Career is not just making to a high paid job. Career is the journey that begins from those wayward days of our childhood when we randomly change decisions of what we want to be and finally decide on a certain point what we actually want to see ourselves as and then we start working towards it. When I say it’s a journey, I account all the struggles and hard work that one account in reaching to that desired set profile. I still remember when I was a kid and some relative asked me “So what do you want to grow up to be?” and I reprocated saying that “I want to become the guy who sells cylinder”, at that point in life that kid in me thought the cylinder guy checks the notebooks of the parents and all elder people, so he is some kind of teacher of all elder people and that must be a very heavy position to be at. But as we know time teaches us all. Now we laugh on such kiddish experiences but in actual by the virtue of our changing minds we have taken some serious decisions to be where we are today.
Going back to my first point, wherein I said “we build our career the day we actually fix what we want to be and start working towards it with all determination”. You must be wondering that this guy has been talking quite a lot about working towards our career. With working towards it, I mean the feel of attaining the desired set goal becomes the knock of our head at each and every hour and we do something or the other to mould ourselves to be able to reach to our set agenda. For that matter, let it be the extra time you dedicated to academics, the amount of television that you might have cut, hangouts that you ignored, novels you read and news that you have been updated with. Everything accounts today to be the content full PGPM candidate that you are and that entire working up shows up at the one manner or the other.
Now that you have taken up the firm decision to pursue PGPM and take up a job in your respective specializations or to be an entrepreneur now is the time you need to introspect upon your strengths as this is the final degree for most of you which is going to account for the entire amount of the study that you have done till now. With that competitive spirit on, you need to be a more sound and more content full person that rest of the students. Yes, with that I mean you need to outshine to make it to the best of the job profiles or even excel in your personal venture.
When a company comes to a post graduate institute to hire freshers it comes with the lot of excitement to hire young talents and it basically looks for three things:- “You”, “Your Current knowledge”, “Your urge for knowledge and learning ability”. You must be wondering when I say that the company looks for “You”. Yes I mean it, that’s the most non-ignorable part of human nature, even if we decide that we do not want to judge someone, it’s a natural act that we still end up having some notions about the person even post the decision of not to judge. When we personally judge people whome we want to be friends with and who are we compatible with in the same manner the HR looks at you in a manner if you can ally and work compatibly with the other employees. So that “You” factor constitute of your entire personal and professional traits that you have carried and grown up to be, in short we name it as your Personality and Attitude.
The term personality as it says is very individualistic and personal, it varies from person to person, some are introvert some are extrovert, some people dress in a certain manner and some in another. That everything is part of one’s personality. Like a doctor is expected to have know-how of a human body in the same manner a PGPM professional is expected to be well spoken and presentable. The organization is just not the products it deals in or the services it offers, an organization is the group of people who work together to make it meets it objective. So the group of people work together to make the product or offer services and hence it makes the organization. As simple as that, the same organization which comes to hire in the colleges will not like to be associated with someone who is not groomed and not well spoken as tomorrow being the face of the company such resource would hinder the image of the org. in the market. The very first thing we observe in a person is the clothes and they say so much about you. The way you keep your clothes and the way you wear them shows the kind of the person that you are. So whenever you sit for an interview or even when you join work, your dressing sense has to be elite, clean and professional. Everyone likes to have well dressed people around (which we call “crowd”). So even the companies want to have good crowd working for them in the same manner we expect.
With so much of competition around, the world has become well spoken. For that matter even we see small kids talking so well in the shopping complex and around. Being a MBA, you are expected to be well spoken. With well spoken, I do not mean just English with some heavy jargons and vocabulary. Being the natives of India, we need to be good at hindi too. As most of the times you have to use both the languages at work or with the clients. For an example if someone asks you “ Kya hal hai?” You just can’t say “ I am good, you say, How are you?” That’s an insult. You have to revert in the same language the person talks to you in. So with well spoken I mean that you need to have a good hold of English and Hindi and use these respective languages in a simple and clear manner to make your point sound more content full.
Most of the times we get so tensed when an interviewer asks us the question like “Who is the Home Minister of India” or solve “xyz93d * 23xd= ?”(P.S- Please do not actually solve it because even I do not know what it means). So in actual my dear friend, they actually are “Ok” with you know knowing the answers of these questions as this is just your attitude check. We Indians just cannot say “No”. Like most of us, even if do not know the answer we will make some 3-4 guesses and post that will say that we do not know, and some will think for some minutes and give the correct answer. But the least will have the confidence to say “Sir/Mam I don’t know can you please tell me the answer?” That is absolutely fine if you do not know as google has it all. But in actual these are your Attitude check. For those who answer these questions they obviously impress the interviewer with their I.Q but those who guess and answer wrong or waste time in answering it even correctly are the kind of resource which will waste the time in figuring out the things and after they affirm themselves that it is not happening from them they will walk up to the people around or their bosses to understand after wasting the most important thing- “Time”. So that shows up your learning attitude at work and those questions are put to judge your attitude and knowledge. Your manager doesn’t mind to explain you, but no one will stand an attitude in wasting time and making false promises. And always remember an interview or a discussion with your reporting managers is a two way process. If they question, you have all the right to gain the knowledge from them and question back. That shows even if you do not have that much of knowledge but atleast you have an urge to knowledge (and that is what they look for). That is where your attitude shows place and it is an important aspect in framing your career.
That is why we come across companies that hire students with even average and low grades from the students with great academic grades who sit for the same hiring sessions because it might be possible that “You” quotient in those students must be more appealing than the traits of the other competitors and hence they make a better fit in that job profile. So along with the academic grades, one needs to work on one’s personality and attitude in making up to the desired career. Good Luck!
Contributed by Rahul Wadhwa, (Class of 2013, IBS GURGAON)