My Career Struggles and Beyond
For over 10 years ever since finishing graduation back in 2006, I did not have a stable job nor a decent opportunity to prove myself. A lot of aspiring talent won’t be able to handle one bad manager. However, I had to go through three of them and importantly sustain the phase beyond their cusp.
For a lot of people getting the right opportunity was a
challenge. In my case getting an opportunity itself was a challenge, the
initial few years after graduation fizzled out without any noteworthy job roles.
Since my career was not even getting a kickstart, I had opted to do my masters
in finance in not so recognized institution in Mumbai.
Phase 1
Post completion of my masters, I was already in my mid 20’s,
I was offered the role of Business Analyst and worked under a boss who was from
IIM Bangalore. Clearly, he was not impressed with me but I was more than
willing to put in the required level of hard work and scale up. In just about 7
or 8 months in the job, he had ripped me apart in email copying my entire workplace
ecosystem (including his boss) and openly questioned by competence to
accomplish a given task.
I really felt completely trashed on the ground. The same
conversation in private was something I would have taken in a constructive mindset
but this public censure was beyond my absorption capacity.
This event constantly played out in mind for the next 1
month and eventually led to my resignation in just 10 months time. Purely from
a career standpoint, this was suicide.
I did not get a decent job for the next 4 years and did
hustle around selling insurance policies for a bank. I felt stuck in a box and
was not able to withstand this intellectually non-progressive work like selling
insurance.
I quit that job as well and felt completely useless. It
drove me to a point of serious depression and a desireless state of not even
wanting to live. There were days when I used to sleep for 18 hours and not even
want to get up. For all good reasons, I felt my days were up.
Phase 2
At the age of 30, I decided to pursue a degree in data
science much to the anguish of my elder brother who clearly questioned my
aptitude to take such a course and build a career. As an act of open mockery, my
classmates who were on an average 6 to 7 years younger, preferred call me uncle
rather than my name. To justify their act, there were even a few professors
younger than me. However, I was determined to cut the noise out and take one
step at a time.
At the end of the course, I was given just 3 interview opportunities
to get a job as in other organization interviews, my profile was rejected
straightaway.
In the first TCS interview, I couldn’t go beyond first
round.
Given my lack of opportunities, I had expended an enormous amount
of effort to clear the second interview which was with Infosys. There were 3 rounds
and the panel choose to drill me for a period of 4 hours in total. Along with one
more of my colleague, I was given a positive sign of getting an offer letter.
However, the HR compliance team had a different toast for
me. They reviewed all my mark certificates and told me that since my overall 12th
grade percent was 2% below the cut off (68% vs 66%), my candidature was being
rejected.
Given my circumstances, this was a heavy blow and left
wondering how many more failures to be faced without any sign of progress.
The third company happened to be a start-up which I finally cleared.
The catch being, I was offered a dashboard report generation job instead of
data modelling role. Given my desperation, I took up the job without any fuzz.
Phase 3
To my nightmare, it happened to be a copy paste task of
getting all the data within certain headers onto an excel and copy them into a
presentation. Given the quantum of reports to be generated and the error free
expectation, the hours of effort was not less than 12 hours every day. With very
strict deadlines, I had even come on Sunday to complete the work.
During the course of this engagement and the high-pressure
nature of the ecosystem, I had developed a friction with my reporting manager.
I had no clue that he had intensions to screw my case and the credulous nature
of mine did go against me.
In just 7 months, I was fired and there was a restriction imposed
to even allow me in the very same office I had worked my ass off. I was left
wondering, when did I become a thief?
This was a moment when I was literally on my knees and
offered to work for free in return to build my career experience. As far as the
management was concerned, I don’t fit into their scheme of things anymore.
At 31 years of age, I got fired and to spice up, just got
married.
Phase 4
In about a month’s time, I got a breakthrough into an IT
organization on a sales roles. As it turns out to be, this happened to be the
first time I had spent close to 3 years in an organization.
Sales is all about revenue that the resource is able to get into
system. With that context, let me throw some light on the numbers.
·
Revenue generated in 3 years - INR 3.6 crore
· As cash outflow (in terms of compensation) as a percentage of revenue – 4.6%
I don’t have to justify were I stood, the numbers paint the story by themselves. This time I was clearly indicated by my manager that he has no intent of promoting me or give me better geographies or marquee account to handle. Of course, a commensurate compensation was not even in the picture.
I had painfully quit but ensured that I left with the
positive note. The CEO responded saying that he acknowledges my contribution
and asked me to be in touch.
Phase 5
4 years later I had joined the same organization as a
director at 4 times the compensation I had received back in 2017.
As I always believe, the story has just begun!
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