Basics of Career & Solution Based Counseling

Counseling generally involves two individuals. The Counselor: the one provides the ability to understand viz. an issue or a set objective to help develop the ability to decide on the ways and means to achieve an objective. The Counseled: the one who is facilitated by the Counselor to clearly understand the way to resolve issues and difficulties faced and find out the ways to achieve ones goal or objective.

Our focus is generally on issues such as career exploration, career change, personal career development and other career or livelihood related issues. Typically when people come for career or employment related counseling they know exactly what they want to get out of the process, but are unsure about how it will work

Let us now focus on the two basic forms of counseling that are effective for the prospective trainees as well as the trainees we interact with while explaining to them the various Livelihood Training programme that will be appropriate for them. At times, while training them on specific skill sets under Livelihood Training Programmes, we need to counsel them on how to remain focused on their training objective. We too need to counsel the team members to meet the common functional objective of the team.

(A) Career Counseling:

This is useful while counseling candidates from educational institutions or those who seem quite aware and are trying to develop their career or striving for appropriate means of livelihood.

Career counselors work with people from all walks of life such as adolescents trying to explore career options or with experienced professionals looking for a career change. Career counselors typically have a background in psychology, vocational psychology, or industrial/organizational psychology.

Each and every counselor has his/her unique way of counseling, but generally they generally use one or more ways to find out the interest, ability and aptitude of those they are helping in deciding on career options or appropriate means of livelihood. These assessments typically include: interest inventories, cognitive ability tests to find out the level of formal education i.e. school, pre-university, college or other levels of formal education, and personality assessments i.e. self assessment or behavioral traits such as integrity, Kindness, responsibility, determination, team work, etc.

Interest Inventories:

An interest inventory is a self assessment tool, used in career planning, that assesses one's likes and dislikes of a variety of activities, objects, and types of persons; the premise is that people in the same career (and satisfied in that career) have similar interests.
Examples:
· Ramana, who is aspiring to be a sales executive has listed his hobbies as making friends, traveling, learning languages, etc and the successful sales professionals have similar interests and their job description mentions that they need to get new clients and develop good client relationship. They need to travel to meet clients and make business deals with people who are located in distant places.
· Reshmi, who is a young Indian village girl, but is very shy by nature yet wants to work in the BPO industry has a very good voice and likes to sing, can play the harmonium and easily works on its keys and is good in accounting work; therefore shows all the interest and potential to be groomed into a successful Executive in BPO industry

Career counseling basically consists of four elements:
(a) Helping individuals to gain greater self-awareness in areas such as interests, values, abilities, and personality style.
(b) Helping individuals to gain opportunity awareness by connecting individuals to resources so that they can become more knowledgeable about jobs and occupations.
(c) Through job search engaging students in the decision-making process in order that they can choose a career path that is well suited to their own interests, values, abilities and personality style, and
(d) Through self-assessment assist individuals to be active managers of their career paths (including managing career transitions and balancing various life roles) as well as becoming lifelong learners in the sense of professional development over the lifespan.

Following is the detailed Checklist of the four basic steps of Career Counseling activity:

Checklist of Career Counseling Steps

The Checklist

Self-awareness:

1. What are my values?
2. What are my skills and abilities?
3. What are my interests?
4. What is my personality style?
5. What other life roles are important along with my job or occupation?
6. What are the family and cultural influences on my career path?

Opportunity-awareness:

1. What kinds of occupations and jobs am I suited for?
2. How much do I know about these different fields (job description, amount of pay, working conditions, opportunity for advancement, whether there is a demand for this field, the types of tasks performed, etc.)?
3. What are my options (possibilities: further study/training, work shadowing/ work experience/ volunteer work as a stepping stone towards long-term employment)?
4. What are my short-term and long-term goals?
5. How do I make decisions about these options?
6. Provide all necessary information on options available as professional training programmes that can help the individual to avail livelihood opportunities available according to his/her interest and aptitude.

