FritoLay Wins Employer of Choice - Thirst RU

That's not a typo. We did get the "Thirst" R.U. Award But let me talk about our Employer of Choice award in a moment. First things first.

We had already won three awards at the Asia Pacific HRM Congress held in New Delhi a fortnight back. But then this was the national round. So it was a different game. We all keep joking with each other about how inherently competitive a FritoLay employee is. Basically we like to win. Hey I am different. For me winning is not the only thing - it is EVERYTHING!! When we decided to go across to Mumbai (we were apprehensive. Would we win or wouldn't we. It is a tough thing to go to an awards ceremony and then return empty handed. That just sucks.

Well we did win awards. Allow us to preen and strut for a brief minute. The first one was the Global HR Excellence Award that recognizes FritoLay for being an Organization With Innovative HR Practices.

In addition we won all three categories of the Employer Branding Awards for 2007-08 at the national level. These were for FritoLay Division being recognized has having the Best HR Strategy in line with Business, Innovation in Recruitment and the fiercely competitive category of Excellence in Training

We won the 3rd Runners Up award for being Employer Brand of the Year 2007-08 the national round of Asia Pac HRM Congress which celebrated 16 years of the awards. Mahindra and Mahindra got the award for being the Employer of Choice. Congrats M&M. This was no mean feat with "2600 entries, out of which 50 companies reached the finals." According to Suchitra FritoLay is "THIRST Runners Up". I agree. Until we win the first spot, we will remain "thirsty for more"!

Here is a closeup view of the awards. And the awardees (from L to R): Madhu Rajesh, Abhijit Bhaduri, Suchitra Rajendra and Sanjeev Dixit.

Sidelight: Both Suchitra ("Suchi" to friends) and fellow blogger Madhu are diehard fans of Shah Rukh Khan. Since the venue of the competition was bang next to the superstar's house and it just happened to be Valentine's Day - yes the competition was on 14th February 2008, Madhu and Suchitra decided to camp outside the Bollywood actor's house (called Mannat - means a vow made to a deity) in Bandra. They clicked this photo of Pepsi's brand ambassador Shah Rukh's mansion (Mannat is marked with the arrow - and that's a road sign. Not what you thought). Both of them swear that if you look hard enough you will see Shah Rukh Khan standing in the Balcony. Leave your comment behind to let me know if you spotted SRK.