JUST DIAL PRIVATE LIMITED

Company Profile

Just Dial is India’s no.1 local search destination. The company caters to over 70 million unique users. Today, our search engine covers more than 200 cities in India. This unique local search service is available on:

Phone - A 24/7 operator assisted search on a single national number 6999 9999

Internet - www.justdial.com

Wireless -

search by SMS on short code 53999

wap.justdial.com

Print - b2b and b2c yellow pages

The company has experienced substantial growth since it’s inception in 1994, with a meager investment of just US$ 1000. Today Just Dial is the numero uno local search brand in India. More than 1,00,000 SME advertisers promote their business through Just Dial.

The company’s goal is to create long-term shareholder value by enhancing its position as the leading local search destination in India. Going forward, the company intends to leverage its experience and strength in the International arena as well.

Competitive Strength

The company bridges the gap between buyers and sellers by helping buyers find the right providers of products and services while helping sellers improve the efficiency of their marketing channels. The company has gained its numero uno status by establishing the following competitive advantages:

The leading local search brand in India

Large customer base and nationwide coverage

Highly scalable platform

Excellent track record in user experience

Very high customer satisfaction

Modern and constantly updated infrastructure and technology

Vastly Experienced management team

Vision and Business Philosophy

To constantly introduce and invent revolutionary concepts in the field of local search that changes the way people access information on products and services. The company’s philosophy focuses on the end user experience through feedback, constant innovation, teamwork, and integrity.
On A Right Call ( The Economic Times)
Unusual Entrepreneurs - Talking Shop (India Today)
Just Dial Offers Live Search in 240 Indian Cities (India West)
The Million $ Idea(UTVi)
Instant Karma (Hindustan Times)
Success on Call (Money Today)
Enterprise Inc (CNBC TV18)

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Improve Your Communication Skills

Regardless of the size of business you are in – whether a large corporation, a small company, or even a home-based business – effective communication skills are essential for success.

The articles in this section of Mind Tools help you to understand how to communicate your message in the best possible way.

We start with a look at some of the key ideas behind successful communication, and offer a brief quiz that helps you evaluate how effectively you communicate, so that you can identify the areas you should focus on for improvement. The articles that follow help you develop the skills you need to produce effective and inspiring spoken, written and electronic communications to individuals and groups.

To read each article in sequence, click "Next article" at the bottom of the page and, for other useful communication skills information, see the suggested 'Next Steps' and 'Extension resources' links below.

Start improving your Communication Skills with the articles below.

Communication Skills - Start Here!


How Good Are Your Communication Skills? - Take our test to see how effectively you communicate and identify key areas to improve

Making a Great First Impression

The Johari Window - Helping people understand one-another

Active Listening - Hear what people are really saying


Better Public Speaking and Presentation - Ensure your words are always understood

Speaking to an Audience - Communicate complex ideas successfully

Presentation Planning Checklist
Questioning Techniques - Asking questions effectively


Effective Email - How to communicate powerfully by email


Charts and Graphs - Choosing the right format

AIDA: Attention-Interest-Desire-Action - Inspiring action with your writing

Running Effective Meetings


Ice Breakers - Setting the scene for productive meetings


Facilitation - Guiding an event through to a successful conclusion

Win-Win Negotiation

Business Story Telling - Using stories to inspire

Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions - Understanding values around the world

Career Excellence Club Member Tools: (How to become a member)


Communications Planning - Getting the right message over, in the right way
Monroe's Motivated Sequence - Perfecting the call to act
360° Feedback - Encouraging teamwork and improving performance (sometimes!)
Empathic Listening - Going beyond active listening
Neuro-Linguistic Programming - Achieving excellence in communication

Jargon Busting - Communicating without creating barriers
Keep It Simple - Avoiding confusion and complexity
Powers of Persuasion - Understanding the dos and don’ts of persuading
Transactional Analysis - Learning the secret games people play

Role Playing - Preparing for difficult conversations and situations
Opening Closed Minds - Getting past an initial 'No'
Dealing With Unfair Criticism - Responding calmly and rationally to unwarranted criticism
Chunking - Grouping information so it's more easily understood
Ice Breakers - Easing group contribution
Running Teleconferences - Chairing effective phone meetings
Concept Attainment - Reaching a shared understanding of important ideas
Creating a Value Proposition - Clearly communicating benefits
Communicating Internationally
Delivering Bad News - Terminating employment honestly, respectfully and with dignity
Cross-Culture Communication
Communicating in a Crisis - Don't shut down communication

The Leadership Motivation Assessment

The first and most basic prerequisite for leadership is the desire to lead. After all, becoming an effective leader takes hard work. If you're not prepared to work hard at developing your leadership skills or if, deep down, you're really not sure whether you want to lead or not, you'll struggle to become an effective leader.

