Education in India Part III – Lack of awareness in students about career choices – drive or be driven ?

On March 28, 2011, in Education thoughts, by Swapnil
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This is the third article in the series of articles I am writing on my views on the education in India.  In both the previous articles, I wrote little stories about my own feeling and thinking during the time I was student.

Here is another little story. This time, about the choices in life we have to make as a student. Most importantly, about the career choices.

I would again like to take you back to my student days when I was in the MNREC, studying the Computer science engineering. I was in 3rd year and as a part of our group discussions within my GD group, another topic we used to touch was the “dream company” and where each one of us would fit in, eventually, knowing our capabilities.  Obviously, in the 3rd year of our engineering, none of us knew what was in store for all of us, including the future employers or the work we wanted to do in our life. In fact, we knew a little about the software industry and what kind of work happens once you go in the corporate world.

The introduction of the IT industry for all of us was one where you do lot of programming and you must have great logic and problem solving skills.

Partly right, because even today, majority of the software industry is driven by developers and they drive the industry forward. However, its equally true that software industry does not only consists of developers !!

When we entered into final year and the companies started rushing in our college to do campus interviews, we started to understand few rules of the games that probably sounded little bit confusing to me. Some of the most notable were as follows,

  • All the companies essentially had a cut off by percentage for the people who could actually be eligible to apply
  • Most of the companies chose to only opt for Computer Science and Electronic engineering students and other stream students were not allowed to sit for the exams
  • Aptitude tests were compulsory for most of the companies and again, there was a cut off with passing percentage

Career choices ?Eventually I got through a top MNC and was placed in one of their offices. When I entered the corporate world along with few of my friends, we found ourselves “grouped” into technology verticals based on our academic record.  All the students who had computer science or electronics engineering background, were grouped into “Open source” or “web technologies” group. All the students who had non-CSE background were grouped under “legacy” or “Mainframe” technology group

Once the grouping happened, the related entry level training started. After a month of rigorous training, we all were placed on live projects eventually.  Over a period of time, few new people from either of groups could not survive and had to leave the company because company thought they could not perform up to their expectation level.

 

 

If you have read the story carefully, you would have known the following facts,

  • The hiring company has strict eligibility criteria so only “good” students could be filtered through
  • Only good students eventually got the job through aptitude, group discussions and interview filtering criteria
  • The hiring company decided who goes in which group based on their academic background (i.e., open source vs mainframe)
  • The hiring company put expectations on the employees and raised the bar based on the training provided against specific “technologies”
  • When few people failed, they were shown the door out
  • Remember, all were excellent students !!

So, where do you think things would have gone wrong ! We had good students with very good academic records selected through a stringent criteria.

In my opinion, the we have two fold problem here.

1. General lack of awareness about career options within IT field (development, support, maintenance, testing, process management etc)

2. Generic assumption by employers that everyone is fit to do everything

The first problem is about making students aware of the opportunities that lie within the corporate world that are not “development” kind of jobs. 

Awareness about career choices is a key issue we currently face in the premier institutes. The students tend to choose their career by the name of the hiring company, than the the work they would eventually want to do and would enjoy more.

I have seen students who are very good academically but not so good programmers. Their strength was in their analysis of situation and power to remember things and follow certain laid out procedures. These people could make an excellent career in “testing field”.  Similarly someone who is keen to explore new stuff and learn more each time and think out of box could be very good for “Research & development & innovation cells”.  Some people who have shown good organization and management skills they can rather build their career around program management etc.

Not everyone is born to be a developer !

The second problem only compliments the first one by giving both corporate businesses and students a platform to prove the mismatch.  It is obvious that the student who is not so good in problem solving techniques and algorithm building, can not be a good programmer. 

The companies today pay huge money to do the campus recruitment and hire top talent. Unfortunately, if the fitment between the type of person (student) and does not happen, the person eventually leaves in a year or two out of frustration and looks for change.  This means that these companies are more often than not are tend to lose money that they have invested in these people before getting full recovery out.

I know it is a complex problem and we may not have a ready solution for this but I think it is worth considering.

What do you think ?

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Education in India Part II – how a dream is still awaiting fulfillment

On March 23, 2011, in Education thoughts, by Swapnil
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In my last post I wrote a small story about myself.  There I mentioned about how I felt the need of having someone from Cognizant to available to talk and get some guidance and unfortunately could not get it.

