A totally different experience!!!

Author of the post: Rohit Mittal
MBA(IB)2010-12

When a very dear friend of mine told me that he has started a new manpower training & staffing outfit in a city on Haryana-Rajasthan border and invited me to conduct interviews at the job fair they were organising, I was not very excited. One reason for was the hectic schedule I have now a days, with all the classes, preparations for international round of Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture Competition & other projects. Others were the poor road conditions, cold & patchy connectivity.

However on Friday, when last class got over, I thought about it and decided, What the heck! lets do it. So I quickly packed my bag and hopped on a bus to the place. The journey was uneventful and quiet. I reached around 1 AM and almost immediately went to sleep. After getting ready, we reached the venue of job fair which was a government degree college. A lot of people had come to the fair because of some really wonderful advertising.

After gathering understanding of the complete process, I got the brief about the qualities to look for in the candidates and got down to the work. We were basically doing the preliminary interviews for retail & call center companies who had come for recruitment.

Interviews were an eye opener to say the least. It also helped in breaking a lot of myths about shining India and quality of life for Indians. Although people had graduation degrees, still they found it difficult to express themselves well. Lot of the candidates had pursued year long computer diplomas from private institutes in the hope of improving their lives but majority were duped and were given sub standard education. Some people wrote English as a language in their CVs but were unable to frame even 5 simple, correct sentences.

Though I also found some gems who were working hard to gain knowledge and improve their status in society. One fellow had lost his father long back and had worked alongside education to support his family from a young age. Another was a topper and was also trying to complete his studies. In fact, this quality was displayed by most of the candidates who were willing to work hard to achieve something.

This kind of experience was very new for the people as they had not had any such exposure earlier. Thus they had talent & the determination but were raw. This is what my friend’s outfit is working: to bridge the gap between the available talent & needs of the industry. This is something unique which will provide people with the opportunity they have been looking for and help them improve the quality of their life.

For me, as I said, this was an eye opening experience and gave me a lot of insights into the mind of “still developing” India. I gained a lot personally by interacting with so many people which is going to be useful for me during MBA and beyond.


P.S. Needless to say, hospitality was superb and I really had a great time at the friend’s place