Are you motivated to lead? This assessment helps you find the answer.

How to Use the Tool:

To use this tool, show the extent to which you agree with each of the following statements on a scale running from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree).

For each question, click the button in the column that most applies. Click the 'Calculate My Total' button to add up your score and check your result using the scoring table underneath.

#	Question	Strongly Disagree (1)	2	3	4	Strongly Agree (5)
1	I am energized when people count on me for ideas.
2	As a practice, I ask people challenging questions when we are working on projects together.
3	I take delight in complimenting people that I work with when progress is made.
4	I find it easy to be the cheerleader for others, when times are good and when times are bad.
5	Team accomplishment is more important to me than my own personal accomplishments.
6	People often take my ideas and run with them.
7	When involved in group projects, building team cohesiveness is important to me.
8	When involved in group projects, coaching others is an activity that I gravitate toward.
9	I find pleasure in recognizing and celebrating the accomplishments of others.
10	When involved in group projects, my team members’ problems are my problems.
11	Resolving interpersonal conflict is an activity that I enjoy.
12	When involved in group projects, I frequently find myself to be an “idea generator.”
13	When involved in group projects, I am inclined to let my ideas be known.
14	I find pleasure in being a convincing person.
Total = 0

Score Interpretation

Score	Comment
14 – 27	This implies a low motivation to lead
28 - 55	This implies some uncertainty over your motivation to lead
56 - 70	This implies a strong motivation to lead.

Source: This set of questions was constructed for this self-assessment and for illustrative purposes only. No prior validation work has been conducted that enables us to address the construct validity of this assessment. This self-assessment was patterned after that of A. J. DuBrin in Leadership: Research Findings, Practice and Skills (2nd edition) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998). Pp. 10-11.

This test is one of five essential leadership assessments contained within Mind Tools’ “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You” course. This teaches the 48 essential skills needed to be an effective leader in today’s workplace. Click here to find our more about “How to Lead"

MindTools.com - Join Our Community!

The next article gives you a number of techniques you can use to increase your leadership motivation.

Resume Tips

Whether you plan to submit your résumé via e-mail or snail mail, résumés today should be designed to be scanned and indexed by computer.

Electronic and Scannable Résumés

Increasingly, companies are using computers to help manage the volume of résumés for their job openings. Electronic applicant tracking is a new process by which résumés are entered into a database using coding methods or artificial intelligence. The computer programs read and extract information from the résumé , then store the data in the corporate database for matching to job openings. However, if the résumé is difficult to read, much of the information in the résumé will be discarded.

Résumé format

Computer scanner software programs must be able to distinguish between the capital letter "I" (as in Ivory), the letter "l" (as in luck), and the number "1". This font clearly shows the difference. But look what happens with the same characters in Times Roman font: Ivory, luck, number 1.

Several factors can cause the scanner or Optical Character Recognition software to confuse these and other similar characters. Résumés printed by inkjet printers, or facsimile machines, may lack the sharpness and clarity required for scanning, or the fonts used may be too close together, too small or too fancy for the scanner or OCR software to read the characters properly. Here are some tips to help you format your résumé for computer scanning:

	Use common fonts like Times Roman, Courier, and Bookman.
	Use a font size of at least 11 points for Courier, and 12 points for Times Roman or Bookman.
	Do not use condensed or expanded spacing between the letters.
	Use left margin justification. Do not use both right and left justification because it stretches letter and word spacing.
	Avoid italics, underlines, boxes, shadow or shading effects, or reversed colors.
	Eliminate braces, brackets, graphics, tabs or hard returns at the end of the line.
	Do not use horizontal or vertical lines.
	Do not use columnar formats (e.g. newspaper).

A common practice has been to put a headers such as "EDUCATION" and "OBJECTIVE" in a column down the left side of the page and the details or those heading in a column down the right side of the page. While this may be appealing to the eye, a computer scanning program will ignore the columnar format and merge the columns together into one line, reading it from left to right. Columnar formatting is also commonly used in the heading. In the following example, this eye-appealing format….

..….. will be misread by some scanner software as:

John Can D. Date
12362 Avenue J Res: 899-555-5555
Suite 640 Bus: 1-899-555-5558
New York, NY 10020 Fax: 1-899-555-9444

Because the scanners will not read tabs and columns, the telephone numbers run together with the street address. To highlight new section headings, use capital or bold letters for section headings (i.e. Objectives, Education, Experience, etc.), and place the section heading on its own line. The heading information should also be treated in a similar manner:

John Can D. Date
12362 Avenue J, Suite 640
New York, NY 10020
Res: 1-810-555-5555
Bus: 1-810-555-5558
Fax: 1-810-555-9444
jcd@isp.com

Some software programs will read common bullets like those seen on this page, while other programs will substitute other funny characters like the sum symbol "å ". Since you cannot be sure what character the company’s software will actually read and print for a bullet, it is probably wise to forgo the use of bullets. Highlight your accomplishments at each job (no more than 3 highlights per job) by indenting the line, using bold characters, small capitals or slightly larger font. If you must have bullets, use an asterisk *.

