The young at work

Over the last few days I have been subjected to long lectures from friends and acquaintances on the quality of fresh graduates entering the work force and the time required in getting them up to speed. While complaints abound, solutions offered are few and far between and there is smug undertone that we ( my generation ) were better than the current crop. Considering the volume being written on the current youngsters one would assume that we are facing an epidemic of sorts and that India has missed the bus or about to miss the one on demographic dividend. What's the real truth? Well, here is my spiel: 1. We tend to reflect on the past through rose tinted glasses and with fond nostalgia. In short - we had our share of gaffes and were as much as clowns! 2. Our managers were a lot more patient with us than we are with the current breed of graduates. I had pretty good bosses's and wince at what they had to put up from me. 3. Today a larger volume enters the professional workforce and there are bound to be hits and misses.We had ours too. So are things hunky dory and are we being paranoid ? No, on the contrary, I think serious problems do exist. At the start of any career a youngster needs to be able to manage oneself and his/her environment. There seems to be a serious problem here. A young career professional never seems to grow up and is unable to deal with a changed environment.The mind set simply does not exist to accept that serious adulthood has begun!It's like if SRK can prance around trees at 50, why can't I? Simple things cannot be grasped, even to the point where the youngster can answer as to why exactly he/she is in a job? Some obvious areas of concern 1. Arriving to the office on time 2. Being civil to others at the work place 3. Distinguishing between work time and personal time 4.The work place is not a country club and point for socialization but is one where serious work gets done 5. Work gets done in teams and the individual is just a cog in the giant wheel 6. Learning never stops but needs to be accelerated at work 7. A career is like running a marathon and not a 100 yards sprint. One needs focus,discipline and the the good sense to look after one's health rather than indulge in wild partying and drinking binges. Not all of us are Superman! The great Indian middle class taught many of these values to their children at home, but that seems to have been lost, so many of the young are buffeted by conflicting pulls at the workplace and fail to focus. When the inevitable pink slip arrives it leaves many shattered and bitter. While I envy today's young for many things that I missed, I also feel extremely sad at their inability to come to terms with a complex, complicated and ruthless world of work.

Western Practice & Indian Thought!

A little while ago, I reconnected with an ex student of mine on a business trip to another city. The young man, took time off from what was apparently a busy work schedule to touch base with me.We decided that there was much catching up to do, so we headed off to a nearby pub and downed a couple of mugs of draft beer. The evening was great fun amidst loud English pop music. The youngster obviously was very proud of his work and the progress that he had made. I was glad that he was doing well and his career was on an upward curve since on an earlier occasion at college he had looked despondent and very very low. Well to cut a long story short, we go-sipped about Bangalore and his class fellows and common friends that we had. Since I had a packed day ahead, we decided to wind up early, even while the evening was still young and he offered to drop me off at my hotel. This done, while leaving he bent down to touch my feet, the quintessential Indian manner of showing respect to an older person who one respected. It is called Power Distance ! I was touched and very very proud. I have told this story to many of my older friends and most laugh it off asking if we had drunk anything stronger than beer? The answer is no, it was beer and we were not tipsy. I believe that whatever we might like to think, the denim clad Indian youngster is still very Indian and not culturally adrift.In a confused, over sexed world, youngsters are buffeted by conflicting thoughts and emotions but at the end of the day their Indianess remains and they have not abrogated their value systems. As for me, I was very pleased that students that I had taught still remembered me with some affection in a world where permanence is in serious short supply!

What's hiring got to do with self esteem?

A while ago I ran a training program on hiring practice for senior managers of a large PSU here in Bangalore. One of the role plays involved interviewing skills and therein interviewing a recruit. The interviewee so chosen was a youngster who seemed to be full of vim and pleased as a punch. In fact his behavior bordered on the cocky. The prospective candidate did extremely well in navigating the technical questions that were thrown at him by the panel. At the end of the interview round, much to my surprise, the unanimous verdict was that that particular candidate would not make the list of selected candidates as he was 'arrogant'. I responded by saying that the candidate looked confident and not arrogant and that the organizations needed confident people who were technically very sound and that the candidate should be chosen. The panel was not very convinced. What's the point here? An issue that most lends bias to a recruiting process is lack of confidence or self esteem in recruiters.Recruiters with low self esteem abhor confident candidates and will not select them. Unfortunate but very true. How does one mitigate this rather unfortunate state of affairs? A route may be to have a panel of interviewers, where hopefully biases will cancel themselves out and more importantly training recruiters to recognize and deal with biases. Hiring a poor candidate is bad, rejecting a great one is even worse and in a competitive world, organizations recognize that this is workplace harakiri. While many do recognize that hiring is a very important HR activity, few spend enough of money in training their recruiters and developing staffing metrics which would give an early warning of poor practice.