Crafting Lasting Connections: A Holistic Approach to Candidate Interviews

Introduction:

“Unlocking the true potential of a candidate goes beyond the confines of a resume. It’s about unraveling their unique narrative, understanding the person behind the professional. In a world where hiring is not just a necessity but a symbol of growth, the way we approach interviews can make all the difference. Let’s delve into a method that transcends the conventional, fostering genuine connections in the hiring process.”

The Hiring Symphony:

If you find yourself in a situation where you are hiring, consider yourself and your team lucky. More often than not, it’s a good sign. This means that your organization is growing. Even if you aren’t growing, and you are simply hiring a backfill, believe me when I say, it’s even more important in that scenario. I have often been in situations where after some unfortunate departures, the workload was simply distributed amongst the remaining. You can imaging what led to…

Dating in the Professional Realm:

This goes without saying but I think its very important for you to do as much research about the candidate as they might have done about your or your company. I feel that often the interviewers bring about an aura of “you need us more than we need you“. If you think like that “get over yourself”. Think about this, you are about to hire someone you might work with for a very long time. You want that relationship to work out. Put your best version in front of the candidate. Get to know them by reading their LinkedIn profile, their posts, try to understand their history, their heritage. The more you research, the better off the conversation during “the interview” will go.

Setting the Stage: The Interview Ritual

Now, that we have done a fair amount of research about the candidate and we are meeting for the first time, it’s extremely important for the interviewers to set a tone to make the candidate relaxed. You do not know where they are coming from. Maybe they have been recently passed on a couple of opportunities and feeling down. Maybe, they need a paycheck right away so they can get their health insurance back. Regardless of their circumstances, please don’t think this gives you leverage over them. Be human, treat them like one and make sure they know you need them as much as they need you. So, for that, here is an approach I follow

I start with very little small talk, something as simple as how’s the weather is just fine. I then tell them that I want them to feel comfortable and not to feel that this is an interview. This is a conversation. Here’s an example.

ME: “Hey there, Rupi (candidate). Great to meet you. I hope you are doing well today. I see that you are wearing a thick jacket, I presume it’s pretty cold where you are today”.

RUPI: “Yeah, it’s snowing out there today. Looks pretty.“

ME: “Oh wow, snow does look pretty. I myself can’t handle it as I get cold even in 60 degrees. Anyhow, thanks for taking the time today to talk with us. I am looking forward to this conversation as I get to know you a bit and give you an opportunity to get to know myself and our company a bit more. I know we have 45 minutes slotted on the calendar today but for any reason, if we go over, I wanted you to know that I do NOT have a hard stop so if we go over, it’s all good.“

Laying the Groundwork: The Conversation Format:

ME: “Rupi, if it’s okay with you, let me break down how I would like for the next 45 minutes to go. There are a few specific questions that I would like to ask today. Some might be behavioral questions, some might be role play and I will be sure to point out when we might need to be role play. There are no right or wrong answers. I would like to know how you think, how do you go about a certain challenge so feel free to just think out loud. Does that work for you?”

RUPI: “Sure that works.”

The Power of One Question:

ME: “Tell me about Rupi that I don’t see in the resume”

I have never been let down by this question and the responses I get to this. People often have resumes where they list the 5 companies they worked for. And, that’s important. What’s equally important is what happened between the gap. Did they take some time to travel? Did they take some time to be with their newborn? Did they take some time off to help with an elderly parent? The stories I find them telling speaks about their character more than the lines in the resume.

Beyond Employee to Person:

As we continue down asking the list of various behavioral questions ( I know everyone has their own list somewhere), I urge you to take the opportunity to get to know Rupi the person, not Rupi the employee.

The Finale: Wrapping Up with Grace:

The other super important thing to do is to make sure that the candidate is given some time to ask you questions. I often tell them early on that I will leave about 10 minutes towards the end so they can ask me anything. This is also another way you can help feel at ease during the start.

As you say you bye, tell me that you enjoyed getting to know them and that they will hear shortly from the recruiter (who will continue to be their single point of contact). Give them your email address so if they have any questions, they should feel free to contact you.

Conclusion:

“In an era where connections matter more than ever, redefining the interview process is not just a choice; it’s a responsibility. It’s about recognizing the potential in each candidate, fostering relationships that transcend the professional, and ensuring that every interaction leaves a lasting impact. So, let’s embark on this journey of transformative hiring, one question at a time.”

Want to get your hands on a great list of questions for interviews?

Subscribe to the mailing list. I will be sending that list next week.

