5 tips to ensure you're paid equal

Looking forward to that day when men and women are paid equally at work? You may be waiting a while. 

According to reports, no country in the world has closed the gender gap when it comes to salary. In India, the Monster Salary Index (MSI) on gender for 2017 revealed that women in India earn 20% less than men. The gap has narrowed by about 5% points from 24.8% in 2016; however the gender pay gap widens with experience and is highest at 25% for talent with 11 and more years of experience. As many as 69% women at Indian workplaces feel the management needs to “walk to talk” when it comes to gender parity. 
Instead of stewing in the unfairness of it all, or waiting for organizations to catch up with the times, here are five things you can do to get even:

1. Choose a male-dominated career
   The choice of career may have far-reaching implications on your salary. If you choose a traditional female occupation, chances are that you start off on a lower salary rung. Helen Russell, associate research professor at Economic and Social Research Institute, says: “International research shows that female-type occupations tend to pay less and have lower status [than male-dominated occupations]…There is a strong argument that jobs involving care work have been systematically devalued.” 
   
   Over the years, teaching and nursing have become female-dominated professions while engineering and software development tend to be male-dominated. So choosing a career in software is sure to get you started on a higher salary than teaching kindergarten. Harvard labor economist Claudia Goldin has found that college grads moving into such professions can eliminate an average 30-35% of the wage gap.
2. 
   
3. Negotiate from the start
4. According to a study at Carnegie Mellon University, only 7% of women negotiate their first salary. Compare that to the 57% of men who make a case for better pay, and you see why women set themselves up for lower salaries and lower salary bumps through their work life. “A lot of getting ahead in the workplace has to do with being willing to raise your hand... If we as women don’t raise our hands in the workplace, we’re not going to get the same opportunities men do. Because men keep their hands up,” says Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, in Mika Brzezinski’s book, Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You’re Worth. 
   Failing to negotiate your salary from the start is a mistake that will follow you and be compounded over the years. So do your research to figure out what you are worth and make your ask. 
5. Make it a point to negotiate smarter
6. 
   In her 2012 book, Pushback: How Smart Women Ask — And Stand Up — For What They Want, top leadership consultant Selena Rezvani discusses how women miss promotion opportunities, plum assignments, and higher pay by not negotiating. She says men not only initiate negotiations four times more often than women, they also set higher targets, and so benefit in the long run. “So while women attempt to negotiate equitably — so that the pie is split in half — men tend to ask for a larger part of the pie,” she says. It’s a fact that women find it tough to negotiate aggressively. When they do, it often tends to be held against them. Try being collaborative; using words like “we” and “our”, and trying to take the company’s perspective is often more effective to get yourself a pay raise. 
7. Make a push for promotions 
8. 
   Early-career promotions are important to put women on the growth track, but women at entry level tend to be more likely than men to spend more than five years in the same role. PayScale, a website that provides information about salary, benefits and compensation information, states that women’s pay growth “stops outpacing men’s at around age 30, which is when college-educated women typically start having children”. So it makes sense for women to try and scale the corporate ladder before they start their family. Speaker, trainer and career consultant Emilie Aries advises painting a clear picture of what the future could hold for the company if you got the promotion. “Why would everyone’s lives be better if you got your promotion? Seriously, make the case for how you would be better equipped to do more for them,” she writes in an article. Ask for your supervisor’s time, make your case, and present it to the best of your ability. 
9. Blow your own horn

Women and tooting their own horn doesn’t go hand in hand. But, it’s imperative to get ahead. Peggy Klaus, a business coach and author of BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It, says: “Bragging is something that everyone needs to do.” A study at Northwestern University revealed that women’s tendency to downplay their successes at work may hold them back. Paola Sapienza, co-author of the study and a professor of finance at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, writes: “Men tend to overstate how well they do relative to women. And the people who are making decisions after hearing everyone speak tended to take most people's statements at face value. You’d think that people would discount what men say somewhat and inflate what women say about themselves. But in reality, they didn't do that.” If you don’t want to just brag, take along a self-evaluation that spotlights your skills, achievements, and reveals how your performance has benefited the organization’s bottom line.