In this post, I would like to tell one more short story of me and few of my friends when we were in college.  

sproutDuring our college days, I think in 2nd year of our engineering we had formed a group of 6 friends. All of us used to discuss on various topics every now and then and one of the topics, favorite of ours, was discussing about our future.  What kind of job we would get, what kind of work we would do and what is in store for all of us.  Pretty interesting topics !

During those days of college life, we all (well most of us) had a dream of having our own company. Being an entrepreneur and making it big in life.  Well, great dreams we had. Entrepreneurship was one of the common topic that we used to discuss.  Although getting job in final year through campus was a priority, the dream was still in-tact for us that one day we will become entrepreneurs.

So the days passed by, eventually all of us got placed through reputed companies during campus interviews and our discussions kept ongoing.  We kept on discussing lot of ideas and kept on building dreams. We all had grand visions and some very nice plans of co-working together in building businesses.

Fast forward present, all of us are now grown up corporate work-horses. Bigger positions, fatter salaries and busier life is now the mantra for most of us.  But unfortunately the fact is, none of us are entrepreneurs !

 

So, where did it all go wrong ? We all were supposedly bright and talented students, academically doing well, had passion for technology and few grand dreams.

 

Why could not we achieve our dreams of being entrepreneurs. Who could have and probably should have helped us in realizing our dreams. Who should have spotted the talent in us to motivate us / mentor us / guide us to the destination.  May be .. just may be, one of us could have been the (earlier shall I say) Zukerberg !

I wrote an article about an year ago about lack of support for entrepreneurship and innovation in our education system, where I mentioned a general lack of enthusiasm of trying out something else when its ‘easy’ to get a job in India, especially if you are student of a decent college. 

Further to what I wrote in my article, few facts I gathered in last year or so,

  1. Institutes will support innovation and entrepreneurship only if its part of their curriculum.  Otherwise not !
  2. Corporate organizations will support student innovation only if they see eventual benefit to their companies
  3. Government is helpful, but process is very tedious
  4. Angel investors, VC funding is available but reaching out is not yet easy in India
  5. The students, who want to be entrepreneurs, forget all about it once they get the job !
  6. We are not taught to make mistakes and learn from them, we are taught to avoid it !
  7. Someone is yet to write and publish “Idiot’s guide for being an entrepreneur in India”.

I am sure me or my 6 friends are not the only one’s whose dream probably has not yet been fulfilled. There are thousands of guys like whose dream started when they were in university college but could never fulfill them as of now due to some or other reason.

If you ask the question “What do you want to do in your future, a job or your own business ?” to an average 1st year engineering student. We have observed that 8 –9  out of 10 students (80 – 90%) eventually say they want to do their own business some day.  The same number drops to 3-4 students (30 – 40%) by the time they come to their final year of education.

Unfortunately less than 5% of the people actually realize their dream.  Less than 0.2% sustain in long term !

We do have a problem at our hands ! How serious, not too sure, but worth considering, definitely !

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Education in India Part I – industry, institute interaction, what needs to be done to make it better ?

On March 20, 2011, in Education thoughts, by Swapnil
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I have been talking to few friends of mine about the way the education is taught in the engineering colleges and there were few interesting topics we touched during our conversation.  One of the topics we touched about was the readiness of the premier engineering students for the rigors of the industry. 

We all know that our education is mostly based on the curriculum that does not necessarily reflect the work that will be done by these very students after they pass out of the engineering.  Also, the industry interaction at most of the companies is also limited up to few sponsorship labs (eventually to attract talent to these companies) or the final year sponsored project. Innovation projects or promoting entrepreneurship is not a very common sight in many of the colleges.

I spoke with few professors about the scenario and in their opinion the lack of initiative from the industry people to consistently support the re-shaping of the education system is one of the main reason for this status.  Although the industry people are very good at providing so called recommendation in shaping up the things, they were not very good at providing grass root level support in ensuring that the recommendations reach the deserving students. 

Obviously, me being one of the representative of the corporate industry, it made me think on how this could be done ?

Mostly in all the companies, we do have entry level training programs in order to on board and make the students adjust to the technical / behavioral and professional demands of the industry and make them fit for upcoming project deliveries. More over, many of the organizations also run the scholarship programs to encourage learning, motivate high performing students and pay their fees for entire course.

