INDUCT FIRST, INSTRUCT NEXT

Two weeks back, in one of the farthest suburbs of Mumbai, in the conference room of an otherwise pretentious but swanky office, I was asked a question by a stranger – How good are you with your interpersonal skills?

I hadn’t ever met this person before in my life. I hadn’t heard about him or read about him. I might have read about his agency’s name in the list of instantly mushrooming so called ‘digital’ agencies but, I never seriously considered meeting him in person.

The necessity to reply him didn’t seem of vital importance to me. In this scenario, I was neither a desperate seeker nor a desperate browser; I was just meeting up for some other purpose. His question left me miffed. In the past few years, I’ve been asked many such questions and I’ve also been party to people doubting my capability, my capacity and my calibre. So be it! But I need to ask one question – Why aren’t any of the recent organizations (in my knowledge) conducting induction programmes? I am not asking this question independently but this is a unanimous concern, which needs to be addressed by the so called thinking community of today’s changing advertising, digital or any tom-dick-harry culture in India. So I ask again, “Why aren’t any of the recent organizations (in my knowledge) conducting induction programmes?”

Every time, I’ve asked this question, I’ve met with failure or a long lull (almost mute). To be honest, none of the organizations are encouraging induction. The hiring culture has grown worse than ever. This is how the entire process takes place; this is with regards to the hiring marathon, appointment thereafter in most of the recent advertising and digital agencies:

An HR Manager calls up after reading the first few lines of your profile. In most cases, keywords like #CreativeBackground #Copywriter #Scripting #Experience #CampaignDevelopment seem to be enough for the HR girl or guy (I am saying girl and guy because serious individuals have left this space and jumped into the valley of invisibility) to dial your number and invite you for an interview.

• The first round of the interview is necessarily with the HR Manager. In some cases, the HR Managers are well read about the background, a candidate hails from. But, at times, I’ve been personally saddened to come across some hiring executives, who don’t know a thing about advertising or even the age of digital communication in India. I’ve met someone who thought Facebook is 20 years old in India. Shit, why wasn’t I on Facebook then? What a shame for me!
  
  
• The second round is usually conducted by someone who is loosely or tightly associated with the job profile that you might get appointed to. Now this girl or guy comes with his/her own excess baggage. The deadpan look on their faces tells you that they have been forced to conduct this interview. Secondly they are very upset about the candidate they had met last week and had eagerly desired to be appointed to the position, now under negotiation. Since the deciding committee hadn’t selected his/her desired candidate, this interview will be considered an additional burden. Your resume will be not scanned or read in this second round. You will be asked silly questions about yourself, your best campaign, your knowledge of a brand and some more extra queries (about which you might not have any inkling).
  
  
• The third round of your interview will be a rapid fire round with a person, who usually hangs around three departments; the Managing Director’s Cabin, The HR Manager’s Cabin and the Cabin of the Second Round Interviewer. This person might be a relative or a good friend of someone already working in the office and will come to you either with a sheet of paper or loads of attitude around him. The certain task in his or her hand – Ah, here is this product, create a campaign around it.
  
  
• The fourth round will be a negotiation round, which necessarily focuses on underestimating your talent. No matter, the years of experience you possess, you will still be made to realize that you are nowhere. 

Having cleared all the rounds, you are in the Bingo Zone. You are happily handed over an offer letter, an appointment letter, a bunch documents comprising illogical rules and regulations and yes you are told, “Our incoming times are fixed 9:30 AM but, we are very weak at outgoings.”

On the first day (in the event of you deciding to join on a demotivating, lazy Monday), you are hurriedly pushed into a conference room, which smells of neither a room freshener nor food but rather stinks with the pesticide sprayed over the weekend. The HR Manager from the first round makes a Godly appearance and promises to introduce you to everyone in the office. On your first day, you are made many promises and none of them are true. On the second day itself, you are put on task by the two people from the second and third rounds. They start acting like a boss to you. When you gather the courage to ask for some time to think over it, pat comes the reply, “Time is what, we are running against my friend. You better pull up your socks.”

The moral of the story – On the first day when a candidate is misled into an organization, the chances are thin for him/her to continue even for the first six months.

Therefore whey is induction necessary?

• A newly appointed candidate might come from the same sector that your organization operates in but the functioning might be different.
  
  
• Your organization might be following the theory of chaos to win accounts, lose accounts, adjust accounts or sustain accounts; the newly appointed candidate might like to do things in an organized manner.
  
  
• Some people in your organization might not be aware (either deliberately or unknowingly) about the appointment of a new candidate; wouldn’t it be nice to organize a 10 minute get together to help the new candidate break the ice?
  
  
• The hierarchies might be different in your organization; what if a junior talks to a senior like a boss or what if the candidate is dragged into some important pitch presentation, about which he has no knowledge at all.
  
  
• Every organization, every agency has a certain DNA of operating; are you sure the newly appointed candidate will come to know of it on the first day of his/her joining?
  
  
• Hold back your set of instructions before gauging if the candidate has found a proper place to sit in our office. If he/her hasn’t yet been shown the place to settle down, you seriously need a reality check. 

Hoping that I haven’t kicked off a controversy, I would sign off saying - INDUCT FIRST, INSTRUCT NEXT.