Job search (How to prepare oneself for it):

Explain to the individual how Professional Training Programme will help him/her:

1. How do I prepare my resume and Job Application letter?
2. What do I need to know about attending a job interview?
3. How to search for employment opportunities? Contact potential employers to provide employment opportunities after the individual completes the professional training programme.
4. How to prepare oneself for career in the chosen industry’s specific domains viz. Customer Service in Retail industry.
Self Assessment
Self assessment is an important step in career planning process. It is the process of gathering information about oneself in order to make an informed career decision and plan and progress on the career path by regularly updating thus information. A self assessment should include a look at the following: values, interests, personality, and skills.

When you are able to clarify your own interests, values and skills then you can understand better about jobs/ careers which are a good match for you and those which are not. When you are well-matched to the career/ job you are likely to be more motivated and successful in your work, and would enjoy the job more than the person who is poorly suited for the same. That is why self awareness is so critical for successful career counseling.

An effective counselor helps a job aspirant in Self Assessment and guides the individual to Appropriate Livelihood (related Skill) Development Training Programme, if necessary, while enabling the individual to plan his/her career.

Individual Character Awareness is very important and Interest Inventory also has six basic character traits:
1. Kindness
2. Integrity
3. Community Existence
4. Determination
5. Responsibility
6. Respect
Based in part on the “Six Pillars of Character,” these traits are seen as cornerstones of good character and are necessary for social progress—regardless of one’s religious beliefs or cultural background. The Character Development Scale (CDS) allows individuals to explore their character development by rating how well actions and attributes tied to these six traits apply to them and this helps in their career development and advancement too.

(B) Solution Based Counseling:

This is useful while counseling candidates from slums, villages and other rural areas.

The counselor uses respectful curiosity to invite the candidate to envision their preferred future and then counselor and candidate start attending to any moves towards it whether these are small increments or large changes. To support this, questions are asked about the candidate’s story, strengths and resources, and about exceptions to the problem, seeking employment or means of livelihood.
Solution focused counselor believes that change is constant. By helping people identify the things that they wish to have change in their life and also to attend to those things that are currently happening that they wish to continue happening, Counselor helps the candidate form a concrete vision of a happy future for themselves through self development and livelihood opportunity available through various Livelihood/Career Development Programmes. The counselor then helps the candidate to identify an appropriate livelihood programme that will help to progress towards the desired future. Through many success stories of candidates with similar profile who have succeeded in charting the course for their life. Get such candidates to share their success stories with the job aspirants as that will boost latter’s hope and confidence. Through this exercise, the counselor can motivate the job aspirants to overcome their failures and help them plan and move towards their goal. In this way, the counselor helps the candidate devise methods to analyse the problems they face and draw up a solution to overcome them. Thus counselor helps the candidates move towards the preferred future they have identified.
Solution focused counseling can be seen as a way of working that focuses exclusively or predominantly at two things:
1) Supporting people to explore their preferred futures.
2) Exploring when, where, with whom and how pieces of that preferred future are already happening.

Coping Questions
Coping questions are designed to elicit information about candidate's available resources that will help the candidate to decide on the livelihood/career along with the required training programme(s) and how to organize finances for executing his/her career plans. Counselor should help the candidate to organize and cope with the available resources to avail to help the candidate develop required knowledge/skill specific to the chosen profession. "It is really nice to see how you are coping with your existing resources to travel from your village to come and meet me. Let me help you see how you can work out your joining one of the Livelihood programmes and in successfully getting a job at the end of it!"
Genuine curiosity and admiration can help to highlight strengths without appearing to contradict the candidate's view of reality. The initial summary "I can see that things have been really difficult for you" is for them true and validates their story. The second part "you manage to join the programme.", is also a true, but one that counters the problem focused narrative. Undeniably, they cope and coping questions start to gently and supportively challenge the objections raised by a candidate to joining a livelihood programme.
Problem Free Talk
Problem free talk is often over looked as a technique. In Solution focused counseling, it is thought to be a useful technique for eliciting resources. Many people do leisure activities that relax them, or have experiences of being assertive, and many other useful resources that can help. The counselor can also gather information on the candidate`s values and beliefs and their strengths. From this discussion during the counseling session the counselor can use these strengths and resources to help the candidate decide and confirm his/her joining appropriate livelihood programme. For example; if a candidate finds it difficult to convince his/her parent or is not free with parents to take their consent to join the programme then get a meeting with the parents organized through the candidate.