Print the résumé on standard 8.5 x 11 inch bright white paper using black ink. This produces a strong contrast and reduces scanning errors.

If you are mailing the résumé via the post office, send the résumé and cover letter unfolded in a large flat envelope. A crease though a sentence in your résumé might render the résumé illegible.

Paper clip, do not staple, the pages together, making sure that each page contains your identifying information.

Résumé Content

We recommend a combination chronological and functional résumé format. For example, use the names of your employers as a section headings then list your position titles below these as sub-section headings. Beneath each position title, write 3 statements that describe your qualifications or achievements. For example:

XYZ Company, Los Angeles CA January 1993 - October 1997

Project Manager

Responsible for a team of software implementation specialists. As the project leader, assumed responsibility for the implementation and upgrade of the Financials version 7, utilizing full life cycle development including the use of RAD (Rapid Application Development) and JAD (Joint Application Development) methodologies. * Approved recommendations for business improvements * Conducted prototyping for Asset Management, Budget, General Ledger and Costing * Approved customizations or data conversion requirements.

Use nouns instead of verbs. Recruiters and Human Resource personnel use key words and code numbers to electronically search through résumé databases, and the keywords they use tend to be nouns rather than verbs. For example, use "Project Manager" rather than "managed software implementation project."

Some résumé writers recommend an opening paragraph summarizing your career with a 30 second ad or that captures the reader’s attention and encourages them to read more of the résumé . However, this paragraph is often written more for the job-seeker than the Recruiter or Human Resource person. Résumé writers often pack this paragraph with fluff— predictable clichés, action verbs and power phrases. For example, we often see power phrases such as "Results-orientated", "Solid leadership", or "excellent written and verbal communication skills. " But today, fluff doesn’t cut it. Computer databases catalog a candidate’s education, skills and experiences. Employers and recruiters never query a database for phrases such as "Results-orientated."

Other résumé writers suggest the opening paragraph be used to state objectives. Typically, they recommend the objectives be kept broad to avoid locking yourself out of positions for which you were qualified, but were not stated in your objectives. However, many résumés we see contain such broadly stated goals, they translate to "I’ll take anything that pays money." For example:

"A management position in a manufacturing environment encompassing professional development, personal achievement and the opportunity to share in the growth of the company and its employees."

After reading that paragraph, the reader still is without a clue as to what this person does or for what position he/she is looking. The average résumé reader spends less than 1 minute reading your résumé . The opening paragraph must set the framework for your career history and direction. Pack your opening paragraph with jobs titles and other nouns that will be used for keyword searches or will otherwise define your career history and future aspirations. For example,

"Award winning MBA Operations Manager, Certified Quality Engineer, first-tier Automotive OEM supplier, seeks position as Operations Vice President, Plant Manager or General Manager. Willing to relocate within the U.S."

Employers and recruiters now use sophisticated computer software to match job openings with résumés. Some software programs use coding methods or artificial intelligence to match the skill sets required for specific job opening to skill sets found in the résumé. The opening paragraph above assists H/R personnel in coding the résumé for computer matching, and it enables keyword data queries.

In today’s marketplace, a candidate is very much like a package on a shelf. Prospective employers shop the aisles in this market and select packages of skills that are needed to complete current projects. Whether or not you are selected depends on the company’s current requirements and how you quantify and advertise your skills.

Résumés that draw response are those that are easy to code or categorize. Difficult résumés are those that are vague in direction, or the stated objective simply isn’t supported by the education or experience. It is not enough to state where you have been or the positions you have held in your career. The résumé must quickly and clearly state your skill sets and the specific position or general direction of your search.

Lastly, forget about that old rule to hold your résumé down to one page. The computer programs scanning your résumé do not care if yours is 1 page or 3 pages. Cut the fluff out and pack in the keywords that will be used for searches. You might even consider a paragraph at the bottom of your résumé that includes nothing but keywords. The following keyword paragraph might be included in a résumé for a consultant that is seeking a position as a Project Manager for a company that is installing the enterprise-solution financial software package, Peoplesoft:

KEYWORDS: Project Manager, Implementation, Peoplesoft, Financials, RAD, Rapid Application Development, JAD, Joint Application Development, Prototyping, Accounts Payable, Asset Management, Budget Administration, General Ledger, Project Costing, Windows 3x, Windows 95, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, PS nVision/Query, PS Projects, People Tools I & II, People Code.