial/Calibri.
– If you are checking your emails after few days then first read all emails and then reply to the e-mail which requires a reply. Do not reply as you read because you might have receive further e-mail for the same communication or someone from the CC list might already have replied.
– Read and re-read before replying an e-mail. Have you answered all underlying questions/concerns raised by the sender?
– If an attachment is to be sent then compose your email after adding the attachment, followed by adding recipients.
– Do not forget the attachment (use attachment reminder script in Outlook or download this software) In Gmail, activate the attachment reminder.
– Do a spell check.
– Do not reply an email when you are angry. ( Instead do this: compose the email, save it but don’t send it. Read that email again after a while and chances are you will change the e-mail completely or do not send that at all .)
– Avoid using ‘but’, it’s somewhat negative, instead use ‘however’
– Do not use fancy signature with animated images, it distracts and annoys the reader. ( and won’t animate in Outlook 2007 )
– Turn the automatic spell check on.
– Be precise and to the point, help your e-mail recipient save time.
– Ask yourself a question, how much would it take for me to answer this email? less than 2 mins? Reply now.
– Do a spell check and grammar check.
– Do not use authoritative language in your e-mails even if you are writing to your subordinate. Nobody likes to receive orders. Would you like if you receive such an email? Re-read your email after composing and sense the tone of your e-mail?
– Don’t forget the out-of-office Auto reply when you are not reading your e-mails.
– Always mention the alternate person who should be contacted in your absence if there is any.
– ‘Please see the attachment’ is a better phrase then ‘Please finds the attachment’ (if your attachment is not a treasure? ).
– Do not forget/misspell recipients’ Name. It might turn him/her off.
– Avoid using CAPS and bold.
– Know when to use Hello/Hi/Dear.
– Received an email from an irated customer/client? Empathize him/her in your reply first and then explain your situation.
– If you are sending a screen-shot in e-mail then make sure you saved the image as JPG and not BMP in Paint. Sending a BMP image would unnecessarily make your e-mail heavy.
– Do not forward those useless e-mails for your pleasure, and block office bandwidth .
– Be a responsible e-mail forwarder, verify the authenticity of an e-mail forward before being a victim of these forwards.
– Have an e-mail signature which has all your required contact information.
– In personal e-mails, make an email signature which has links to your website, blog, social networking profile like Orkut/Twitter.
– Do a spell check.
– Read your email one last time before hitting the send button.

These are few points which I believe would help you in better email communication. What do you practice in your email communication? Do you have any tip? Please do share.

Be Googleable: As they say Google is God and if God doesn’t know you then you are in trouble . I will go to extent of saying that in today’s Internet age if you are not in Google search results you do not exist. If your prospect employer searches for you on Google what results appear for your name? Have you ever Googled your name? Go give it a shot and see what are the results for your name?

Get yourself a website: Start your own website. Write about your achievements, aspirations, knowledge and experiences. This will also help you your brand (read you) search engine friendly, you will be googleable. In today’s time it’s doesn’t cost a fortune to get a website. You can get a domain name in Rs. 400/- and hosting starts as low as Rs. 1000/-. To create a website you don’t need to know HTML, there are plenty of free website templates available with which you can create your own website and with CMS like Wordpress, you can configure your dynamic website/blog in few clicks.

Bonus Tip: If you want your personalized website, you just need to buy yourself a domain and I can get your website hosted for nominal fee or free.

Get a personalized e-mail: After you have a personalized website then do get a personalized email. mail@yourname.com is far better than yourname_cool_1980@gmail.com. This e-mail address would be easy to remember for others and tells about your brand name. With help of Google apps, you can get as many as 50 e-mail address for your domain for free.

Be visible on forums: Participate in forums of your technology domain. Ask questions, seek advice and share knowledge with others. This would increase your visibility and adds credit to your expertise.

Be Social, join Social Networks: Join social networking sites like Facebook, twitter and most importantly Linkedin. These sites help you connect with like-minded people and expand your network. In terms of visibility, Orkut is not the right social networking site because Orkut profiles are not indexed in Google while Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin profiles do appear in Google results.

Expand your Linkedin Network: Join Linkedin if you haven’t already. You need to expand your network on Linkedin, add your peers, your ex-colleague, colleage’s colleague. Don’t just join Linkedin for the heck of it, be an active member on Linkedin. Give an identity to your profile, add your picture, your accomplishments, and your detailed profile, recommend persons in your network and ask for recommendations and participate in discussions on Linkedin.