Although we all acknowledge that the industry has a bigger role to play in re-shaping and consistently supporting the education in India, what else is required to be done, and once we know what needs to be done, we also need to find out how it needs to be done and consistently ?

The answer to this is not simple and I guess one article is going to be small enough to cover the details. So let me tell you my small story and try to elaborate one aspect of this.

 

My story

Let me take you back to my engineering college days.

I was studying Computer Science Engineering in MNREC (now MNNIT) and all those years I was studying, my focus was rather in learning what came in my way, rather than focusing my learning on what I want to do in my life.  Heck …, until I got a job in my final year, I had no clue what I was going to do in my life.  I was just studying in order to get decent level of marks in all my subjects to ensure I am eligible for campus placements.

Student - confused with choices Till the time I did not get a job, I was clueless about what kind of work I am going to do in my life (read – confused). And after I got a job in one of the premier companies I was even more confused as what will happen to me once I join and what kind of work will be expected out of me (read – even more confused)  !

Although experienced people used to tell me that I got through one of the best companies and my future was supposedly bright, I spent the rest of year contemplating what kind of career I would have in my life and would I enjoy it. In the previous 4 years in my college, I had developed a passion for programming and web development and I was desperate to continue working in that field, but again, there was no guarantee that I would be working on these when I join my new company after I finish my college.

I did join Cognizant (then CTS) after I finished my career and spent initial few months learning the basics of the technology.  Fortunately or unfortunately, me being from the Computer Science background, they through I would do well in the Web technologies domains and hence they put me through a rigorous training program for 1 month making me take coaching on HTML, Java / JSP, Oracle and Unix etc., technologies.  I also had to appear for an exit test after a month and ensure I pass on so that I can make myself available for the project selection, for one of which I eventually got selected.  More over, while talking to my other friends who got through various other companies, I also learnt that these entry level programs are very common and similar natured in other companies. 

Then I had a question !

When I was selected out of campus almost within a week into my final year start and had a full year ahead, why I did not know what I could do to prepare myself for my eventual entry into corporate world ?  Would a diligent self learning for a year, made me prepare myself better ?

Probably the answer I would give to myself was Yes ! Then why there was no one who was available for me to talk to or guide me on what I should have done and helped me make a better use of my available time in my college ?

These companies go to the college campuses year on year, select students year after year, but unfortunately most of them end their relationship only there. Few go a further by setting up sponsorship labs (as mentioned earlier) or providing student scholarships. Unfortunately not beyond !

When I was a student and had a job offer, I felt a need of having someone to talk to, ask questions, seek answers and prepare myself better. I wanted to make better career choice, I wanted to feel and know the various aspects of industry world. But unfortunately, there was no one who could help ! 

Industry people, can you make a difference here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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Seven tricks to feel motivated at workplace and in life

On February 25, 2011, in Mind thoughts, by Swapnil
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Have you ever felt de-motivated, dejected, disappointed or down hearted after a long day’s work ? I am sure you would have at some point in your life, if not every day after the work.  Staying motivated and positive for long time is a real struggle. We are surrounded by and often assaulted by negative thinking and anxiety about the present situation and of course about the future !  We always have a phase where we start doubting ourselves and feel depressed.

Unfortunately there is no master key or a simple solution to unlock the mystery of de-motivation. Even after we feel we are over it, sometimes, it comes back to haunt us in an even bigger way. Here, in this article, I would like to mention few of the points that would help one keep up the motivation, focus and avoid the long spells of depression and dejection, especially at work !

Love music

 

music listeningThe following quote perfectly summarizes why we need to love music. Music refreshes one’s thinking and diverts the persons attention from the tiredness at work to something that is refreshing and soulful that delights the mind. 

 

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

~Berthold Auerbach

 

Whilst I am not a big fan of music collection, I do have a small collection of specific songs that I find dear to my heart. It is a decent mixture of all types of songs ranging from disco to classical and ghazals to bhajans. Depending on what emotional state I want to get, I choose the song and listen. This helps me often to get right state of mind before I proceed to do next task.

 

Have a buddy at work

Its important to have someone at work whom you can consider a best friend or a buddy. You need to have one such friend with whom you can share your work difficulties and vent out temporary frustration. Believe me, more often than not, you need some kind of instant emotional support with whom you can talk and share things.

At more stressful jobs, you often experience bursts of negativity around due to several work related matters. So it is always helpful to have someone who you can count on to help you get out of negativity and back to normal mind state.