The content was authored by me. The main title and the paragraph titles of the post was generated by an AI.

From Campus Challenge to Cold Field Triumph: 25 Years later

“Seriously, how is he half a lap ahead of me?”… That really was the frustrating part. Anyways, I had to keep running, thinking to myself that I can catch up. As the race went on, I really couldn’t catch up to him and I could see that he almost was going to gain a whole lap on me. Okay, I can’t let that happen. “Keep running and keep breathing”..

This was 25 years ago when one of my college mates and I were walking around the campus in IT-BHU (alma mater) and saw the signs for the “Athletic Meet”. We got curious, asked what’s going on and were told that there is an athletic meet going on. We asked if we could participate and were told anyone can participate.

So, both of us, looked at the sheet of events that were going on and signed up for 4 events over the course of that day and next. Bear in mind, neither one of us were into track and field but hey, what’s the worst that can happen. Gotta sign up, right?

Here’s where the story gets funny. The high jump and long jump events that I signed up for were happening as we speak and then the 5K was going to happen in 1 hour. I looked at myself wearing shorts and a T and said, “sure, I can do this”.

I got myself a bib and I was on the field ready for my high jump. I do think I had high hopes for myself given that I am 6’3″ and I didn’t know anyone at my college taller than myself. I got my 3 attempts (maybe it was 4) at the high jump into a sand pit, thoroughly embarrassed myself in my lack of any vertical and said, okay maybe I can’t go high but I might be able to go long with the long jump coming up. Different sport, same story. I had no technique and I probably landed somewhere at the bottom. I wasn’t the last one so that’s good.

Now, time for big event, the 5K. Have I had any training in running, no? Do I enjoy running, no. So, what made me do this? Not sure, possibly the excitement of just signing up for something out of nowhere.

Anyway, as the race started, it was 13 or 14 of us and we all started running. I felt good largely because I used to play about 3-4 hours of sports on any given day, cricket, volleyball and football so I was feeling good about my stamina.

As we started running, and I remember we were told we had 12.5 laps to do, I could feel my heart thumping in my chest around the 2 or the 3rd lap and I was like, WTF? Anyhow, the other guy who had signed up also had no training in running and he was starting to build about 2-3 arms length of lead on me while I was out there panting, not sure if I can keep running. Anyhow, I kept going and kept looking at him gaining on me and I said, I can’t stop. Not if he keeps running. I don’t want to go back to the hostel and be laughed at that I couldn’t even finish. Little did I know, he was thinking the same thing. Yes, he was ahead of me but told me later that he was ready to stop any moment I would have. So, it actually might have been a great thing that we weren’t in each other’s ears distance to be able to talk to each other cos who knows what would have happened.

So, let’s cut to the end. Did I win the race? No.. Did I finish the race? Yes. I finished it and I was one of the last few. Hey, a few people stopped running mid way so I wasn’t actually the last. I think I might have ended up around 9th or 10th. Who cares, what really made me happy was that I finished. I didn’t stop and both of us kept talking about how we didn’t want to stop because the other kept going. I still remember that day and how amazing it truly felt.

Oh, I also remember dropping dead right on my knees the next morning when I woke up. Yeah, my legs literally gave up.

FAST FORWARD 25 years… I still do not like running. But, I love playing any sport. Playing sports is the only way I get any exercise.

There are triggers in your life that sometimes act as amazing catalysts and this time around, it happened to my wife who is actually also not so much into running but had decided to run over the last month or so to take part in the “Bah Humbug 5K race”. She asked if I wanted to do it, but I passed on it. She finished her race well and her legs didn’t give up the next day. Super proud of her. Since then, I have been wanting to see if I can even finish 5K without stopping to catch my breath like I did back then.

And today was the day, I was watching my daughter at her volleyball practice and I gave her a bit of coaching with my gestures, she rolled her eyes and mouthed “I know”. I got a little pissed that she doesn’t really want me to coach and walked out.

There I see this beautiful field in front of me where I had seen two ladies walk earlier and said to myself, let me just go for a walk. Her volleyball coach is in there coaching, I don’t have to add to it, she has a point, let me just walk it off.

And, as I stepped foot in the field, I said, maybe I could just run a bit and see how much of the 5K I can do without stopping. Looking at  myself again, this time I wasn’t in my shorts and a T. I had thermal, my jeans, my shoes that are about 1/2 size too small and a puffy jacket. Told myself, sure I can do it. And started…

I didn’t even know how long each lap around this field was, so I started my fitbit run. As I finish my first lap or maybe second, my heart is thumping and my mouth is getting dry. Pathetic I said to myself, I am not in a good condition. Anyway, gotta keep going, right? As a wise man once said “How do you eat an elephant?”… One bite at a time.