-Virtuous Vociferous 

357 DAYS MORE TO DO A LOT MORE

Some days ago while writing about the first five days of 2014, I decided to turn this into a habit. The habit that helps me to remain indulged with my everyday life. Thus arrived next three days of 2014; as expected they were unpredictable. From meeting new people to new conversations and from imagining a deal to be finalized to seeing it go bust. Everything within a span of three days (72 hours). But the grit to do a lot more doesn’t cease. My body language says that I am restless. That is for the world to make an opinion about. I believe I am just a curious seeker of creative solace. Even though I laugh about the many oddities of what half of the uncreative populous talk about, I am not authorized to insult or criticize them. They have done their bit of climbing ladders; honestly or dishonestly.

All these three days have been very important with context to the yarn of personal growth. The mind that was held captive by cobwebs of unfair thinking, finds itself a bit enlightened now. The excess baggage of not wanting to go against heart seems to have lightened a bit. All that remains with me are conversations. These conversations comprised words like – Tell me something about yourself, how good are you at doing xyz, what is your opinion about its future, would you like to know anything more about us, we will keep in touch, there is lots happening around us and we might have skipped that. It was left to my imagination to either believe or disbelieve them. On most occasions, I disbelieved them but didn’t express what was on my mind.

But such encounters are necessary for the process of life to continue smoothly. Disruptions challenge the way our minds might want to think. Or else our minds tend to grow lazy. Our minds start feeling petrified by the prospect of facing a potential challenge lurking around us. The last three days have been filled with disruptions. These disruptions ranged from an erratic internet connection to an unplanned discussion. From a missed call to attended calls of the unwanted and one such call was from the so called Customer Service Centre of Hypercity.

The female on the other side of the phone opened the conversation with a courteous question – Excuse me sir, I would first like to seek your permission to ask, if this is the right time to talk to you? She added more by extending it with another sentence – Sir, will you be willing to share your marital status and the number of kids you have? I was impressed. She spoke very well. Her voice was controlled. Seemed to be in her early twenties and didn’t come across as a threat to my mind, while being in the middle of heavy duty thinking. After having shared all the details, she asked me as to why I wasn’t shopping too often at Hypercity? She wanted to know if I was unhappy with their services. Did the staff not cooperate with me? Or did I want to see a change that Hypercity could introduce with respect to my feedback? Voila. I was bowled over. I conveyed to her my satisfying replies. Her gratitude seemed like an announcement in an airplane. Thank you so much sir for having spared your precious time to answer our questions. We assure you of better services and a pleasant shopping experience during your next visit to Hypercity.

But such communication is very rare. The executive I spoke to was well trained and respected the significance of time, the communication, the seriousness and possibly the temperament of a rigid customer like me. The next moment was that of shock. I was coordinating with a disorganized courier service agent. For a second, I thought they had misplaced the cheque that I was expecting from someone. As I started tracing the courier and talking to the guys involved, I encountered disruptions and thereby lay the challenge. These disruptions where in the form of humans, with whom I hate to communicate on an everyday basis. But luck was in my favor and the shenanigans ended with the courier company sending across a person to personally deliver my documents aka cheque.

In all these three days, I think somewhere there was less of effort involved and the perception to do more was missing. I sat across a table staring at the calendar and felt there was still an unfinished task to be accomplished. Excusing myself for a half day from the task in hand, I landed up at one of the offices of a Government of India undertaken Insurance Company. Somehow I followed my intuition of they haven’t acknowledged a document, sent across by my mom to adjust a claim. Initially I was shocked by the tactical location of this office. The office was located in a State Transport Bus owned complex. I took an over abused staircase that helped me arrive at the first floor of the office. The walls were plastered with spit (definitely a byproduct of endless gutka gossips). The security guard sitting at the entrance preferred to busy himself with his personal dose of powdered tobacco than wanting to attend my query. I still mustered the courage to be vociferous.

Who will help me solve this problem? Open the door, go straight, turn to your left and he might be of some help to you. Followed by an ignorant round of laughter, I was directed towards the official who held the fate of my mother’s insurance claim. A discussion between him and me, made me realize how easily he had not even bothered to read through the details; we had couriered across centuries ago. It was upsetting to realize that my mother and I had invested a total of Rs.15 in simplifying the task-on-hand of these unkind species. But looking at my outraged form, this gentleman somewhere between his mid 40s sprung into action. Kalji karu naka, hey don mintacha kaam aahey, fukatcha dag dag karoon gheoo naka (No need to worry, this task will take just two minutes to be taken care of and please don’t stress yourself). The result of this proactive action will be released only after ten days. That is when I will come to know if I have fared well in my effort. For no reason, I think that our Government offices are a symbol of colossal chaos. The number of pillars in these offices stands outnumbered. Or else, how will they do justice to the phrase of ‘made to run from pillar to pillar’!

Last but not the least, I wish to speak about a lady who expressed her desire to have a prolonged conversation with me regarding some prospects of future. But the conversation got scattered between her paying more attention to her laptop than me. The conversation got scattered between two gentlemen who were sitting around her paying more attention to her continuous exit and entry into the room than the points, I was stressing upon. To be frank, I don’t care about the outcome of this flawed discussion.

From all the above actions that I spoke about, I think the fault was mine to have limited myself somewhere from not wanting to do more. That means in the last eight days; I haven’t done much to achieve the ‘more’ that I perceive from 2014. But great men said ‘better late than never’ and as agreed, I am looking ahead to the next 357 days of the year. If I am good at calculations that stands for next eleven months of the year and I can’t care a damn less about the prospect of getting to do so much more in these coming days.

No matter where I am. No matter what I might be planning of doing next. The objective is clear – think and write more for 357 more days to do a lot more.

-vociferous