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How women can make an Oscar-style

The Shape of Water may have taken home the Best Picture trophy, but the real winner at the 90th Academy Awards ceremony was diversity and inclusion. From statement lapel pins to powerful speeches that championed equality, the conversations that dominated the star-studded evening made it clear that the women – and men - of Hollywood have recognised that personal activism is the best way to #PressForProgress.

As the popular saying goes, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. To that end, here’s how this year’s Oscars can inspire you to take action for gender equality at work:

Time’s Up, so close the confidence gap

Several references were made to the “winds of change” blowing through Hollywood throughout the evening. But actresses Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra and Salma Hayek coming together to “salute those unstoppable spirits who broke through the biased perceptions against their gender, race and ethnicity to tell their stories” was a clear show of strength. The accompanying video, featuring actors, writers and filmmakers talking about the importance of equality, was a much-needed motivational boost for people in the audience and at home.

What you can do: 

Women tend to undervalue their strength, doubt themselves more and back themselves less than many men. It’s what behavioural experts call the ‘confidence gap’, which Judd cited as one of main reasons why it has taken so long for the women of Hollywood to “speak their truth”.
Closing this gap will take time, as it involves unlearning years of conditioning. But until you take the first step, it will never be bridged. Start by doing one difficult task every day. Action boosts confidence, which in turn inspires more action, and creates a positive cycle of growth. 

Fight for change as equals

The many brave and outspoken supporters of movements like #MeToo, and Time’s Up, weren’t just women. Actors Bradley Whitford, Justin Paul, Benjamin Bratt and The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro were all spotted on the Oscars red carpet wearing a signature pin to express solidarity with the Time’s Up movement. Host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue referenced it first comedically, then seriously, when he said, “We can’t let this behaviour slide anymore”.

What you can do:

 Women aren’t the only ones who believe that creating a safer, more inclusive and equal work environment is important. According to the Women of India Inc. Survey by Monster.com as high as 40% women expressed that men fear being judged by their male peers and choose to support gender equality only in private. However, the good part is that 44% men confirm that they can be effective advocates for gender initiative programs at workplace. 

Men are your allies at work, but in the current scenario, they are unsure about how to engage or even express an opinion. Research by the Lean In organisation reveals that almost half of male managers feel uncomfortable participating in a common work activity with a woman like mentoring, working alone, or socialising together after the #MeToo campaign went viral. 
Don’t penalise men for their gender. Talk to them about your experiences and challenges, and enlist their support.

Know that women are good for business

Wonder Woman didn’t receive any Oscar nominations, but it was one of the biggest talking points of the night. The critically-acclaimed film, directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot, became the highest-grossing superhero origin film of all time in 2017, and the box-office clout of women filmmakers and film goers was brought up by both presenters and winners. 

What you can do: Whether it’s to do with leadership styles, or the diverse viewpoint they bring in, all research points to the fact that women are good for business. Keeping that in mind, if you’re in a leadership position in your organisation, work towards creating a pipeline of female managers to follow your lead. 

Lift other women as you climb

While accepting her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, Allison Janney made it a point to thank yesteryear star Joanne Woodward, who had mentored her to pursue acting seriously. Later on in the ceremony, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand’s rousing speech where she called out for an inclusion rider – a legal clause that Hollywood actors can include in their contracts, to request “more diverse representation in background actors and extras” – was one of the biggest reveals of the night 

What you can do

Don’t pull others down to prop yourself up. Instead, women need to start looking out for one another more. Start by listing down a handful of women in your immediate network and think of how you can support them in some way. Make an introduction, volunteer to share a useful resource, share a few words of encouragement over a cup of coffee or praise them in the presence of a decision maker.

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 Amazon interview questions for software engineers

You may be an engineer with a genius for software, but that may not be enough to help you join the Amazon ranks. For the retail giant’s interview questions for a software engineer span the gamut – taking into account your technical skills for sure, but also looking at other facets of your personality.

Sobit Akhmedov, a software engineer who was recently contacted by a technical recruiter from Amazon, on his blog writes that the whole process “from being contacted to signing the contract took two months”. His three rounds of technical problems included object-related design, an algorithmic question and analyzing complexity for the solution given in the previous problem.