Just look at each lap as a milestone. I look at my fitbit and it tells me that one lap was about 0.2 miles. So, while I am running my third lap or so, I am just calculating. 5K, okay that’s about 1.609 miles, so it’s a bit more than 3 miles. Each lap was about .2 miles, so I gotta do 15 laps. Hmm, it’s possible. Let’s keep going. Another lap or so, I am thinking, this is going to be much harder than I thought. Keep going…. I said to myself.

Bear in mind, I have no water, my jeans are not helping, well, nothing really was helping. The weather was actually great, Cold and crisp air actually made me feel great.

A few more laps into it as I near 5 laps, I am thinking I am done with 1 mile only to look at my watch and see that it wasn’t yet a mile. So, now I am doing my math again and calculating. Ultimately, with all the calculations, I think I still need .2K to do after 3 miles, so instead of counting how many laps I need, I should finish 3.2 miles, that should do it. And, given that I still want to keep doing math to distract myself from the heart thumping fast, I realize that if I do 16 laps, I should be more than good.

Just keep going, is what I said every lap. Here’s what was fun about each lap, every time I was finishing each lap, it felt like a mini victory, one more bite out of the elephant. One more down, one less to go. And, my brain kicked into math every new lap. I am 33% of the way there, I am 40% of the way there. And then something happened on my 8th lap.

“I am more than halfway done”. And the second wind just hit me. Before you know it, 9th lap done, 10th done, 11th done, 12th done, 13th done.. 3 more to go, baby.

Having said that, in the 14th lap, I got that feeling when you feel like you can’t finish. Almost like, when you have to pee really bad and get to the house and you think you won’t even make it to the toilet. Anyhow, I made it to the toilet, I dragged myself through the 14th and 15th.. and the 16th (last) lap was just fun, the legs weren’t tired, I picked up my speed, took my phone out and

Here is the video of the last half lap

And, here is me after I finish my last lap

Here is the Fitbit recorded run

But, overall, I feel super happy to say, I can still do a 5K without practice. What’s next? Another 5K in 25 years, maybe a 5K with some training, 10K, not sure.

It’s a good day today. I am going to enjoy that with a glass of wine and thank my wife for inspiring me and our kids to keep ourselves active and healthy.

Why did I write this?

I write this out for a few reasons. For those of you who know me, you know that I sometimes go out of the way to create a disruption in my life. I need change, I need to do things differently every now and then. There are times I eat with my left hand, there are times, I try to hit a tennis ball behind my back.

There are times when I just have to run a 5K even though I hate running. If you are in a situation in your life where you are looking to put yourselves to learn a new skill, possibly have a new years’ resolution, I urge you to just dip your toes and just go for it. The first lap is always the hardest one. And then, you stabilize the pace and the then there’s the joy of finishing something… Well,

There are no words to describe that feeling, you just have to experience it.

(check out this graph, and that dip is when I dropped my phone while taking a picture and I had to stop)

The content was authored by me and title of the post was generated by an AI.

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Top Technological Catalysts To Elevate Your Small Business Horizons

In a rapidly evolving business ecosystem, discerning technology and software choices can be more than just operational necessities; they can be instrumental in carving a distinctive edge. The role these choices play in elevating a small business’s trajectory cannot be understated. 

By harnessing these strategic decisions, your business can profoundly enhance workflow, productivity, and, consequently, profitability. This Data Journey piece delves deeper into the nuances of several tech and software arenas where judicious investments can offer transformative value. Get ready to set businesses on a robust platform for sustained growth and success!

Prioritize Accounting Precision  

Every successful enterprise, irrespective of its size, recognizes the paramount importance of impeccable financial oversight. Embracing state-of-the-art accounting software offers businesses more than just digital bookkeeping. 

It acts as a catalyst in streamlining complex financial workflows, ensuring meticulous record management that leaves no room for errors. This precision translates into efficient invoicing, minimizing any scope for discrepancies. Moreover, with real-time financial insights at your fingertips, your business is empowered to make strategically sound decisions, shaping a prosperous future.

Enhance Payroll Efficiency 

The adage that “time is a valuable commodity” rings truer than ever in the demanding realm of small businesses. To maximize every minute, you must keep administrative processes like payroll as efficient as possible. 

