I am Not what I Am! Interview, nothing but a Fact...!

Many a times before mock interviews I decide to be myself just to keep my nerves in control and do justice to an age old cliche, which is usually found written on T-shirts, "I am what I am." But as soon as interview starts I realize that I have too little a knowledge of my subjects to influence the interviewer, my academic marks are poor enough to compel panel of any decent B-School to curse the prevailing education system.

In the absence of any noticeable achievement, window dressing is the only option I have to resort to. Here's how things usually go:

Interviewer: Tell me about yourself.

Heart says: I am Nirav. I have done my schooling from XYZ. I hate studies since the day my parents coaxed me into sitting in prep class. I have few extracurricular activities but certainly not of national importance. I have been blogging since 2011 but most of my articles have been ridiculed as futile and frivolous. I have done my B. Tech. in CS stream, which was the biggest blunder of my life. What I learnt in 4 years of my engineering is how to make rings out of smoke of hukkas, how to leapfrog firewall to make complete use of Internet, how to complete course in 3 hours straight and networking which helped me getting few questions, going to come in mid-terms, out of the mouth of faculty. I had a great fun in my Engineering but CS has had given me many sleepless nights.

My hobbies are sleeping and watching adult comedy movies like American Pie. I had also spent endless hours watching Big Bang Theory and playing Counter Strike.

I Say: (The typical memorized answer)

Interviewer: So, you like watching movies. Hmmm... Have you seen any French movie? 

Heart Says: French? I watch Hollywood movies with subtitles. 

I Say: No (with-all-due-respect smile).

Interviewer: Which is your favorite subject in Engineering? 

Heart Says: English, Environment education, and few others subjects that Nisha madam taught. 

I Say: Operating System. 

Interviewer: What is round robin scheduling?

Heart Says: What the hell!!

I Say: When there are series of jobs waiting to be done then OS schedules these jobs acco... 

  

Interviewer: (Interrupting with A ridiculing smile) Have you heard about Bitcoin? What is it?

Heart Says: Oh man! I wish I had read that boring article in yesterday's newspaper.

I Say: Bitcoin is a substitute of real currency and... (Continuing by capitalizing on anything that is coming across mind) 

Interviewer: Why MBA and Why this institute?

Heart Says: Sir, I did my B.Tech thinking that after 4 years I would be in a A.C. chamber with a handsome package. But things didn't turn up as it was supposed to be. MBA is money spinner as far as sentiments of the market goes. After I decided to go for MBA I checked the B-School rankings of different magazines and your institute was one among top. Average package has also motivated me to pursue MBA from this institute.

(and I am still devising a perfect answer that could veil my real intentions)

Interviewer: How was your work experience?

Heart Says: Pathetic. For first three months I changed my profile pic hundreds of time, checked every mail including spam folder, drank coffees, and made programs that hardly would have made any difference to the organization. Our supervisor was the man on mission to intimidate freshly minted employees. My learning experience was somewhere around 'nil'.

I say: It was fantastic. I handled several projects under my supervisor who was a good motivator and leader. I learned many qualities from him. My work-ex has given me a good corporate exposure (Smile as if I am being awarded as the best employee by Jeff Bezos). 

Interviewer: Where do you see yourself 10 years down the line?

Heart says: On a beach... in some foreign location.

I say: I see myself as an important asset for the company blah blah blah...

Interviewer: O.K. Thank You. You can go now.

Heart says: Thank You.

I say: Thank You.       

Bananas and Monkeys - A Modern Story

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.

Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.

After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.

Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not?

Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done round here.

And that, my friends, is how company policies are made.

What Happens When You Really Disconnect

I woke up one morning about four weeks ago and realized in a flash that I'd hit a wall. Most days I can't wait to get to work. On this day, I struggled to get myself out of the house.

The first three months of the year had been intensely demanding, between hiring a series of new employees for a rapidly growing business, working with colleagues to develop several new products, travelling frequently, and taking on multiple writing assignments.

One of the primary principles of the work we teach at the Energy Project is that the greater the performance demand, the greater the need for recovery. I needed a vacation, but what I needed most of all was a period of total digital disconnection. My brain felt overloaded and I needed time to clear it out.

My wife and I made reservations to go to our favorite hotel for nine days. But I knew that getting away from my office wouldn't be enough if I remained tethered to my online life and my work. I decided not to bring my laptop, my iPad, or my cellphone. I left an away message that made it clear I wouldn't be checking email.

I was determined to eliminate temptation to the maximum extent possible. I had learned from past experiences how easy it is for me to succumb, given the opportunity.

As Daniel Goleman writes in Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, a fascinating new book he'll publish this fall: "Overloading attention shrinks mental control. Life immersed in digital distractions creates a near constant cognitive overload. And that overload wears out self-control."

From the moment I boarded the plane for our trip, I noticed a shift. Ordinarily, I would have skittered between reading the newspaper, magazines, answering email, and surfing the web (if it was available). I'd brought along a pile of books, mostly novels, and none of them related to work. I began reading the first one, and I very quickly became absorbed. For once, nothing else was competing for my attention.

