Monday, October 5, 2009

Minutes Of the Meeting

What are minutes of the meeting. It is a detailed documentation of all thats transpired in a meeting. It is usually one person who is assigned the task to make notes and then share it with everyone including the clients and get approval on that document before actioning or proceeding with decisions taken.

Fresher are often faced with this dilemma on deciding a format that is to be used.

Preparing "Minutes of the Meeting" is something that might give sweaty palms to some. Minutes are very critical and the most important for obvious reasons. It is a good practice as it helps you go through the requirements, commitments and deadlines discussed to the minutest details. Further more you have written approvals on them.

There is no fixed format for the same. However, here is a format that has evolved over a period of time since I have been shouldering the responsibility of preparing our MOMs.

The client organisation has been referred to as ABCD and your organisation as XYZ.

You can use it if you like it.

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Date : May 20, 2008
Meeting : ABCD Bank
Time/Duration : 11:30 am / 1:30 mins
Attendees : Five

Client : Rajiv Handa – Service Delivery Manager
Vinay Shukla – Product Marketing Manager
Aatif Abdulla – Strategic Account Manager

XYZ : Billy John – Client Relationship Manager
Deepak Shah - Head. Business Development

This is the section is where you enter the date, time, venue details along with the attendees from both the side so that its easy to quote someone six months down the line. Also when CRUCIAL decisions are taken. This helps as you have someone to fall back to in case of any confusion in the future.
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Agenda : Formulate a work plan for ABCD's website re-vamp.

This is where the actual motive of the meeting is mention in details. You could have a list of bullet points in your agenda as well.
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Points Discussed:
Design and frontend not to be too jazzy.
The target audience is going to be between 24 yrs to 35 years
The basic idea to create a scenario that will promise the visitor of a great career and seduce him to apply.
Different look and feel welcome subject to adherence of branding guide lines.
The primary idea of the site is to ensure that a person takes something back and talks to others about the openings with ABCD
Contests or polls can be there to have a continuous interactivity.
Video clips to be uploaded
Content writing will be done by Your Company. Approval will be taken from the client for the same.
Candidate to be able to subscribe to SMS alerts for new job openings.
The site to show the number of openings for a particular position
Videos under each job opening to be made available.
Standard template to be created for each role to be created.
The quiz cat which is currently done once a year for the entire masses can be done through this site.


Mention all the points as spoken. Do not assume or make decisive statements here. For example the client might ask for a product or a service that your company might not be providing or may not be able to provide. That requirement still needs to go in this section as the client had asked for it and you discusses about.
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Suggestions Given :
Teasers or testimonials by existing employees on every page.
Forum to be built which will be moderated.
Candidates can apply for jobs by SMS. Answer to multiple choice questions and get to know instantly if they are shortlisted.
New domain name suggested such as xyz.com, etc but the client skeptical on grounds of phishing.
Desktop widget that can throw up details of current openings along with the basic set of questions that are usually asked in the first round. This can help short listing candidates immediately.
Desktop widget can also be used internally for announcing IJP’s.
Skipping interview levels depending upon the activity a user does on the site. Thereby creating a green channel for the visitor to be absorbed within the organization much faster.


This is where all the suggestions need to be noted that were proposed from your end or your organisation.
Its immaterial weather the suggestion was accepted or not. If the suggestion has been accepted it will even feature in the Plan
of Action Below.
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Plan of Action:
XYZ to share strategy document with ABCD for approval by next Tuesday.
ABCD to share offline assets with Your Company by tomorrow EOD.
Next meeting on Thursday, 29th May, 2008.
XYZ to revert with the possibility of the requirement of a desktop widget by EOD today.

You need to enter all action points including the details of any requirements or confirmations from either sides precisely with approximate timelines. This will make things crystal clear and help you plan your work flow accordingly.
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