But there’s no set pattern for what the Amazon software engineer interview questions may be. We suggest you try these tips to ensure that you make the cut and land your dream job.

Make sure you practice for the interview

It may seem like you don’t need it, but a mock interview helps you learn how to answer difficult questions, work on your communication skills, develop interview strategies, and reduces your stress. Tigran Sloyan, CEO of CodeFights, advises uses real interview questions to practice. “The #1 mistake developers make when preparing for technical interviews is not practicing using real interview questions. As a great developer you often think 'this is what I do for a living and I am good at it' so it’s tempting to walk into an interview without much practice…[but] you need deliberate practice using the types of questions you are going to be tested on,” he says.

Do your homework and come prepared

Everyone expects an engineer who’s applied for a job with Amazon to be up to speed when it comes to technical skills. But don’t just rely on your skill set as an engineer to get you through. In an article, Dan Melnick, Chief Operating Officer at Reverb.com, says, "If you can nail the technical parts of an interview, such as a pairing code challenge, that’s great. But it doesn’t end there. The best candidates—who eventually go on to make the best team members—come prepared with smart questions that show that they’ve done their homework. Not only can this demonstrate that you understand tech’s broader impact on the company, it also showcases your communication skills.”

Show off the strategist in you

Dr John Sullivans, a professor of management at San Francisco State University and an acclaimed HR thought leader in Silicon Valley, in an article on Harvard Business Review, wrote: “In a 2013 Management Research Group survey, when executives were asked to select the leadership behaviours that were most critical to their organisation’s future success, 97% of the time they chose being strategic.” Refael Zikavashvili, cofounder at Pramp, which offers code interview prep, agrees. “The number one mistake software engineers make on their technical interviews is that they jump into code before thinking through the solution and explaining its correctness to their interviewer. To succeed in technical interviews, software engineers must break down the problem first and clearly communicate their approach to solving it prior to proceeding to implementation,” he advises.

Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know

It’s impossible for any one person to be a know-it-all. Saying a confident “I don’t know” tells the interviewer that you’re upfront and willing to admit to your drawbacks. Interview Cake Founder at Parker Phinney believes that “not saying 'I don't know' [is a mistake]…. Great candidates know there'll always be some things they don't know, so they just give a confident, non-apologetic ‘I don't know.’ (Bonus: throw in a 'but if I had to guess, I'd say X because Y').”

What you must know

Keen to see what kind of questions you might come up against when interviewing for the position of a software engineer at Amazon. Have a look and stay prepared:

• Given a list of integers, find the highest product you can get from three of the integers.
• Give an overview of the Amazon technology stack. 
• Print a tree in level order.
• Implement "File" Java class.
• Write a function to see if a binary tree is superbalanced.
• Given a binary tree and an integer S, print all distinct paths from root to leaves which sum to S. Describe the algorithm and implement it.
• Design a task execution service, which accepts tasks from clients and runs them and returns result. 
• Write a program to find the longest common subsequence in a sequence.
• How would you create an array given two sorted arrays?
• Integers are arriving at a rate of one on a socket stream. At any given time print k largest numbers. Describe an efficient algorithm and implement it in language of your choice.
• How do you find phone numbers of a given format inside large number of different HTML files?
• Given a stream of characters and a set of characters, find the shortest sequence in the stream containing all characters in the set.
• If a linked list is a loop, kth nearest points, sort two sorted linked list into one.
• Write a function for doing an in-place shuffle of a list.
• How do you design a TinyURL for a website? Design an algorithm and write sample code which generates TinyURL for a website.
• Think that 25k jobs are being applied for per second. Scale in such a way so we able to process as many jobs as possible per second. 
• Design a function that counts the number of occurrences of every character in a string.