Checklist of Support and Materials needed during Counseling
1. Venue in the form of a comfortable place where two people can comfortably sit and talk to each other.
2. A note pad and a writing pen for the counselor to take notes while speaking to the candidate
3. Drinking water
4. Adequate fresh air and light
5. Information Materials on various career options available.
6. Information on financial assistance available to meet the professional training/education expenses.
7. Materials for Aptitude test or such assessments.
8. Information on the Industry Clients and domains and career opportunities in them.
9. Counseling log book to maintain candidate wise records for case studies.

Important
· It is important to counsel that parents and guardians of the candidates when counseling the candidates to various livelihood programmes Counsel the parents during the mid-term assessment of the trainees.
· Counsel the parents on how they can participate in the process of their child’s career planning & development.

Ponder

I wanted to rush to the office, so I opted to travel by auto rickshaw than B.M.T.C. (Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation) bus. The auto-rickshaw driver was aware of my anxiety, so he dexterously negotiated the traffic on the road to avoid getting stuck in the jam; while doing so, he narrowly escaped brushing passed a car that suddenly appeared on the left hand-side without honking its appearance. The auto-rickshaw driver lost his cool and yelled at the driver for causing the confusion. In order to avoid further delay, I requested him to move on and explained that there are better ways of making  erring drivers aware of their follies. I broke into conversation with him and realized that all those who are behind the wheels on the road break the traffic rules at some point in time, but they tend to generalize and blame those who make them feel as the underdogs  to be the guilty party. For instance, the auto-rickshaw drivers consider the private car owners as the bullies, who consider the roads to be their private property, while the private car owners consider the auto-rickshaw drivers to be the dare-devils who don't even bat an eye lid to violate traffic rules; therefore the blame game continues. 

This made me aware of the fact: the road traffic of a city very much depicts its urban character, its personality. It shows how urbane the inhabitants are. 

The topic of discussion eventually changed from private vehicle owners versus auto-rickshaw drivers to the roads and traffic in Bangalore and how much the vehicular traffic had increased within the past ten years. Sayeed (that is his name, owner of the auto-rickshaw, who was ferrying me to my office in Gandhinagar, Bangalore) a young lad in his mid twenties seemed to be quite well versed in the arterial system of the city roads and also had expert comments on the methods Bangalore Metropolitan Corporation had devised to DE-congest traffic on busy routes. When I further probed him to find out if he had a better solution than the one implemented, I was amazed to also receive some rather innovative solutions from him. He pointed out that most of the traffic congestion near Bangalore race course was due to sudden spate of high rises springing up on the Race course road. Neither Race course, nor the high-rises that house many offices have adequate parking space make the car owners park their vehicles on the road causing traffic congestion. The problem could be solved through multi-tiered or underground parking lots. He also cited the congestion caused by the underpass and fly-over at Maharani Collage Circle that added to the massive traffic problem at K.R. Circle. This could be solved by extending the fly-over and deviating the private vehicular traffic from Gandhinagar area through the connecting roads to de-congest traffic at K.R.Circle. 

I recalled that I had also come across a mason (brick layer) working at a construction site close to my place of residence who, through his years of work experience in construction, had some innovative ideas, but did not have the opportunity to hone his skills and formally blue-print his ideas  as any trained professional can do. Many of the construction site workers have rural background with ample knowledge of indigenous construction especially adobe homes and when they are trained in modern techniques of architecture, they will be able to contribute effectively in innovating indigenous designs suitable and better adapted to the local climes, rather than we aping the western architecture that are ill-suited to the environment and add more to the ecological problems such as unusual warming up of the environment due to excessive use of glass as facades of the buildings.

