When you finish your degree, you enter the corporate world, wide-eyed, innocent, with high hopes for the future and the expectations of a mega salary. Soon, you believe, you will be climbing the organizational ladder, making quick steps towards the top. The world, you believe, lies in the palm of your hands, ready to be conquered. It is your destiny. No one can stop you.
Then, you get the actual job offers, and you feel a mild sting. “Is that it,” you ask yourself? But you soldier on, thinking it is just a small hurdle in your path. It is just the start, you think. The best is yet to come, you believe. Then, you actually enter the workforce, and reality slaps you hard across the face, waking you up from your hopeful slumber and vibrant dreams. “This isn’t what I expected,” you think. But it is reality, and one which isn’t easily changeable.
So, how do these expectations of the student against the industry’s reality work? How is there such a huge disparity between the two visions?
Let’s step away from the usual suspects for now – such as the educational system, the government, the corporate worlds’ unknown ethos – and look at a tangent for a moment. Why? Because let’s face it, they are definitely equal culprits, but they aren’t the only culprits here. We are equal partners in this shebang.
So, let’s look at ourselves and how we hamper our own chances in a deck that is already stacked against us.
It all begins at school and university. We often hear the word discipline and values, we hear about their importance, but we rarely follow them. When we do follow them, it is out of a sense of obligation, and not actual understanding of what does values represent, or how they are supposed to help us become better professionals in life.
For example, we rarely see the importance of being punctual in college. If you’re half an hour late for a lecture, you dismiss it saying, ‘Chalta hai.’ But this attitude does not work in the industry. It is frowned upon. When you are late, you aren’t only disrespecting the other person’s time, but your own as well.
Similarly, you go into the field with a lot of theoretical knowledge from the classroom, but have you actually gained the skills to apply them in a professional setting? Or have you just rote learnt everything to pass the exams and get good grades? The latter may be good for your examination results, but will it hold true under further professional scrutiny?
Plus, how well do you perform under pressure? Are you creatively inclined? Can you find unique solutions to a problem and turn hurdles into opportunities? All of these are important questions, and the way you answer them, the way you react to them, will determine how you fare in the industry.
This is where the disparity between your vision, your expectations of the field, and the reality of the world crops up. Where you find out that the world outside the walls of the classroom is quite different, and you need to develop a clearer focus to deal with it.
So, start working on your vision, lest you end up in muddy waters.