E-mail Signature: Don’t waste the real estate of your e-mail signature. Add your Website URL, your Linked profile link in your e-mail signature.

These pointers are about building your online brand, however, apart from this you need to create your brand offline as well. For your offline brand identity, I can suggest that be nice to people, help others and communicate well.

These are the points which I think enhance your brand value. Do you have more suggestions? Please share it with me.

Here are the lyrics :

yaara… yaara.. o yaara
yeh kis pyaari hifaazat main ho befikri ki haalat hai
yaaroo…..
badi mazboot baahon main ho sooraj ki hararat hai
tumhare waaste toofan sah len, muskarao tum
jiyo har lamha tumko zindagi peene ki aadat hai

I don’t know if I would buy a policy from Bajaj Allianz after watching this ad, however, this song is going to be my mobile ring tone for sure .

Update: Because of several request of this mp3 download, I have uploaded the mp3 of this ad. To download please click here

Although, no job is perfect and grass always looks greener at the other side. We think that our jobs suck here and in other companies all is hunky dory. But still, considering all factors normal, when one should optimally switch a company.

I have observed two kind of persons ( yeh jo world hai na world isme 2 type ke log hote hain) the ones who think that working longer period of time would look good on their resume and shows the loyality for the company and others who don’t give a heck about it and keep hopping the jobs every other year and their salary package keeps getting fatter by every switch.

I am old fashioned and used to think that a person should work in a company for at least 2 years. After these 2 years if there are enough reasons like you feel stagnant then you should think about switching your job. However, I have recently observed that no period is optimal/ minimum to stay or switch. People leave companies in even 6 months of joining. However, I understand that no matter how hard you work you will not get a decent raise until you switch the company unless you have a very good luck but does that mean you should greed and strategically keep switching the job every other year?

At the end of it, it’s your call to stay in a job or to move on. However, I am still puzzled what’s the optimal time to switch the company considering all the factors stay normal? I remember, NIIT had this tag line in 90s, if you are not studying at NIIT, you are missing something. I think in today’s scenario there is no such thing like loyalty for company and this tag line can be used as: if you are not switching your job in every 1-2 year, you are missing something.

The following e-mail forward makes me think whether it is really a good plan to switch jobs every other year without giving much thought to career plan. (the origin of email not known).

Interesting…..Don’t miss last 2 Questions…
Some, rather most organizations reject his CV today because he has changed jobs frequently (10 in 14 years). My friend, the ‘job hopper’ (referred here as Mr. JH), does not mind it…. well he does not need to mind it at all. Having worked full-time with 10 employer companies in just 14 years gives Mr. JH the relaxing edge that most of the ‘company loyal’ employees are struggling for today. Today, Mr. JH too is laid off like some other 14-15 year experienced guys – the difference being the latter have just worked in 2-3 organizations in the same number of years. Here are the excerpts of an interview with Mr. JH:

Q: Why have you changed 10 jobs in 14 years?
A: To get financially sound and stable before getting laid off the second time.

Q: So you knew you would be laid off in the year 2009?
A: Well I was laid off first in the year 2002 due to the first global economic slowdown. I had not got a full-time job before January 2003 when the economy started looking up; so I had struggled for almost a year without job and with compromises.

Q: Which number of job was that?
A: That was my third job.

Q: So from Jan 2003 to Jan 2009, in 6 years, you have changed 8 jobs to make the count as 10 jobs in 14 years?
A: I had no other option. In my first 8 years of professional life, I had worked only for 2 organizations thinking that jobs are deserved after lot of hard work and one should stay with an employer company to justify the saying ‘employer loyalty’. But I was an idiot.

Q: Why do you say so?
A: My salary in the first 8 years went up only marginally. I could not save enough and also, I had thought that I had a ‘permanent’ job, so I need not worry about ‘what will I do if I lose my job’. I could never imagine losing a job because of economic slowdown and not because of my performance. That was January 2002.

Q: Can you brief on what happened between January 2003 and 2009.
A: Well, I had learnt my lessons of being ‘company loyal’ and not ‘money earning and saving loyal’. But then you can save enough only when you earn enough. So I shifted my loyalty towards money making and saving – I changed 8 jobs in 6 years assuring all my interviewers about my stability.

