HCL is the PR winner this week with the #CoolestInterviewEver

 20th February 2014    Good and Bad PR 

Good PR

HCL Technologies turns to Twitter for recruiting with #CoolestInterviewEver

One of India’s top 5 tech companies, HCL Technologies, used Twitter exclusively for a recruiting drive, making it to the top 3 Twitter trends in the early part of the week.

The campaign, which closes 21^st February, used the hashtag #CoolestInterviewEver to drive traffic for online job interviews. To sweeten the deal, prize money of 75,000 US dollars is also up for grabs.

The three part interview process, spread over 3 days, includes answering new questions every 2 and a half hours, chatting with HLC executives and tweeting answers on a domain of your choice.

The roles up for grabs, described under the macro term of Ideapreneurship Evangelists are:
- Big Data Guru
- Hacker-In-Chief
- Digital Trotter
- Womenspiration

While this is the first time that an Indian company is using Twitter exclusively for recruiting, Heineken - The Candidate is certainly more creative and downright goofy.

Bad PR

Government turns off live telecast of Telengana bill and airs bad press instead

The crucial vote on the Telengana bill, to separate the state of Andhra into Telengana and Seemandhra was bound to create divisive press. But by turning off the live telecast of the vote, the Government has bought itself a slew of bad press.

The Indian Express led with ‘Lights, Camera Off, Telengana’, Hindustan Times with ‘Nation Shut Out, LS clears T bill’. Lok Sabha TV called it a technical glitch, but the opposition leader of the BJP, Sushma Swaraj, called it a “tactical glitch”.

It was the lead story for TV channels as well, with Times Now even devoting a separate discussion on stopping the live telecast of the bill.

The only way to redeem the situation now is for the Lok Sabha Secretariat to release the 80 minute long footage of the debate.

Cartoonists, such as Satish Acharya, had a field day with the blackout:

Lanco group gets the brunt of its pepper spraying owner

You can’t choose your relatives, but clearly you can’t choose your company’s owner either! After the now infamous pepper spray incident in Parliament last week, L Rajagopal, who did the pepper spraying, has dragged his company, infrastructure giant, Lanco into the news as well.

The media has dredged up the story of its massive debt and its corporate debt restructuring-one of the largest such exercises’ in corporate India. A story in the Indian Express starts by saying, “Shares of Lagadapati Rajagopal’s Lanco Infratech, the holding company of the group, are now trading at 35 per cent discount to the book value at the BSE on Friday. The market cap of the firm is down to Rs 1,565 crore as the company, which originated in Andhra Pradesh, has almost eaten through its net worth.”

There have also been allusions in the press that the Lanco group had got a really sweet deal from the consortium of banks, which would not have been possible without government support.

In today’s election charged environment, parties such as AAP have been raising the sceptre of ‘crony capitalism’; companies are under scrutiny as never before. The smallest hint of a politics and big business nexus is big news.

In this environment, Lanco has got a face full of bad news due to its pepper spraying owner.

Have you seen any great or even bad PR?

Write to Paarul Chand at paarul@prmoment.in or tweet @PaarulC or @PRmomentIndia throughout the week and we’ll happily credit you for your trouble.