Similarly, our farmers, sons of the soil, have generations of know-how of the land they till and crops they grow. When they are trained to more scientific approach in honing their skills to improve methods of cultivation and the crops they grow. We will be able to improve our indigenous methods of cultivation and reduce the plasticity of western technology that has alienated us from the natural means of producing crops and through profuse use of chemicals has affected the arability of land.

Are we not depriving ourselves of potential talent that remains untapped and unfortunately disused in the form of unorganized workforce in the form of farm hands, construction site workers, foundry workers and industrial workers, who are to blindly follow the methods to eke their living, rather than train them on the job, hone their skills to use their ingenuity to improve the techniques oriented to the environment: climate, land and the inhabitants. Then we can say that we have innovated and the whole country has evolved and not just grown organically and developed materially.

Do all the inhabitants contribute in planning and improving the village, town or city we live in to eventually develop a sense of belonging so that we can dispel the feeling of alienation that we try to diffuse through blame game? This is the question I asked myself when I paid the auto-rickshaw fare and started walking towards the office building. 

Computers, Information Technology to Bridge Generation Gap

"Baba, why don't you write emails to me when we have computer and internet system at home?" Asked Meghna when she visited her parents during her visit to India from Norway. Father and daughter had many common interests and both enjoyed sharing their views on the current events and developments both on the national as well as global front. The only point of difference between the two was the use of technology in daily life. Meghna's Mother chuckled and said "I have failed in making your Father use electronic gadgets, see if you can succeed..." Meghna immediately picked up her laptop and placed it in front of her Father and said "Baba, I am going to leave this for you and before I go, I will ensure that you begin using it!" while saying so, she deftly opened the system and with a click of mouse button the computer was transformed into a music system playing her Father's favourite Western Classical songs, Occidental classical songs and music. She encouraged her Father to go through the play list to choose the songs he wanted to listen to. Suddenly the melodious reverie was interrupted when the computer suddenly started tinkling like a telephone!! "Baba, sit up, now it is time for you to video chat with Manik Uncle in Iceland!" She quickly pulled her Father up to sitting position in front of the computer and nimbly tapped on the keyboard and hey presto! the computer screen transformed into TV screen and the whole family could see Meghna's Manik Uncle's cheerful and animated face appear on the screen which broke into a big grin and he yelled "Hey Sagar, how are you? you seem to have lost weight and look, your hair line too has receded beyond the visibility range? What are you all up to? how's the festival season in India? Thanks to Meghna that I have got a chance to chat live and face to face with you! The families in India and Iceland had a memorable reunion through the web meeting and all bade teary eyed farewell promising to login in again soon to such web meeting. After dinner, Meghna and her parents once again sat down in front of the computer to see an old movie, which was her parents' all time favourite. During her fortnight visit to her parents, Meghna spent most of the time with her parents in using the computer to help them unravel the versatility of the machine and by the end of the fortnight, she had succeeded in getting her parents hooked to the computer system. At last, it was time for Meghna to bid goodbye to her parents and get back to Norway and her work. Her parents had come to see her off at the airport. When Meghna heard the Airline's departure call, she hugged her parents and said "Baba, I'll eagerly wait for your aerogramme..." Before she could complete, her Father said, don't forget web meeting with us as soon as you reach there and then it will be my turn to call you on web meeting, your Maa and I...take care my dear and safe journey. Thanks for the computer, I will use it when ever both of us will miss you and want to contact you..." Meghna was moved to tears, tears of joy crept from the corner of her eyes as she hugged her parents good bye.

Analysis in the Process of Learning...What About Assimilation?

"Do you know your p's and q's ?" We seem to often ask this question to the children when they are unable to discern the thin line that causes all the difference between two or more objects or concepts and that seems to be the very foundation of "Adult Material World", where we identify through differentiation, which is the crux of the function called "Analysis".

This is the very reason why in our existing education system of learning we believe more in the concept of organic learning (based on our five senses) like committing facts to memory or reasoning to differentiate in order to derive the uniqueness of an entity or to group or regroup the entities to conceptualise the very existence of a "belief" culminating into religious, cultural or political form. This is the primary reason why we eventually encourage any learner to analyze the very existence of an entity in its physical form and this is the fundamental principle of SCIENCE, which deals with the material aspects of an entity and even a thought and idea is immediately given a physical form or shape.