Q: So you lied to your interviewers; you had already planned to change the job for which you were being interviewed on a particular day?
A: Yes, you can change jobs only when the market is up and companies are hiring. You tell me – can I get a job now because of the slowdown? No. So one should change jobs for higher salaries only when the market is up because that is the only time when companies hire and can afford the expected salaries.

Q: What have you gained by doing such things?
A: That’s the question I was waiting for. In Jan 2003, I had a fixed salary (without variables) of say Rs. X p.a. In January 2009, my salary was 8X. So assuming my salary was Rs.3 lakh p.a. in Jan 2003, my last drawn salary in Jan 2009 was Rs.24 lakh p.a. (without variable). I never bothered about variable as I had no intention to stay for 1 year and go through the appraisal process to wait for the company to give me a hike.

Q: So you decided on your own hike?
A: Yes, in 2003, I could see the slowdown coming again in future like it had happened in 2001-02. Though I was not sure by when the next slowdown would come, I was pretty sure I wanted a ‘debt-free’ life before being laid off again. So I planned my hike targets on a yearly basis without waiting for the year to complete.

Q: So are you debt-free now?
A: Yes, I earned so much by virtue of job changes for money and spent so little that today I have a loan free 2 BR flat (1200 sq. feet) plus a loan free big car without bothering about any EMIs. I am laid off too but I do not complain at all. If I have laid off companies for money, it is OK if a company lays me off because of lack of money.

Q: Who is complaining?
A: All those guys who are not getting a job to pay their EMIs off are complaining. They had made fun of me saying I am a job hopper and do not have any company loyalty. Now I ask them what they gained by their company loyalty; they too are laid off like me and pass comments to me – why will you bother about us, you are already debt-free. They were still in the bracket of 12-14 lakh p.a. when they were laid off.

Q: What is your advice to professionals?
A: Like Narayan Murthy had said – love your job and not your company because you never know when your company will stop loving you. In the same lines, love yourself and your family needs more than the company’s needs. Companies can keep coming and going; family will always remain the same. Make money for yourself first and simultaneously make money for the company, not the other way around.
Q: What is your biggest pain point with companies?
A: When a company does well, its CEO etc will address the entire company saying, ‘well done guys, it is YOUR company, keep up the hard work, I am with you.” But when the slowdown happens and the company does not do so well, the same CEO etc will say, “It is MY company and to save the company, I have to take tough decisions including asking people to go.” So think about your financial stability first; when you get laid off, your kids will complain to you and not your boss.

I was a little bit sceptical about it in like any other person whether to go for certification or not. I have also gone through the eternal debate of SAP certification – does an experienced person in SAP really requires certification or it’s just a waste of money.

Read more about it here: Is SAP Certification Worth the Money? from Jon Reed Vs. SAP certification not worth much from IT Knowledge Exchange.

However, as I have completed 3 years as a SAP Basis consultant few months back, I thought this is the right time to go for certification as it would add value to my resume in recession hit economy.

The course C_TADM51_70 contents 5 books in total (almost 3000+ pages). The course material is very conclusive and demands a lot of persistence in studying. You don’t need any other reference material other than these 5 books because you will get all questions from these books only. You need to go through these books at least thrice to remember the every detail of SAP concepts. Thanks to Rafael OoOshiro, I stumbled upon to the concept of creating Mind Maps for studies. Creating mind map along while studying is a nice idea, it makes studying fun and you can have a lesson/unit in an uncluttered way in one single mind map.

The best part I liked about this SAP certification exam is that you don’t get braindumps for it on Internet like any other certification programs like MCSE, OCP etc (without any offence to these exams). So, you have to study the complete course material and have to understand each and every concept in detail. Although, I do believe there should be some sample questions so a person can get an idea about type of questions asked. Until recently, there were no sample questions. I think SAP has identified this problem and has given some sample questions on it’s website (See here) .

I have observed that there was a lot less information about SAP certification exams as compared to other certification until recently. The fee, course contents, registering and passing score etc but now, SAP education site provides the complete information.

While preparing for this certification, I thought of sharing knowledge and that’s how I register my own SAP website SAPguru.in. This website would be my learning canvas of SAP. On SAPguru, I would be sharing whatever I learn, I am in the process of writing few articles, How-To articles etc. I would also be uploading the Mindmaps which I have prepared as notes for my SAP certification prepration, these come very handy in revising the complete stuff in a nutshell.