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Top tips to prepare for TCS Aptitude Test

Ranked among the leading IT services companies in the country, TCS attracts many jobseekers. There is tough competition at the recruitment stage. The selection process broadly comprises two stages—the aptitude test and the interview. The former can further be broken up into four different sections:

a. E-mail writing
b. Quantitative ability and reasoning
c. Programming and computer science
d. Coding test

The last two have been introduced recently.Here’s what you need to know about the TCS Aptitude Test and how to prepare for it:

Pattern and Duration

The pattern and duration of each section is as follows: 

• English test (email writing)—1 question, 10 minutes 
• Quantitative ability—20 questions, 40 minutes 
• Programming language efficiency—10 questions, 20 minutes 
• Coding test—1 question, 20 minutes

The quantitative ability and programming language sections are based on the multiple-choice pattern and include negative markings and star questions (questions that carry extra marks/ weightage).

Important Tips to prepare for TCS Aptitude Test:

Email writing

As far as the email writing test is concerned, ensure that you strictly adhere to the directions. Use all the keywords and maintain the same order, and strictly follow the instructions on word lengths. Try to use the exact keywords without changing their tense. Pay attention to grammar and punctuation and keep your communication clear and concise.

Quantitative ability

This is a multiple-choice round with a mix of logic and arithmetic questions. Avoid guessing since negative marking is applicable. Some important topics in the this section include numbers, time and work, averages, mixtures and alligation, data arrangements, permutations and combinations, ratios and proportions, profit and loss, time, speed and distance, blood relations, probability, ages, clocks and Sudoku.

Programming language proficiency

In this new round, candidates are expected to answer 10 multiple-choice questions related to basic programming concepts on C language in 20 minutes.

Coding test

Here you will be given 20 minutes to solve one programming question in C using an inbuilt compiler. The code must be written using Command Line Arguments. Practice basic programming such as HCF, LCM, factorial, Fibonacci series, string programs, sum of number, even/odd, leap year etc.

Time management

It is also very crucial in solving the test. Solve the easy questions first. Also, don’t get stuck on solving the starred questions if you find it difficult just for extra marks—move on if it is taking up too much of your time. Avoid guesswork in the multiple-choice questions since there are negative markings.

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PowerUp Your HR Strategy. 

The art of recruitment has today been transformed into a much more exact science, with tomes of statistical data on candidates being turned into useful and actionable insights for recruiters. From salary information to talent flow and industry trends, recruiters need incisive information to action their HR strategies. But amidst the bits and bytes of these intricate algorithms, who is adding the human touch to human resources? You need a dynamic intelligent tool which can take such information and bring it to recruiters in the most relevant and actionable way. 

According to a Gartner report in 2013, big data is predicted to create 4.4 million jobs by 2016. As an HR manager, you know there are many decisions dependent on getting incisive information on the talent flow. Where do they come from? Where do they go? What salaries are they getting in the new company? What are the trends catching up within the industry? Recruiters can view specific data related to candidate experience levels, domains and names of previous or future employers, amongst others. With such incisive data, recruiters can devise strategies, take corrective actions and make intelligent decisions to power their HR strategies.

What kind of insights can you get?

 As the economic climate changes so do salary trends in the industry. In times of higher job security, candidates tend to negotiate higher. You want to know their expectations and industry standards to be on the right side of the bargain. Which skills are getting paid the most? At what experience level are employees getting the most hikes? What is the competition paying?

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Sex-Based Discrimination

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits discrimination in employment on 

the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin.  This federal law applies to

 employers of 15 or more employees.

Sex discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) unfavorably 

because of that person’s sex.

Sex discrimination also can involve treating someone less favorably because of his or her 

connection with an organization or group that is generally associated with people of a 

certain sex.

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Religious Discrimination

Religious discrimination involves treating a person (an applicant or employee) unfavorably

 because of his or her religious beliefs. The law protects not only people who belong to 

traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and 

Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs.

Religious discrimination can also involve treating someone differently because that 

person is married to (or associated with) an individual of a particular religion or because of

 his or her connection with a religious organization or group.

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Race and Color

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin.  This federal law applies to employers of 15 or more employees.

Race

It is unlawful to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race or color in regard to hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, job training, or any other term, condition, or privilege of employment. Title VII also prohibits employment decisions based on stereotypes and assumptions about abilities, traits, or the performance of individuals of certain racial groups.

Title VII prohibits both intentional discrimination and neutral job policies that disproportionately exclude minorities and that are not job related.

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