The first time I felt a distracting impulse, it was to Google something I'd read. The initial pull was compelling, but I let it pass. Over the next several days, it happened perhaps a half-dozen more times, and on each occasion I simply observed the feeling without responding to it. By mid-week, that impulse evaporated, and I realized how much richer and more satisfying any experience is when it's not interrupted — even if the interrupter is me.

It turned out there were no newspapers at our hotel. My first response was a bit of panic — I've read The New York Times daily since I was a teenager — but soon, I realized I was giving up the fix of more information that I didn't really need.

Instead, I became increasingly aware that the relentless diet of information I ordinarily consume leaves me feeling the same way I do after eating a couple of slices of pizza or a hot dog and French fries — poorly nourished and still hungry.

What grew each day was my capacity for absorbed focus. For months now, I've wanted to read Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon's book about the challenges of parenting children with disabilities such as dwarfism, Down's syndrome, and deafness. The problem is that it's nearly 1,000 pages long, and who has the time or the wherewithal for that? But with my mind freed of distractions, I found it easy to dive in, and read most of the book over a couple of days. The book was fascinating.

I had a similar experience on the tennis court. I've been taking lessons and working on my game all of my adult life, but on vacation last week, I was able to slow down and analyze my strokes with a wholly different level of patience and unhurried interest. It was the sort of learning you simply can't do when you're thinking about 10 other subjects.

By the end of nine days, I felt empowered and enriched. With my brain quieter, I was able to take back control of my attention. In the process, I rediscovered some deeper part of myself.

If there had been an emergency while I was away, I could have been reached. The humbling truth is that not a single thing demanded my attention. Most everything can wait.

I did finally feel ready to return to my everyday world — even enthusiastic to read my email and check my favorite websites. But I also felt less anxious urgency about dealing with what ordinarily feels so pressing.

The break deepened my recognition that chunks of time away from digital life are critical both to renewal and to work itself. In that spirit, I've committed to two rituals going forward. Twice a week — including this morning — I'm spending the first several hours of the day at home, working on projects that require focused attention, with my email and internet turned off. At the end of each work day, I'm going to spend at least a half-hour reading — and savoring — a book. The key to being more fully absorbed is to regularly and fully disconnect.

Over-Educated, Yet Under-Qualified?

Looking at the number of engineering colleges in India and the number of engineers coming out of these colleges, the questions that form in everyone’s minds are, “does India need so many engineers?” Are they all employable? The negativism brought forth by such questions has crippled engineering education in India.

This is not a great time to be a recent college graduate. The IT sector has also suffered with around 44% of graduates going unemployed. Unemployment rate is likely to be increased up to 75%.

Such statistics have given rise to the narrative that a college degree is no longer worth it. Even so, given the number of college graduates struggling to launch their careers, a wide gap has emerged between what the workforce needs in employees and what colleges are producing in graduates.

Part of the problem is that we have high expectations for the bachelor’s degree today. Thirty years ago, when fewer people required a higher education to get ahead in life, the bachelor’s degree was seen as a vehicle for broad learning. The training part came later by going to graduate school or getting a job where the new employer trained you.

A concerned father wrote in about his daughter’s lack of preparedness for the world of real work. He writes:

“My daughter was good with computers, but struggled to find a major in college at which she could excel. She preferred to hand code HTML rather than use an HTML editor (at the time, something like Dreamweaver), but wasn't one of those bright young people already writing programs in C by the time she was in junior high school. Still, she was good with computers.

Imagine my surprise (and, as it turned out, her relief) that she could get a four-year undergraduate degree in "Data Processing" without having to write a single program in any language! All such assignments were routinely structured as group (team) exercises; it turned out that the groups who found a natural affinity for each other always had at least one member who could do all or most of the work for each assignment. There were no tests as I think both you and I understand the concept. Everything was a "Project," and each team was responsible for its own effort.

To give you a sense of the assignments: The "lab" project for the Server Administration course she took consisted of little more than the groups separately installing Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 on an ordinary PC, either at school or at someone's home. That was it -- just install it. The instructor did not even check that the installation was done correctly; he simply took their word for it, apparently.”

A manager at a “Fortune 500 company,” is similarly unimpressed. “I have never interviewed a candidate right out of college who I would hire. No recent graduate that I have interviewed has had sufficient understanding of real-world problems to be useful to me, at least for the salary that the interviewees were expecting.” 

He gives a specific example: “Several years ago I interviewed candidates for an open position as a Data Modeler. None of the recent college graduates who had even covered Entity Relationship Diagramming in their programs had created a Data Model with more than five entities.” He says that they have better success hiring candidates with three to five years’ work experience, even if the applicant lacks a college degree. That’s a pretty damning statement. 

Now we demand that skills training move in tandem with broad learning, and expect both to be completed in the four years of an undergraduate education. For too many students, however, the bachelor’s degree is not providing that dual experience—high-impact, in-classroom learning and out-of-the-classroom, experiential, and hands-on learning necessary for success in today’s economy.