Here, I would like to clear that I do not have any dumps or something similar to it which I would give you and you’ll clear the exam. Please don’t ask for it in comments. My only objective of SAPguru.in would be sharing knowledge. So, stay in touch for the update!

After searching for rafting information and several packages we zeroed in for booking from this company. (link removed because of virus infected pages, nonetheless website is raftinginrishikesh.com). The plan was simple, get a train to Delhi, preferably, Garib Rath, because it’s departure timings suited us and the fare is low as compared to Rajdhanis’ then get a car to Rishikesh. However, the Murphy’s law “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” did not fail to impress and the great Indian railway’s website (irctc.co.in) did not work while booking for Tatkal tickets to Delhi and we had to settle for a holiday special train that derailed our plans and we struggled to get a car on hire in Delhi to Rishikesh.

Finally, we managed to reach Rishikesh and on first sight of the Ganga and our river side camp, we forgot all our tiredness and sleepless night. We spent 2 days (almost) and one night in camp (without light) and it was pure fun. On first day, we did rock climbing and a small stretch of trekking to a water fall (can’t remember the name of waterfall).

The next day was the D day, after small session of instructions on how to sail, swim and survive in rapids we started the water rafting. The water rafting is an amazing sport, when cold water splashes on your face, the feeling is awesome, when you see the rapids ahead of your boat, when your boat inclines for more than 80 degrees, when your oar doesn’t find water because you are in air due to rapids.
The food and service in camps were good; however, the toilet facilities could have been better.

I couldn’t help but remembering the TATA Safari Dicor ad.

If you looked back on your life, what would you remember?
The corner office?
The corporate powerplays?
The VIP lounge?
What would you remember?
Reclaim your life.

This is one of the satisfying holidays I have ever taken. I would suggest one should do river rafting at least once in life.

Expense statement:

Mumbai-Delhi-Mumbai Train fare (AC III tier): Rs. 2300
Delhi-Rishikesh-Delhi (Innova)- Rs. 6000
2 Days/1 Night in camp including food and all activities: Rs. 1700
Verdict: Satisified

When a backup is terminated abruptly then sometimes the backup status of tablespaces remain active. In oracle 10g, you can reset the backup status of all tablespaces using the query

alter database end backup

However, in Oracle 9i you can not reset the backup status of tablespaces in one go using the above query if database status is open.

You can reset the backup status of tablespace from SQL using the following query.

alter tablespace tablespacename end backup

in this process, you will have to give one tablespace at a time, or, you can reset the backup status in one go by following the below steps in BRTOOLS.

Orasid> brtools

Select 2 – Space management

Select 4 – Alter tablespace

Press c twice to continue

Select 4 – Reset backup status

You will see the list of tablespaces which are in backup mode. Enter the range for e.g. if there are 10 tablespaces listed then input 1-10

Press c to continue.

This would reset the backup state for all tablespaces.

Tip: if you need to kill a running backup for any reason. Always kill the backint process not the brbackup process. It would make sure that tablespaces’ backup status is not active.

So, what has changed? Now, you can book Indian railway ticket with simple and ease on Clear Trip. I did try some search on Cleartrip and was amazed by the speed of results. I wonder why these results do not appear so fast on IRCTC website?
Although, the Cleartrip’s clean interface and speed is appreciated but the website does not show the full list of trains. See in the below screenshot: I searched for trains between Mumbai Central to New Delhi for 16th Dec, 2008. Cleartrip show’s me only one train whereas IRCTC shows 9 trains for the same day.

Is IRCTC not sharing the complete database?
I am sure once Cleartrip overcomes these minor issues, it would be a breeze to book railway tickets online on cleartrip and there would be no Unable To Retrieve Due To Communication failure messages.

Here is how it works.

• Add im@ibnalerts.com in your buddy list in Gtalk.
• Send help as instant message and you can get the list of accepted keywords.
• The keywords are like sports, ent and top. You receive news stories snippet along with link to the news story.

By using IBNlive Gtalk buddy you can also search for stories on IBNlive.com, just send search “your query” (without quotes) as your message and you will receive links for your search related stories (for e.g. search Beijing Olympics )

See the how to video on IBNlive

The Rediff bus fare searches mainly state transport websites and RedBus.in, Ticketvala.com. The search result takes you to the parent site or to the contact information of the operator.