Intricacies of payroll procedures are largely eliminated by incorporating advanced payroll and work hour tracking tools. This means less time grappling with numbers and more time focusing on core business activities. Furthermore, an accurate account of employee hours ensures fairness and transparency to maintain a satisfied, motivated workforce that knows its value is recognized.

Build Brand Distinction  

A brand logo design, much like an emblem, is more than just a visual marker; it stands as a potent representation of a business’s ethos, aspirations, and value proposition. The right logo can resonate deeply and leave indelible impressions in the minds of viewers. 

By leveraging emblem creators, your business has an invaluable opportunity to sculpt an impactful brand logo design without incurring the substantial costs typically associated with professional design services. A thoughtfully crafted logo not only strengthens brand recall but also sets the company apart in a saturated marketplace, nurturing trust and a sense of connection among prospective customers.

Boost Team Synergy  

Today’s dynamic business environment is heavily reliant on collaboration and interconnected workspaces. It’s no longer about individual brilliance but collective efficacy. Task management platforms are not just tools; they’re the bridges that connect diverse teams. 

They offer teams the agility and flexibility needed to synchronize their efforts, even when miles apart. Such platforms foster an environment marked by enhanced communication, clear task delegation, and transparent project oversight to ensure the collective objective remains in sharp focus.

Fortify Digital Realms  

The digital landscape, replete with its myriad opportunities, also brings along significant threats. Robust digital defense mechanisms are not a luxury but an imperative in today’s scenario. Your company can shield itself from the glaring and ever-evolving array of online threats while fortifying its reputation by proactively championing cybersecurity initiatives. 

A secure digital front endears trust among stakeholders and clients alike. Moreover, preempting potential cyber threats ensures uninterrupted business continuity, as it averts potential financial and reputational crises.

Optimize Product Flow  

Businesses, especially those dealing with tangible goods, understand the intricacies and challenges associated with inventory management. Streamlined stock management isn’t just about number tracking; it’s about optimizing the entire product lifecycle. 

Advanced stock oversight tools allow businesses to have a granular view of product quantities, trends, and movement patterns. Such insights circumvent issues related to overstocking or stock depletion, directly influencing customer satisfaction. An efficient supply chain, driven by real-time data, not only reduces wastage but also ensures that product availability aligns with demand.’

Summary

Technology and software, when chosen with foresight, have the potential to transform the very fabric of small businesses. They’re not mere line items on an expense sheet but strategic investments that pave the way for enhanced workflow, scalability, and revenue. 

As the business landscape continues to evolve, it becomes imperative for smaller enterprises like yours to recognize and capitalize on these game-changers. Then, you can seed a future rich in success and innovation.

Would like to read more helpful content? Join the Data Journey today!

The Byte Brigade: Story continues

The Byte Brigade #1 – The Fight that Started it all

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How to block annoying ads in your home network and keep your kids safe !!!

If you’re concerned about the privacy and security of your home network, you may want to consider using Pi-Hole. Pi-Hole is a network-wide ad blocker that can prevent ads and tracking scripts from loading on any device that connects to your home network. In addition to improving the performance of your network by reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred, Pi-Hole can also protect your privacy by blocking requests to known tracking domains.

Let’s start with the benefits

Benefits of Using Pi-Hole

Pi-Hole offers several benefits for home network users:

  1. Block Ads and Tracking Scripts: Pi-Hole can block ads and tracking scripts across your entire network, improving performance and privacy.
  2. Network-wide Protection: Unlike browser-based ad blockers, Pi-Hole can block ads and tracking scripts on any device that connects to your home network.
  3. Improved Network Performance: By blocking ads and tracking scripts, Pi-Hole can reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred, improving the performance of your network.
  4. Customizable Blocklists: Pi-Hole allows you to customize the blocklists to block additional domains beyond the default ones.

What does it look like?

Here, take a look at my Yahoo Mail page

Before Pi-Hole: and then after Pi-Hole

Here is another example, for the CNN page today

Before Pi-Hole: and then after Pi-Hole

Intrigued how to get it started?

In this blog post series, I’ll walk you through the process of installing and configuring Pi-Hole on your home network.

Once it was done, my web UI, looks something like this

As you can see, the pi-hole has blocked more than 30K ad or unwanted website links at my home network just in the last 24 hours.

