The battle between hard work and smart work has been going on since time eternal. We have witnessed a generation of our parents where hard work would make you shine and take you into a league which was unbeatable. How can we forget the times when we have been told innumerable times to concentrate on studies and ensure good marks, work hard for that is what defines our future. Friends and family will always be there. We grow up to believe it to be true and continue working harder and harder not thinking for a moment that what they are sharing is age old gyaan while the truth today is different. With the rise in technology and other developments around us the world has become very competitive due to which now the hard work has to be replaced by smart work leading to better optimum results.

In today’s times everything is instant. Instant food, instant love, instant friendships, instant makeovers with everything available at the click of a button from shopping to recharge to travel to education. It has its own pros as it makes life simpler for one and all. It brings together the world closer deleting the distances in a matter of seconds.

But on the other hand it also means one thing that the knowledge that is readily available online is also approachable to all those hundreds of people around you. With the stringent competitive atmosphere, it is very imperative for each one to make a cut and stand out amongst them. What will make one stand out is the way one will perceive the available information and present it in a form that stands out amongst the crowd.

A student might be very hard working and be able to by heart everything that is in the syllabus which will ensure perfect scores in the examination. But then that is what perhaps every other intelligent and hardworking student will do in the examination. What will set you apart? Some smart work for e.g. some diagrams, flow charts, illustrations etc will set those answers apart and make them stand out. And that is the best example of smart work.

Hard work

• Lengthier approach
• Sets the base for you as a human being in terms of learning

It is imperative that this is the way one should begin the journey of life. For this helps us create a base in terms of learning that entire one could about life. But there are many aspects where sheer hard work will not suffice for there is constant learning that is needed and in such cases only hard work doesn’t suffice. If you need to master something you need a lot of time and put in lot of hard work to be able to be called the master of that thing.

Smart work

• Shorter duration
• Makes you learn the shortcuts of it and still enables you to learn the tricks of the trade

Every individual in today’s times needs to know the difference between the two and also the important of being able to do smart work. It not only saves your time but also increases the accuracy in terms of performance. It is happens that after constant hard work when one doesn’t get the desired results one tends to get frustrated. At such times the only thing that comes to the rescue is smart work.

Apart from being intelligent these days the much sought after quality in an efficient worker is being proactive and that is a sign of a smart worker. And it is this proactiveness that will set that smart worker apart from a hard worker.

Technically it is not possible for one to be able to maintain a balance between the both. It is a hard worker who can become a smart worker because that is when they are able to see the various ways of doing the same thing in a better manner, more quickly and in lesser time. It is like gaining experience before hand and then trying to device new ways to sharpen that experience.

Worldly around it is appreciated that an individual is a smart worker rather than being a hard worker. As it is usually said in the corporate lingo, not knowing something is absolutely fine as long as you have the knack of knowing how to get the work done from whom. For that is when the performance remains unaffected. Smart workers usually end up being good managers because they are not only able to identify the work patterns but also gather a team depending on every one’s capabilities and ensure optimum output from the available resources.

In day to day work it might happen that you might make mistakes resulting into lot of goof ups. The trait of a smart worker is when you are able to find a solution before the damage becomes irreparable. The moment a mistake is made the reflexes should act quickly making you think of all the possible repercussions and also make you think of the ways you can avoid collateral damage because of the same. After all at the end of the day we are all human who are bound to make mistakes.

Being a smart worker means the ability to use your creative side more than anything else. For if you know that the way to solve this problem is a 5 step method, a smart worker will try to find out a 3 step method. He will not only save time in this way but also the energy put in the other two extra steps which now can be used in something more productive.

In the journey of a hard worker to becoming a smart worker once you begin to taste the success you will keep pushing yourself to keep coming up with smarter ways to do things and enjoying the pleasures it brings along with it.

“With a large number of applicants registering for IBS Business School every year, cracking the GD-PI especially for the Hyderabad campus is not a cake-walk”

– IBS Hyderabad class of 2013 alumna, Prachi Tewari.

I still remember my experience of the selection process. After completing my graduation in biotechnology, I decided not to go for a job and instead pursue an MBA. After giving various entrance exams, IBS was one of the good options I had in my hand and I was not ready to let it go. Performing well in the group discussion and personal interview of IBS thus became very high priority for me.

Preparation – The most important factor for performing well in GD-PI of b-schools is to be well aware of current affairs, especially related to business world and the best source for that is reading newspapers. Since the time I started preparing for entrance exams I made it a habit of reading half an hour daily and if not the newspaper then at least to watch English news channels. Joining discussion forums related to latest GD topics was the second thing I did for preparing. For interview the first thing I did was to make a perfect resume as it gives your first impression to the interviewer and the second important thing was to be totally thorough with your resume.