This also makes the learning process fall short of its very objective of making a learner realise the universal truth that one needs to be be aware of ones existence beyond the physical one. This is only possible through assimilation of one primary truth: "Everything is part of one, in its entirety". This is possible only by identifying one with the other leading to a more holistic approach in understanding the existence or various concepts and entities that blend with each other to form "complete one". This is not possible through our present system of education that is based on differentiation and not on assimilation. Assimilation encourages a learner to apply various concepts to realize ones own existence and this encourages the learner to realize that differences only appear in physical existence and everything ultimately blends into one whole concept of existence beyond the physical one.

Our education system ignores the very organ of human anatomy which is vital for the very existence of the process called "Learning and Education"! It is the well developed human mental faculty which makes human realize the existence beyond the physical existence and try to understand existence beyond the faculty of senses. Unfortunately, our current education system believes in unraveling the mysteries of all that challenges the physical senses by analyzing the facts and deducing or inferring the cause and effect of anomalies that defy the logic of the senses.; so do the animals with less developed mental faculty, so are they not better equipped than us to physically exist by their natural instincts in their natural surroundings?

Let us take the example of Robinson Crusoe, who,when marooned on an island was able to easily identify with the surroundings and ultimately realized that his formal knowledge only helped him in his physical existence on the island and the act of his "Man Friday" to save him from the tribal on the island makes him aware of the "Metaphysical" existence, the identification beyond the physical identity, which we cannot derive by analyzing any concept or entity. Awareness of metaphysical existence is only possible through assimilation, which we, unfortunately do not have in our current education system.

Should we not give it a thought?

What Education Really means?

On a bright and sunny day, the six year old Shiuli jumped out of the school bus and ran into the arms of her Mother. She enthusiastically handed her Annual Report to her mother and said: “Mummy look, I will now go to class two (Standard/Level two of Primary School)! I am a big girl now!” Shiuli’s Mother kissed her and absorbed the contents of the Report Card. She looked at Shiuli and said, “Dear, you have stood second in your class, then who stood first in your class?” To this, Shiuli innocently replied, “Kakoli got No. One position, but Mummy, she has got only One while I have got Two and Madhavi has got Thirty, which is more than what I got, then why Teacher said that she cannot go to class two with us?”
Henceforth, it became an unwritten rule for Shiuli to mention her position in the class while handing her progress report to her Mother. It was yet another Final Examination Report declaration day and Shiuli was to collect report of her year-long progress in Sixth standard. She went to school with her friend Tulsi and her Mother. When Shiuli received her report card, she first checked was her rank in the class. She then hurried out of the school compound to find Tulsi’s Mother waiting for them, who smiled at Shiuli and took her in her arms. At this loving gesture Shiuli blurted out, “Mashi (Maternal Aunt), I have stood sixth in the class, I don’t know whether Mummy will be happy or not.” In reply Tulsi’s Mother held Shiuli close to her and reassuringly replied, “My dear daughter, you have cleared the exam and that’s all that matters, not the position you have attained in the class.”
While reminiscing her experience as a student Shiuli, who now is a mother of young girl herself, has these questions that she is still trying to answer: We are community beings but, does our marks and competition oriented education system help an individual to be fully aware of ones own potential and how to harness it to ones own benefit and that of the community? Is our education system geared up to prepare automatons and not enlightened individuals adequately prepared to co-exist in the society and not treat anyone and everyone as a contender one needs to compete with to improve ones own existence? Our Straight-jacketing form of education system begins the ordeal of tension and stress from our very childhood and the rat-race like existence that makes an individual prematurely burn out through undue stress and strain caused by the very misconception of “Struggle for Existence” and “Survival of the Fittest” within the community, when community animals like elephants, ants, lions et al have proved it wrong through their community existence where they co-exist and not out-perform each other within the community. Education system should be a prop or chains to fetter down an individual and smother his/her creative potential? Do the parents and teachers have to educate the children through comparative analysis and invariably fail to identify the true potential of a child?
Pramila Mohanty, who is a Computer Science Teacher in a High School in Orissa, narrated her experience as a teacher:
While helping the students of Class Nine and Ten with their Computer Project and Practical Evaluation as part of the Board Exams, she used to team them up with three students in each team. While teaming the students she used to keep above average, average and a slow learner in each team and make sure that none of them were good friends, so that it would be a chance for them to get to know each other too. She used to mark them on their intra-personal (within the team) and inter-personal (with other teams) skills and all the students were aware of it. The students were also aware of being graded on their performance, so the question of vying with each other for marks did not arise. The students were encouraged to pick up a topic for the computation project either from any of the subjects they were studying in school or from their everyday life or of any commercial scenario. No two teams could work on identical topics.
It was an external evaluation day for Class Ten students and just an hour before the arrival of the external Examiner, a team realised that it had lost the program code of its project it had saved on a computer system in the computer lab. Before Pramila could find a solution (of approaching the External Examiner, who had been handed over the floppy disk of the codes that were to be verified with the one in the computer systems allotted to the teams, and requesting for some more time to recover the code), all the students of the batch had already volunteered to type the code manually documented by the members of the team and then to compile it and hand it over to the team. The students achieved this herculean task within the hour of arrival of the Examiner!
Pramila too has the following questions in mind: Why do we have to have marks scoring system of education? Does it help us to know whether the one who has secured the highest marks in all the subjects has developed into a good human being too? We say that education means over all development of a human being but in the present system of education are we also giving due attention to the health (physical and mental) health of the students, their personality development? How well equipped is the education in developing the skill of an individual according to ones aptitude, that will eventually help one to develop into a successful professional? When will the education system help the parents to think out of the box and stop pressurizing their wards to become an engineer or a doctor, etc and allow her/him to pave their own path in life?

