Today, I and Vivek Bajaj, a dear friend, recorded a podcast episode for his Face2Face MSME series. One of his question triggered some memories, and I felt it will be great to share my learnings from my four jobs!
My first job was a part-time gig with The International Award for Young People, India in 1995 as an Assistant Field Officer for a monthly salary of Rs. 500.
I would assist in office administration, coordinate with different units, and act as an instructor in camping and trekking trips.
I worked with Mrs. Banerjee, a tough task master, but a great mentor. I think a lot of my work ethics, sense of ownership and responsibility, and communication skills came from that stint.
When I joined St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata; there was not much to do after the morning. So I ended up at Shah & Choudhury, a DSA of Citibank.
I was trained to sell “loan against equity”, and I really roughed it out from door to door to meet my sales targets. I saw sales management closely, and also got a glimpse of office politics.
It was a great exposure to sales, and that is where I realised that people want to be helped and educated instead of being sold. This shaped my belief – “People buy. You cannot sell them, but just help them buy”
After my graduation, I ended up in University of Bath for my Masters. The first one was at the Students Union to enter all the student data into the software they had. I hated it, as I found it a lowly job, being a bright programmer in my own assessment. But this shaped up my resilience as well as typing speed! I cannot emphasize, however much these two skills helped me later in my life.
After the data entry project was done, I took up a late evening job at Openworld, a web design firm in Bath. Honestly, this was an eye opener for me, as I experienced:
– the world is flat
– attention to detail
– how a web design firm is run
– that it can be as big as £1m revenue business (coming from Kolkata, I was given a perception that web design business can scale upto 50-60 lakh per year!)
These helped me when I had to take a decision between a tech career in west, or an entrepreneurial career in India.
My take away, as I reflect back, and connect the dots, is that – every experience is valuable as long as you commit to it, and do it with diligence.
What did you learn from your jobs (and where) that shaped your career and perspective.