Group Discussion

Topic – Good guys always end last

We were a group of 10 students with 2 invigilators. I had an advantage of getting the center seat. Initiating a GD, for topics like these, or as a matter of fact any topic plays a very important role. If you do come up with a strong point, the direction of the discussion is lead by you and you get easily noted but if you are not able to initiate properly, you get noted in a negative way. The same thing happened with the girl in our group who initiated with a very weak and unrelated point and she was brutally countered by me. I just spoke one point but a relevant one and got everyone to agree with my point. I spoke three points in total and got full marks in GD. My first point of course brought relevance to the discussion; my second point was an example from my personal life. In GD’s it’s very important to give examples to support your point. If you cannot remember any famous personality examples, then give examples from your personal life. Third point I made was to take the discussion in another direction as everyone was speaking against the topic, I decided to speak in favor of the topic. In short speak relevant, speak something new and always support your point of view with examples.

Interview

There was a panel of two interviewers. As expected the first question they asked was why I want to do an MBA. Giving a good answer to this question is very important. One should never project that they are doing MBA just for the namesake. Since I had no work experience, 80% of questions were based on the academic projects mentioned in my resume. One should be very thorough with one’s resume. I was pretty satisfied with my interview when I came out and few days later the results came out and I was a clear winner. In short for an interview be honest about yourself and be thorough with your resume.

This was all about my experience and best wishes to the upcoming IBSAT qualifiers for their selection process.

Photo credits

 

Summer Internship is an important and a very crucial element of
management studies because it helps the students to identify what skills and attitude are required to be generated/developed to successfully survive in the corporate world and have a competitive edge over the others.

After the completion of the internship, students have approximately 10-12 months of time to develop on the same and re-enter into the corporate world with a better professional understanding. Business schools on an average have THREE months of time available for internship. Therefore entire THREE months should be utilized for better and clearer understanding. More the time available, better is the learning and outcomes.

Contributed By : Ashish Kabra, Class of 2013, IBS Bangalore

By Abishek A Ganesh. Abhishek is an alumnus, class of 2012 (IBS Hyderabad). He has just started with his first job. Abhishek is also a budding musician and was part of Diatribe, band at IBS Hyderabad.

About two years ago when I was busy writing entrance exams and applying to various management schools I never took out the time to notice what I was getting into. After successfully completing two years in a reputed institute, I received my degree in Marketing Management. Before I joined IBS I didn’t have a clear idea about what management or marketing actually entailed and now I have a piece of paper which corroborates that I am a “master” in business administration!

Well as far as I’m concerned Management is more of an art than a skill. Management is bound by regulations but is ever evolving and demands its practitioners to behave the same way. People might be christened as great managers but their style can’t be imitated by anybody else. A person’s management style is contingent with respect to the situation and people he/she is dealing with. It will be unique for each subsequent action and hence the learning is not straight forward. When I mentioned that management is more of an art than a skill, the point I’m trying to elucidate is that it can’t be learn only practiced. Learning is applicable when it comes to the limitless research done on various topics previously, for example “the theory of reasoned action” a model which tries to explain attitudes, is something that was proven by empirical studies in 1975. Now learning this model is a luxury we have as opposed to anyone who died before 1975! Our collective knowledge is something that we have to learn from so we don’t waste time validating something that is accepted. Other than this there is only practice in management.

Now let me clarify about the title of this article and the veil in question. Before I joined IBS my understanding of the corporate was shallow to say the least. I knew that companies existed; I knew they made products and provided services but my preference for any of these companies was not guided by anything concrete. I always thought that corporations were just money grubbing organizations which used media extensively to deceive the mass audience into believing them. I used to try new products in case I found the advertisement really appealing but that was always restricted to the first purchase. After evaluating a product post-usage my preference was based mainly on satisfaction and financial constraints and the corporate world ended there for me.

However after going through a rigorous course and completing it my understanding of the ‘corporate’ has changed significantly. I notice myself staring at advertisements and billboards trying to decipher the strategy used by the company in question, I notice the way the retail store keeper arranges the toffees and chips of different companies, I notice how one newspaper differs so vastly from another in terms of layout, content and readers etc,. The veil has finally been lifted. These organizations are nothing if the people working for them are removed from the equation. Just like humans in the way we address our myriad needs and wants, the corporate being tries to deal with competitors, customers, regulators etc to survive in the corporate jungle. All of these actions however are decisions made by people based on the information available to them and their self-developed insights.

The corporate is not a mysterious entity that lurks in the background and controls our world; it’s a system that we have created as a society. This system may have innumerable faults but as a system created to enrich lives mutually, it’s the best one we have yet.