Human is a social animal and we all have an inherent need of talking and being heard. In case you do not have anyone whom you can to and talk your heart out, it really feels like dejected and lonely at times. Spent a good time with your friend and talk on topics that interest you to get your positivity back on track. On the other hand, please extend help to your buddy when he / she is in the need of help.

 

 

passionHave a passion

In my opinion, having some passion in life is very important.  For me, my passion is watching football.  It keeps me going and helps me keep happy.  My favorite club is Manchester United and I do everything I can to watch them playing (on TV at least). Watching them play my favorite game makes me happier and feel inspired. However, if they lose then there is an equal chance of me feeling more miserable after that. I do keep recordings of certain match clips which I tend to watch when I am feeling a little low and it certainly has helped in keeping me inspired.

Passion is closely related to the emotional behavior of the human and if you see your passion fulfilled, its more of a chance that you feel inspired and motivated.

 

 

Focus on positives

Sometimes, if we experience too much negativity for a prolonged period of time and feel de-motivated for a longer spell of time, we go into a state of mind where all the thoughts start with negative options and creates negative vibes around us.  Once you fall into the negativity trap, its not very easy to come out and have any positive feeling about anything.

In past, when I had fallen into the trap of negativity, I used to feel negative for no real reason and sometimes a mere presence of few people around used to make me start feel de-motivated. However, the wiser I got, I tend to avoid feeling on this trap by concentrating more on the positives that are coming out from the situation.

  • Look at the scenario holistically rather than what is only seen to you
  • Thank God for not making things any worse
  • Find out one positive thing that you can take out of the situation.

As I often mention in many of my conversations, “there are always 100s of negative things that can be made out of the situation, but if you find at least one positive thing out of it, consider it a learning for life and thank GOD”.

Positivity is a habit, and once you get it, you can easily overcome situations that are trying to put you back in the hole of negativity and de-motivation. 

 

Praise others

appreciate_thankyou Appreciation and recognition is one very important aspect of the professional life. Although the nature differs, it is equally important and applicable to all the levels of a profession.  It does not necessary that only the lower levels of hierarchy should be praised and not the middle or upper levels.

Spreading good words makes one feel positive and help others feel good about themselves. This, in turn make change in people’s behavior towards you in a better way, making you feel better. Believe me, speaking positive about someone else’s work and personality is the best way to connect with the person in a right way.

I remember a specific incident when I was given to work with a so-called difficult person. All the people who worked with that person earlier, warned me about the boring and micro-management behavior of the person. While I too felt a little bit strange with his work methods, the more I started to talk to him and praise him about some real good work he had done in past (in some cases without anyone’s real help), it made him really comfortable with me and I could see an immediate behavior change in him towards me allowing me freedom to work the way I want.  Ultimately this led to work satisfaction for both of us and a little bit more positive at work for me !

However, one thing that you need to keep in mind is when to praise someone and how much to praise. There is fine line between real appreciative person and feet-licking bastard !  You need to ensure that you do not cross to the other side ..

 

Open your mind

I always feel that one need to share what he / she feels about the situation in a right way. Its not often very motivating to work in uneasy, unconvincing situations or scenarios where you are in a confused state or feel half-committed to the cause.

Learn a bit about emotional intelligence and try to be aware of your state of mind. One very important, but often neglected, fact is to know our state of mind and understand our emotions. We go through so many emotions such as happiness, inspired, dejection, unhappy, nervousness etc., at work place during various hours of the day and due to several causes, it almost becomes a habit to suppress them and continue with the job we are doing.

Can you stay in a meeting where you do not feel like being, and contribute productively ?  Can you give right suggestions and solutions to a problem, when you are in a state of anger or frustration ?  Definitely not !

The more you suppress your emotions, the more you feel out of control and start losing your own focus.

Its important to let others know what state of mind you are and help yourself in getting back to where you should be. Believe me, the more I tried this, the more I felt in control of the situation and my responses were getting better, in turn making me feel positive and motivated.

 

Think big and have faith

thinkbig Most of the times, frustration grows or increases because we can not see beyond a certain point in current situation and the situation does not really look promising in nature.

When you get the questions, such as “why does it always happen with me”, “why am I being pushed to do something that I do not want to do”, “no one seems to help me here” start flowing in your mind, think of is as time to take a step back and consider the bigger picture and look at the intention behind the situation. 

