The Trodden Path!
A couple of years back, while I was part of the Individual Development Plan panel at Jaipuria Insititute of Management, Noida, we came across a final year MBA student who was one of the ‘star performers’ of his class. He had secured an internship at a Triumph motorcycles showroom in Vasant Kunj, Delhi. He made amazing sales, which led him to earn an incentive of around Rs 3 lacs in just two months. He had never worked anywhere else before this internship much less anything of a direct sales job.
What was more impressive was the fact that he had secured this internship not by applying directly. The first time I had met him, a year earlier, he had expressed his desire to work with luxury brands, be it automobiles, watches, fashion etc. I had given him a very realistic view of the industry and the obstacles he might face while getting into this industry. I also told him to start connecting with the brands he wishes to work with by networking with the respective leaders of those companies through Linked In. I asked him to send very honest messages to such leaders and ask them for their guidance if they had time.
He had no idea of how to use Linked In but still found the Head of Operations of Triumph Motorcyles for India and sent him a request for an internship.
After exchanging a few messages, he was asked to come for an interview at their recently opened showroom in Vasant Kunj. He went there with genuine passion in his attitude towards any kind of work. He was asked to work in sales support.
After his internship concluded, he was offered a position at the showroom, with a very attractive pay package, which I might say, was an envy of a lot of his peers.
…
Last week, a recently graduated computer engineer from a private, relatively unknown engineering college in Faridabad, came to us seeking guidance. He said that he had not done a lot of programming in his last 4 years and he did not expect any help from his college towards getting him a job. Given the state of the IT industry today, where mass recruiters like TCS and Wipro are laying off thousands of employees, he was worried about gaining new skills when he had little interest in the software development industry. His father and elder brother were working for the family business, which he did not want to join at all!
After just an initial interaction of around 30 minutes with him, both Niluufer and I realised that he had a lot of people skills and liked working with people to find solutions.
In other words, he was a born salesperson. Maybe the family business he was trying to run away from, had that sub-conscious impact on him.
He agreed with us instantly and said his other passion was cars. And not only because he found them cool, but also because he could compare the performance factors such as engine specifications, weight to power ratio and other things.
Now, the career guide in you, might have already figured out one of the career paths we suggested to him. Yes, we did suggest that with a proper strategy and some training, he can get into automobile sales where he could use both his people skills and his engineering perspective to drive growth for his employers and lead a happy professional life.
He was overjoyed. He asked us if he could pay in cash; he asked us to give him a couple of days and he would come and register with us. We booked an appointment for him taking out time from both Niluufer’s and my schedules.
He has since not answered any of our calls nor intimated whether he would take our guidance or not.
…
This is not the first of such experiences for us. Students come to us purely for free guidance, absorb the things they like, and forget the rest of the conversation. The final decision to pay up and take services which might take one to his/her dream career, does not necessarily depend on pure logic or the financial paying capability. A usual scenario which happens with such cases is something like this:
Student: “Dad, I want to go for career mentoring which will help me become a Porsche salesman.”
Dad: “So I invested so much money in your computer engineering studies so that you could become a car salesman!”
I am pretty sure, you could imagine the rest of the conversation.
In India and even other traditional Asian communities, we tend to avoid risk. We want to know a sure shot way to gain enough money or growth to help us come out of our current economic or social levels. We are willing to invest tons of money but we would do it as one of the most conservative investors: we want excellent return but with no risk.
It is the reason why India has the world’s largest number of IT professionals because well the entire nation realised that IT is a sure shot way to a successful, stable career.
Even though, a huge majority of all these engineers are not employable with their current skills.
While discussing such decision making, I was finding it difficult to express this phenomenon when Niluufer described it beautifully as “The Trodden Path”.
While we keep watching videos and reading articles about “going off the beaten path”, when it comes to career decisions, we highly prefer the Trodden Path. A path which surely leads to success and stability. The reasons are the differences in the Indian psychology with others and our lack of resources and structures. But when it comes to the fastest growing major economy in the world, the Trodden Path can take you only so far. The popular social satires about “Sharmaji’s Son” and “Indians become Engineers before deciding what to do” are a testament to this fact.
Career Guides like The Happy Career Project exist to help you find the right Career Path. That career path might be well trodden or might not exist at all. I can give you case studies about a fashion designing student becoming a Social Media analyst, about an IT guy turning into a vertical farming pioneer, a doctor joining a professional cricket league, about an Engineer becoming a psychologist…
But please, for your own sake, do not take these case studies as yet another thing to emulate and become successful. These are not your paths and these are definitely not well Trodden!
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