Before you begin, you will need

  • A functioning Raspberry Pi
  • Desire to make your home network safe
  • Time

You will need to know

  • Some basic networking knowledge, If you have very limited or no understanding of networking, it’s okay. I will try to outline the steps you need to perform
  • Physical access to our router
  • Access to admin credentials to your router

Installing Pi-Hole

I won’t repeat the good content that is already out there on Pi Hole website. Follow this link to get started. The entire process took less than an hour for me to finish

Home

After the Install

The DNS server setting is something that will NOT automatically change on your devices. So, you can do one of two things:

a) Restart the router so that all devices can get the new configuration, or

b) Wait until the device (like your cellphone) restarts or reconnects to your router. At which point, it will get the new config

More importantly, remember to visit the Pi.Hole webUI so you can monitor the pages that we being blocked. The stock installs already creates a block list. I manually added a few more lists that I found on gitHub to make my ad blocker even more robust. Keep in mind, there are a few pages that might get blocked that you don’t want to block. For example, if you would like WhatsApp to work but only block Facebook and TikTok, you can play around with custom white-lists or black-lists.

Hope this helps. Happy Safe Surfing!!!

How does that machine make an intelligent decision?

Reading to your kids at night is a pleasure. I didn’t realize how much my kids loved it and how much I loved it as well. For some reason, I haven’t been doing as much reading as I would like, both to the kids at night and in general. So, it was time for a change and I took on a challenge.

So, I brushed up this book and mentioned that I would be reading this to them every night.

Both kids got excited and huddled straight into bed. And, of we started on this journey. The plan is to read a few pages every day so by the end of the year, we have finished this book. Yes, that’s slow but that’s intentional. There is so much to pack in the history of various civilizations. I will report on what we learned towards the end of the school year.

Back to the main story, “How does that machine make an intelligent decision?”. So, as I started reading the book, I realized that I needed more light and called out to the Google device, “Hey Google, change the brightness to 30-40%”. You see what’s interesting here? For me, its perfectly reasonable to ask for brightness that is 30-40% and all humans will deal with impreciseness without any issues. How about a machine, though? How does a machine deal with 30-40%? Should it ask a clarifying question? If it did, would it bother me and frustrate me? Should it just take an average and turn it up to 35%? Should it go to 30% given its night time and then prompt me if I needed to turn it up even more?

See, these decisions that come to us so naturally are not so natural for machines. Instructions that might sound simple may have many downstream decisions. That is not easy to preconceive. 

We keep talking about how machines make human life better with better decision making. But, in every bit of information that we receive back from the machine(s) to help us with decision making, there are a lot of decisions that go into creating those branches. Not an easy job, for a product manager.

So, it got me thinking and got me googling for various articles. One of them happened to be this one (it is mostly an informational piece about expectations in a temporal expressions):

Managing Uncertainty in Time Expressions for Virtual Assistants

At the end of the articles, it lists what humans would want from a virtual assistance (in context of managing uncertainty in time expressions), but I think those expectations might go even beyond the scope of the paper. Here are some of the expectations:

  • Implied flexibility
  • Implied constraints
  • Complex expressions
  • Respect uncertainty
  • Recognize uncertainty
  • Embrace flexibility
  • Notify intelligently
  • Leverage implicit knowledge

You can read more about it in the paper, but its great thought process to keep in mind when designing for such systems. I have been researching and haven’t come across many articles (yet) that describe how that that uncertainty is coded into the system? Does it have to be rule-based? Does it have to be derived from the order of the words? What additional context can be used?

  • Time of Day? – If nighttime, choose lower end of the range and reverse for daytime?
  • Previous brightness level? – If the lights are already at 30% and there is a request to change something, don’t keep the brightness at 30% unless mentioned specifically.

You can see the types of information humans can use in context comes to naturally and it is very hard to programmatic embed those contextual systems into a machine. But, I wouldn’t be surprised when it is done.

Reading the book “Super Intelligence” as we seek to find some answers.

Please comment and let me know if you got some interesting papers for me to read.

How to Solve Rubik’s Cube with your kids

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Data+Kids: Their First Assignment

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Best Practices for Dashboard Performance – with the TC20-ish update

  • Do you have a problem with your tableau dashboards loading slowly?
  • But, not sure where you start?
  • What are the things I should try to optimize first?

Here is my talk from Tableau Conference 2019 (TC19) for you to watch. The Tableau Public biz has now been updated with new features from 2020.

