For a human resource intensive operation like ours, hiring the right kind of talent is of utmost importance. It is also equally important to make sure that hired talent is nurtured, refined and made industry ready.

System administration and Technical Support are areas where depth of skills and familiarity with relevant tools and environments are crucial requirements. We have to ensure that our personnell are well trained in order to be able to deliver the kind of responsive, efficient and knowledgeable services that we aim to provide. So, recruitment and training are extremely important processes and we know that getting these right is half the battle won. We take these processes extremely seriously and have evolved and perfected them over the years.

Recruitment : We're exceedingly careful about whom we hire. Sample this: During our last entry level recruitment drive (at the time of writing this), we received a little over 6000 job applications. We went through all these applications and shortlisted about 500 candidates. Of these 500, only 13 candidates were finally hired after all rounds of selection tests and interviews. This works out to a select rate of 1 in 500 !! We're THAT careful.

To give you some further idea, here's a quick overview of our entry level hiring process :

• Screening of resumes and calling only those with the right qualifications and consistent track record
• Checking communication skills. This consists of essays, reading comprehension tests, and grammar    tests.
• Aptitude tests consisting of GMAT level arithmetic problems, puzzles, questions that test lateral thinking,    logic, reasoning and data interpretation
• Test of technical skills and concepts
• Interview to test problem solving aptitude and technical skills
• Interview to assess customer support skills, emotional quotient, ethics and values
• Final interview with a Director

Our stringent recruitment processes ensure that we get the right type of candidates most of the time, people capable of delivering the best of services and adding genuine value to your business.

Training : From establishing a dedicated training division (http://www.educarma.com), to adopting and advocating the right training techniques (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/news/? p=3348) , we're extremely passionate about training and take it very seriously indeed.

Our training programmes at EduCarma are largely built around the following 3 objectives :

a) Clarifying and Strengthening Basic Concepts : Having a solid foundation to build on is extremely important. An employee with crystal clear understanding of the basic underlying concepts will seldom be found searching for the right approach to resolve a problem.

Some of the very basic concepts which we feel trainees should be absolutely clear about :

• File systems, booting and process management
• DNS Resolution
• How Apache serves websites : Underlying mechanisms
• Database management system structure and organization of data in it
• How email works : Underlying mechanisms
• How control panels organize server software and data and interact with them

b) Hands on exercises : From having trainees write a variety of scripts in order to master shell commands, to having them perform all kinds of installations, setups, configuration and experiments (on test machines of course), we make sure that the employees are internalizing whatever they learn. Learning by doing, an oft-repeated training mantra, is EduCarma's
training philosophy and we've found that trainees gain profound understanding of their subjects when they actually see things in action, as opposed to simply reading printed text

c) Working in simulated environments : This is our most innovative training process, and by far the most effective and unique. We set up a simulated environment for trainees, complete with helpdesks and servers which gives them a real feel of the actual work. This way, employees get experienced with our work environments and support issues, gaining much
needed confidence and exposure.

Some features of the simulated environment and tasks trainees perform :-

• Remote Servers with control panel and accounts ( servers are actually VPS nodes in a   datacenter in Phoenix purchased specifically for this purpose)
• Real helpdesks (Cerberus, Tickesmith)
• Scripts that generate issues (like a configuration error, or incorrect permissions) and  send tickets to the helpdesks as soon as the issue is generated
• Nagios monitoring the remote servers
• Scripts that cause a major server wide issue causing monitoring alerts to be sent to  trainees. They're expected to fix the issue thereafter
• Server maintanence tasks allocated to them (like security audits, upgrades)
• Setting up fresh servers, installing and configuring software
• Account migrations across servers

 Training in our simulated environments acts as a finishing school from where they emerge fully equipped to work in live environments

d) Working on the Job : Once they're put on the job, they're placed under very close supervision for several weeks. Each and every outgoing reply is checked and they're expected to submit detailed reports to their supervisors explaining what they did to resolve each problem. This phase is very fruitful also due to the fact that the trainees start working with the rest of the workforce, consisting of employees with several years of experience, which gives them access to a lot of knowledge capital. Our work culture is such that employees help each other out a lot, so the new trainees get a lot of help from senior employees and learn a lot under their wings. Apart from that, the supervisor assigned to each trainee would also keep track of their progress and help them out, addressing their shortcomings if any.