A response to: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/an-open-letter-to-indias-graduating-classes/
Dear Employer:
You are not only an Indian company/Bank/Consulting Firm/MNC/PSU; You are also a KPO, a BPO, an IT company, an FMCG company, a Startup, a Social Enterprise, looking for bright, energetic individuals to swell your ranks.
You are not the givers of our paychecks. Your customers are. You not only give us the brand names we covet, you also need us to propagate those brands among all your stakeholders.
Your definition of open-mindedness and enthusiasm in a graduate is that they should do what you want them to, no questions asked.
You want the ASM to tour risky areas in order to push sales with recalcitrant distributors. You set up a system which forces them to manipulate data, primaries and secondaries, undercutting and so on just so that you don't fire the gun which you hold to their heads at the end of every month.
You want the fresher to work on the presentation at Sunday night to cover up for your tardiness so that you can impress your client on Monday morning.
You maintain half the strength you should in your investment banks so that freshers work their asses off till 3 AM on some arcane models and archaic regulations, so that you can deliver your uber cool pitch to some unwilling hapless promoter to get him interested in a deal which won't benefit him in the least.
You are the corporate which thinks freshers come with fringe benefits, such as getting your coffee and cigarettes and photocopying your daughter's homework.Thats how they did it in your day.
Your talk till the cows come home about professionalism, meritocracy and performance based progress. Yet you indulge in politics, bitching and backbiting and favouritism.No fresher comes with all these things ingrained. You have developed a system which makes him imbibe it the hard way.
You produce verbose, jargon oriented rhetoric about frameworks and skill sets and value drivers to impress your clients by confusing them into oblivion, and then complain when freshers try to project themselves as being capable of producing such junk.
You ensure that you "benchmark compensation" and use the "bell curve" to keep employees just below what they deserve. Then you complain when they leave for somewhere with better pay.
In short, as the typical Indian employer so often does, you blame the freshers and make convenient assumptions which reinforce your own prejudices, absolving you of the need for any introspection on your part, as to what it is that you need to do.
Dear Employer:
You are not only an Indian company/Bank/Consulting Firm/MNC/PSU; You are also a KPO, a BPO, an IT company, an FMCG company, a Startup, a Social Enterprise, looking for bright, energetic individuals to swell your ranks.
You are not the givers of our paychecks. Your customers are. You not only give us the brand names we covet, you also need us to propagate those brands among all your stakeholders.
Your definition of open-mindedness and enthusiasm in a graduate is that they should do what you want them to, no questions asked.
You want the ASM to tour risky areas in order to push sales with recalcitrant distributors. You set up a system which forces them to manipulate data, primaries and secondaries, undercutting and so on just so that you don't fire the gun which you hold to their heads at the end of every month.
You want the fresher to work on the presentation at Sunday night to cover up for your tardiness so that you can impress your client on Monday morning.
You maintain half the strength you should in your investment banks so that freshers work their asses off till 3 AM on some arcane models and archaic regulations, so that you can deliver your uber cool pitch to some unwilling hapless promoter to get him interested in a deal which won't benefit him in the least.
You are the corporate which thinks freshers come with fringe benefits, such as getting your coffee and cigarettes and photocopying your daughter's homework.Thats how they did it in your day.
Your talk till the cows come home about professionalism, meritocracy and performance based progress. Yet you indulge in politics, bitching and backbiting and favouritism.No fresher comes with all these things ingrained. You have developed a system which makes him imbibe it the hard way.
You produce verbose, jargon oriented rhetoric about frameworks and skill sets and value drivers to impress your clients by confusing them into oblivion, and then complain when freshers try to project themselves as being capable of producing such junk.
You ensure that you "benchmark compensation" and use the "bell curve" to keep employees just below what they deserve. Then you complain when they leave for somewhere with better pay.
In short, as the typical Indian employer so often does, you blame the freshers and make convenient assumptions which reinforce your own prejudices, absolving you of the need for any introspection on your part, as to what it is that you need to do.