And, here is a link to the tableau public Viz. Remember: each tip has a blog supporting the thought process. Click on it to read more

Factors affecting dashboard performance

PERFORMANCE SERIES:

If you wish to get directly to the blog series of the 42 tips, here is the blog series on Performance, where I will take up each of the items above and present my thoughts and experience with Tableau

US Election Results – with Tableau

Enjoy a Tableau visual showing results of all US elections till 2012

Elevate Your Online Success with Essential Website Performance Monitoring

In today’s digital era, the importance of monitoring your website’s performance cannot be overstated. This critical practice serves as a cornerstone for maintaining and improving the overall health and effectiveness of your online presence. Through this article, shared by Data Journey, we will explore the broad range of advantages that come with diligent website performance monitoring. 

From enhancing the technical robustness of your site to ensuring a seamless user experience, the benefits are multifaceted. We will delve into how regular monitoring can provide a strategic edge in a competitive online marketplace, helping you stay one step ahead in an ever-changing digital world.

Swift Action Ensures Continuity

Imagine your website as a bustling storefront; its uninterrupted operation is essential. Monitoring its performance is akin to having a vigilant manager on-site, ready to address any hiccup immediately. Jetpack notes that this proactive approach minimizes downtime, ensuring that your digital presence is always welcoming visitors, thereby averting any potential loss of engagement or revenue. Moreover, it instills confidence in your users, knowing that any issues will be rapidly addressed.

Gain Insights Through Metrics

When assessing the performance of your website, it’s crucial to focus on key metrics that provide valuable insights into user behavior and engagement. One such metric is the number of unique visitors, which is a clear indicator of your site’s ability to attract an audience. This data point is critical in understanding the reach of your website and evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. 

Another important metric to monitor is your bounce rate, which reflects the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate could signal issues with content relevance, site design, or user experience, highlighting areas that may require improvement. By keeping a close eye on these metrics, you can gain a deeper understanding of your website’s performance and identify opportunities to enhance your online presence and business strategy.

Enhance User Experience

Creatitive.com points out that user experience is the cornerstone of website success. Regular monitoring enables you to fine-tune your site, ensuring rapid loading times and smooth navigation. This relentless pursuit of excellence translates into a seamless experience for your visitors, fostering satisfaction and encouraging repeat visits. It also helps in keeping your website aligned with the latest user experience trends and standards.

Utilize an HTML Validator

Incorporating a CSS HTML validator into your website performance monitoring toolkit offers a multitude of benefits. This tool meticulously checks the markup validity of web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, and MathML, ensuring that your website adheres to web standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 

The advantage of this validation process is twofold: it not only enhances the user experience by ensuring that your site displays correctly across different browsers and devices but also plays a significant role in SEO. Search engines favor well-structured and error-free websites, meaning that validation can directly impact your site’s search engine ranking. 

Elevate Efficiency with Automation and AI

In the realm of website performance monitoring, the integration of automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a revolutionary leap forward. By harnessing these advanced technologies, businesses can discover the ease of use of this solution, which not only streamlines the monitoring process but also enhances efficiency remarkably. 

AI-driven tools are adept at identifying issues in real-time, providing an immediate response to potential problems before they escalate. This proactive approach goes a long way in maintaining a robust online presence, ensuring that performance and security concerns are addressed swiftly. The result is a significantly improved user experience, as visitors encounter a smooth, reliable, and secure website. 

Safeguard Data and Customer Trust

In an era where data breaches are not just a threat but a frequent occurrence, proactive monitoring acts as your first line of defense. It plays a pivotal role in not only preventing data loss but also in detecting vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, thus protecting your customers’ sensitive information. This vigilance not only secures data but also serves as a cornerstone in building a foundation of trust, a critical asset in cultivating lasting customer relationships. 

Moreover, effective monitoring strategies can help in complying with various data protection regulations, showcasing your dedication to maintaining high security standards. By demonstrating a robust commitment to data security through continuous monitoring, you further solidify customer confidence and reinforce your reputation as a trustworthy online entity.

Tailoring to Customer Preferences

Utilizing specialized monitoring tools yields deep insights into customer behavior and preferences. These insights allow you to tailor your website and offerings, creating a personalized experience that resonates with your audience. 

In turn, this customization fosters a deeper connection with your visitors, enhancing loyalty and engagement. This strategic personalization can lead to increased conversion rates and a more robust bottom line.

Maintain Search Engine Relevance

Your website’s visibility on search engines is crucial for online success. Effective monitoring ensures that your site remains optimized, adhering to the ever-evolving algorithms of search engines. This vigilance is essential not just for maintaining but also for enhancing your digital presence, keeping you a step ahead in the dynamic online market. 

