Life Skills

Anoop Verma

The difference between working for a large company and a smaller company can be staggering enough to warrant your consideration. If you make a leap from a smaller organisation to a large multinational corporation then you must be prepared for making some seminal changes not only in your professional outlook, but also in your personality traits.

In big companies there is the large bureaucracy that you have to deal with. Many of these bureaucratic processes will make you do some extra work. You should go with the flow as much as possible. But once you have worked in the large company for few months, and something really wasteful comes to your notice, you can talk to your superiors about it. First of all, you have to understand why a particular process is there, only then you can be judgemental about it.

Communication is the key

It is better to communicate your ideas to many, rather than to a few. This could lead to email waste, but it will keep your colleagues and superiors happy. It will lead to your getting noticed by people who matter. Even the guys, who are heard complaining that they are getting too much email, love to read the emails. Everyone loves to be aware and kept in loop. The information that you share will enable you to build bonds with other sectors in the organisation and that can open avenues for future growth.

In a large company, networking is very important. It can make a difference in the long run. Really listening and discussing with people will pay off. But you must be real. Everyone can detect a fake person. Your networking should not be just for the sake of networking; you must really care about the interests of the other person and you should have a passion for the issues that you raise. This is not as difficult as it seems, being true to ourselves comes naturally to us; it is being fake that needs some effort. Friends will help in big companies a lot, if you are planning to stay any longer.

A large corporation has many sources of revenues; it also has a large operating budget, and in most cases, it does not face any problem in paying employees on time. Even if the business slows down, or there is negative growth, you will continue to get your salary. You are almost certainly assured of serviceable technology like a phone, a computer and a comfortable chair. If you are looking for a stable working environment, a large corporation is the place to be.

Language Skills

Globalisation: An Impressive Influencer – II

B Tejesh

In the last part we had discussed that the globalisation is an influencing force all over and it has also influenced the English language. In the era of globalisation ‘think globally and act locally’ and maybe vice a versa as per the context is necessary. Now, everyone wants to enjoy individualised, localised and globalised education. One major change has been observed that now English is used for functional interaction rather than achieving native-like perfection. The speakers of English emphasise their own local variety of English rather than colonial standardised norms. This maybe helpful to project their identity and values. In short English language is changing. The change is also there in the employment pattern.

You might have observed that the jobs that existed in the industrial era are disappearing and are being replaced by new types of job and work requirements that did not exist before. So many I T companies are involved in information processing activities, and the percentage is continually rising in BPOs and Call Centres. We although being a developing country experience a growth in information-based employment. New work skills of symbolic analysis are emerging as crucial for success in the 21st century. These include skills of critical analysis, evaluation, experimentation, collaboration, communication, abstraction, system thinking, and persuasion. And, due to globalisation, these skills are increasingly being applied in English language contexts. We do use English daily to gather information or communicate with colleagues using the internet and social applications. 

Now, we must understand that the learners of any discipline need to be able to write persuasively, critically interpret and analyse information in English, and carry out complex negotiations and collaboration in English, in order to compete for the better jobs in society. English has to gratify the changing needs right from the waiters to webmasters in the light of increased tourism, international business travel, and the use of telecommunications. Further it should offer basic conversation skills for hotel workers, basic reading skills for certain factory workers and business writing skills for secretaries.

In the next part we will discuss the new language skills of reading and writing in the light of ICT, in order to face the challenge of globalisation. Please do place your comments on ‘what do you think about globalisation as an impressive influencer?’

(The writer is a Assistant Prof.  in Late BRD Arts and Commerce Mahila Mahavidyalya, Nasik, Maharashtra.  Email:beldartejesh @ gmail.com)

Tech View

Password protection for your USB keys

Anoop Verma

We have become used to carrying our important documents, pictures, videos and other digital stuff on USB thumb drives, which are small, portable and can be read on just about any device. For transporting data between two computers, they are the perfect vehicles. But if you loose a thumb drive, you could loose lot of sensitive files.

If you are not ready to invest in a costlier thumb drive, which comes with inbuilt security features, you can still protect your files and folders by the following ways:

Manually save files with password

It is not possible for you to safely protect your entire USB stick without using encryption. But you can simply save the files with a USB password. Many programmes, including Word and Excel, allow you to save files with a password. For instance, in Word, while the document is open, go to > Tools > Options and switch to the Security Tab. Now enter a password to open, click OK, re-enter the password when asked, and finally save your document and don’t forget the password.

Download USB safeguard

USB safeguard is a portable software programme to encrypt and protect data with a password on your removable pen drive using the AES 256 bits encryption. It can be downloaded by pointing your browser to this link – http://usbsafeguard.altervista.org/ . The free version is limited to drive size of 2GB. Download the usbsafeguard.exe and copy it to your USB flash drive. Run it from your flash drive and enter a password to lock the drive. To unlock it, run the file again and enter the password. 

Encrypt data in USB

Encryption is a time consuming process, but if the data that you have in your USB drive is really valuable, you can go for it. The most popular way of encryption is TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/). The process of creating an encrypted file container for a flash drive is no different from the normal TrueCrypt process. You can encrypt the complete USB drive, but in this case you will not have any space left to store the TrueCrypt file. So a better way is to create a TrueCrypt file container on the USB flash drive, and leave enough space to run TrueCrypt.