When such situation occurs, look at the big picture and find out the intentions behind this situation.  In case you are wondering how to do this, I recommend reading a story in my leadership series.

 

You can safely bank on the thumb rule of “intentions of people at work place are never bad, sometimes behaviors are” to sail through this period.

 

On the other hand, if you are unable to trace the intentions and get any positivity of the big picture, think of it as the lowest point and be happy that things can only improve on this point onwards.

Just have faith !

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Innovation techniques – for the brilliant ideas in you

On February 22, 2011, in Mind thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
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Hello folks, I am back on writing my blog after a very long time. Too many things have happened during last two months since I was active on blogosphere.  Some of them are shareable and some, definitely not.

One such thing that I can definitely share was the experience I had when I participated in the Innovation forum in my company to do some more structured learning around innovation techniques.  Although it was a half day session, it has definitely left a mark on my perception on how the innovation could be done and a change of thinking is brought within the team.

We discussed quite a few methods on how the innovation could be introduced and more importantly sustained in a company, where innovation is a mandatory requirement for sustaining and thriving in the competitive market.

One of the most important aspect of innovation is the “Idea Generation”.  Unless ideas are generated, innovation can not fly.

There are quite a few idea generation techniques that would help generate large number of ideas to find new solutions and different ways of achieving the purpose.  Here in this article, we are going to have a look at three common techniques of idea generation.

 

Brainstorming / Brain writing

group-discussion One of the most often known and used IG technique is ‘Brainstorming’.  ‘Brain writing’ is another form of brainstorming where most of the thinking is done by writing your ideas on the piece of paper rather than discussing with the group initially.

 

  • For the brainstorming or brain writing session, we need to gather a group of participants who are familiar with the challenge statement. 
  • Create a challenge statement and the attribute list and make them visible to the team.
  • For the purpose of brain storming, it is recommended that the group of participants is typically less than 7 people.  If you have more than 7 people in the room, then you should go for Brain writing technique.
  • Ideas should be put up spontaneously verbally during brainstorming session and written on a piece of paper during brain writing session.
  • During the brain writing session, after each idea is written on a piece of paper, it is recommended to crumple the paper and throw in the middle and pick up someone else’s crumpled paper to write next idea.
  • Ensure that some rules such as non-criticism of any idea, welcoming unusual ideas and encouraging other participants to build on other’s ideas should strictly adhered to.
  • Encourage ‘quantity’ of ideas. For the purpose of idea generation, quality follows quantity.
  • Overall ideas should be rated based on the benefits it can give and easiness of achieving them.
  • All the ideas should be properly documented for future reference.

 

Scamper

SCAMPER is a checklist of lateral thought technique that can expand one’s creativity.

SCAMPER is a acronym of the following words,

  • Substitute – Try and see what can be substituted in the current situation in order to improve upon the scenario. Ask the questions on what can be substituted, how, when, why ?
  • Combine – Try to enhance the synergy by combining, merging, attaching, adding and uniting separate attributes together for the issue.  This might give a different solution altogether.
  • Adapt – Try and make adjustments to certain aspects and attributes of a product or process
  • Modify/Magnify/Minify – Try and change the size, quantity or quality of the attributes. Try to make things later or smaller, faster or slower and see what difference it can make to the situation.
  • Put to other use – Try and change the place or purpose for which an object or a process is currently being used.
  • Eliminate – Try and remove, omit or get rid of a quantity, part or whole object from the situation and see how it happens.
  • Rearrange/Reduce/Reverse – Try and place attributes against each other, pit them opposite or contrary to, turn around; to change order or adjust, different plan, layout or scheme.

 

Think like a child

thinklikeachild The purpose of this technique is to look at the challenge through the eyes of a six year old child to get a different perspective of the problem.

Whilst, I understand that changing the perspective from an adult to the child itself can be challenging but believe me it can be a fun.  In order to try and generate ideas using this technique, make your mind set similar to that of a child by thinking of a children you know and you can anticipate the reaction of.

Try and see the situation through their eyes and feel what they would like about the situation, what they would be proud of, what they would dislike, feel funny or useful about and note down the reactions. 

Consider the simple example of a muddy puddle. When we adults see it, we try and step over or step around it.  We imagine muddy shoes, dirty clothes and filthy carpets at home if we step into the puddle.  However, if you ask the same to kids, they would call it fun and imagine to build bridges and dams to cross it !!

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