By consistently monitoring and updating your website in response to search engine algorithm changes, you ensure that your site meets the latest SEO standards. This proactive approach helps avoid any potential penalties that could harm your search engine rankings. Staying ahead in search engine rankings translates directly into increased visibility and traffic, which are vital components of a thriving online presence. 

As we traverse the ever-evolving digital terrain, the significance of website performance monitoring cannot be overstated. It stands as a testament to a business’s commitment to excellence, security, and user-centricity. Through diligent monitoring, businesses not only safeguard their online presence but also cultivate an environment ripe for growth, innovation, and enduring customer relationships. This strategic approach to digital engagement is what sets apart successful online ventures in our interconnected world. By embracing the full spectrum of website performance monitoring, businesses are not just reacting to the digital age; they are actively shaping their future within it.

Read more informative articles on the Data Journey blog today!

Photo by Freepik

Investor’s Odyssey: Navigating Wealth Creation with Timeframes, Knowledge, and Discipline

The other day, one of my family members called to get my advise about investing. They said they had a bit of money to invest and were wondering what they should do.

“Should I invest in gold, that’s what my mum said”. I chuckled a bit. I know why she was being told that buying gold might be a good investment. And, just to be clear, I am not saying gold is a bad investment. I have some investment in IAU ETF as well. But, the reason I laughed is because here we are… We are dealing with opinions that may or may not be true. So, I thought we should look at things from an objective perspective and see if we can look at some data. More on that later…

First things first, I told them I will not pick the investment strategy they should chose. That is on them. The fastest way to ruin a relationship is the get money involved. I did not want to be held liable if their investments didn’t turn out as well as they had hoped.

Here are 3 pieces of advice that I gave them

  1. Defining your Investment timeframe
  2. Learning about Investing
  3. Learning how to keep things on track

Let’s cover each one of these in detail

Defining your Investment timeframe

To me, this maybe the most important thing that one needs to do before they invest any of their hard earned money. Let’s say you have a 10K to spare and you are looking to have your money earn you more money, you have to think whether you are able to keep that money in the market for 3 months, 1 year or 5 years. Let’s say you are good to keep that money in the market for a year. Now, consider if you want to keep making changes to your investments. If you are not looking to become a part time trader and have your family and work commitments, you shouldn’t need to keep adjusting where you invest that money. For many folks, set it and forget it (for the chosen time frame) might the best strategy.

In fact, there is evidence to support that people who review their portfolio once a year vs. others who review it on a short term basis tend to have larger gains on their investments.

I use this strategy very effectively. In fact, every time I have an additional chunk of change that goes into the market, I define a time frame for that chunk of change.

All monies are not equal, it’s okay to treat them differently.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that when I look at money in my checking account and I try to keep that to about 6 months of living expenses, I might think about putting that half of that money in a 3 month CD. So, even if I lose my job and have bills to pay, I will have 3 months of living expenses in cash and in 3 months, I will have another 3 months supply without any risk associated with losing it.

Understanding Investing and Inherent Risks

You don’t have to go and become an financial analyst to consider investing. One of the things you have to do is not follow blindly what others are doing. Platforms like Robinhood are making it extremely easy for anyone to invest any small of money (big or small) and making immediate gains. My worry is that if you do not understand some basics of investing, it is nothing but gambling your money away.

So, how do you process the risk in investing?

First of all, remind yourself that if you put your money in the market, there is a chance you could lose it all. Don’t believe, let’s take a look at MicroStrategy. The stock went up from trading around 100$ to 3000$ from 1998-2000. And then, from Mar 2000-2001, the stock lost 99% of it’s value and went back to less than 100$. You just can’t time the market when it comes to individual stocks.

So, instead, if you are just getting started, look at ETFs.

What is an ETF? (Exchange Traded Fund).

Basically, an ETF is a basket of funds with a particular strategy applied to it. So, think of it as that instead of figuring out how much of that 10K do you want to invest in MSFT or NVDA or TSLA, you can look into just buying SCHG (Schwab U.S. Large-Cap Growth ETF) and you can find out the basket break up by going to various websites. I like going to MarketBeat.com where on the holdings page of SCHG, I can see the break-up.

The biggest advantage of investing in ETFs is that you protect yourself from situations like what happened with MicroStrategy.

Well, what if you wanted to try to take a chance in investing in a situation where you could get 3000% return?

How do you go about finding a company that might have it’s stock just rip? Well, the answer is no one knows, unless you are an insider. So, if you have some useful information that others don’t have AND you are NOT an insider, go for it.

For others, we can use information that have been put together by analysts and try to invest based on their advice. So, how I go about doing that?

Here, we are talking about a situation where I want to invest in a single company and I fine with potentially high risk, high reward situation. I use data again in that.

Let’s go to Marketbeat.com together and then click on “Research Tools” and the go to “Stock Screener”

Once you are there, let’s click on “Adjust Filters”

Now, comes the part where knowing what plan I have in mind is important. I might have a scenario where I want to invest that 10K and see what gains I can make within a single week. I am comfortable with losing some of that money but I also want to try to make a quick buck. So, I might try to take a chance and see if earnings report date is date around which I might invest my money.

So, I enter the criteria for companies that have their earnings in the next 5 days

The analysts consensus is that company is a “Buy”

And, I want to invest in Tech companies

And I get a list of companies

Now, how might I chose between the various companies here?

Do you the basics? Do you understand what is the Market Cap of a company?

Market capitalization, or market cap, is the total value of a company’s shares of stock. If a company has issued 10 million shares, and its share price is $100, its market cap is $1 billion. Market cap is calculated by multiplying the number of stock shares outstanding by the current share price

So, in other words, if someone wanted to buy all the shares of Adobe, they would have to pay 285B$. Okay, let’s think about this. If someone had enough money to buy Adobe and the current owners of Adobe want to sell the company, would they sell it for 285B$? Not sure, why would the current owners want to sell?

This is when a quick comparison of Market Cap to Revenues is helpful. A quick search of Adobe revenues informs me that their revenues are about 20B$. So, in other words, it will be about 14 years or so to get to 285B$ (assuming there is no growth). However, I know Adobe is growing very well (10-11% the last couple of years). So, doing some simple math, tells me that I can get to 285B in not 14 but 10 years or so. Now, let’s consider the buyer of Adobe. Would the new buyer want to give up 285B$ today and get revenues over the next 10 years cover their investment? Maybe, maybe not? If that Market Cap was 40B and their revenues were 20B every year, that suggests that you would recuperate your investment in 2 years. Well, in that case, the current Adobe sellers wouldn’t want to even sell Adobe. It makes no sense. So, this back and forth between what sellers want to sell their company (or a piece of the company which is called a share) and buyers want to buy a company (or a share) is what drives the stock price up or down.

A multiple of 2 in above scenario is a huge “Buy” sign and it’s not something you will see and a multiple of 20 might be a huge “Sell” sign. Looking at Adobe, the factor is 14+. So, even though the company is great, has a great growth rate every year, it is possible that the stock trading at 626$ might mean that it is at the peak that it could get to. A lot of people have already bought Adobe because they think others would buy it a a higher price and that’s what has kept pushing it’s price up. It just can’t keep going up forever, unless, they release their earnings report and unleash some news that now people think, their revenues might jump to 25B next year. Then the equation changes and buy-sell tussle begins. This is what you need to understand at some basic level before you buy. Hope you get the idea here.

Now, if you do decide to put that 10K into Adobe and you buy 4 days before earnings, it’s good to remind yourself of your timeframe. You wanted to make a quick buck, so establish a target and put in a order to sell it as soon as it hits 675 or 700 or whatever. The point is to keep reminding yourself of your time frame and the risk/reward profile you are willing to play with.

Just so it’s clear, the above laid out plan isn’t my framework for finding companies to “gamble on”. I was simply explaining that you need to have a framework on how you would find companies that “fit your criteria” of timeframes and risk/reward you are willing to play with. I am simply explaining the process and that everyone has their own process and everyone should have a process rather than just investing in what mum says or their room mate says.

Writing down your initial objectives somewhere

Here is a very important piece of advice before you begin investing. Stop thinking of investing in market as a get-rick-quick scheme. It has to be a strategy. Understand some basics, understand your plan and try to stick to it. There will be many times when things do NOT go your way. It is possible that a few of your stocks go down more than 50%. Now, in some situations, if you learn that company was involved in some fraud and that the value might go even lower, it’s better to cut your losses and get whatever money back you can get.

However, the markets are always cyclical. So, it is very possible that the same companies that are trading 50% below what you bought them for will go up 200% in the next 3 years. If your investing timeframe was 3 years, having your initial plan on paper and going back to it for reference can help you by not making you rush into panicked decisions and sell your investment just because it went considerably down.

Summary

In summary, understanding your time frames for investing, gaining knowledge about the Investing and maintaining discipline are key to building long term wealth.

Have Fun and Invest Sagely

The content was authored by me and title of the post was generated by an AI.

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