A Conscientious Voter

Any citizen of a country is responsible for its wellbeing and can eventually take care of it by conscientiously exercising ones voting rights to elect representatives for effective and progressive governance, reflecting the voters’ will and efforts to social progress and national development at large. To make this happen, every voter should (irrespective of origin, gender, religion, caste and creed):
· Freely and easily identify self with the nation as its citizen. Be proud of the identity.
· Be educated and literate with knowledge of the country’s Constitution.
· Be aware of Duties and Responsibilities as a citizen of the country as well as ones global responsibility too.
· Be aware of the Rights and Privileges as a citizen of the country.
· Be aware of the National Heritage and its resources (natural, infrastructural, cultural, financial, human, etc.) and above all the ecology.
· Be aware of the National Objective (not only in terms of own well being but that of the neighbours too, both nationally and globally) considering the previous point.
· Be aware of the ways of organizing and conducting effective governance to meet the national objective.
· Be aware of the political groups and their political agenda in terms of fulfilling the national objective.
· Be aware of the members of the political group and their credentials in terms of their personality traits, their qualification, their achievements in the past and how all this will help in achieving the national objective. Functional transparency followed by the political groups as national representatives.
· Above all, should be aware of the fact that self interest or any vested interest should not be above national interest, therefore both the integrity of the voter and the members of any political group is at stake in terms of commitment to national development as well as global harmony along with ecological balance.

Amiss

While recalling my life in M.E.S. College, Bangalore as a student of ‘B.A.’ Second year, I smiled to myself remembering my contesting the College Student Council elections in 1985. I am a shy individual, who is also an introvert and had a handful of friends in the college. It’d been a year since I had shifted from Calcutta to Bangalore but had not found it difficult making friends with my classmates. I had made friends with Anuradha Kanti, who was a year senior to me in the college and was behaviourally contrary to my rather passive demeanour. She had contested the Student Council Elections the previous year for the post of Lady General Secretary but had lost. This, year (1985), it was Election time again in the college.
In the college, the Student Council comprised of President, Vice President, General Secretary Boys and General Secretary for Girls [G.S.Girls] (Since it is a Co-education college) and all them were elected members of the Council. The students had to contest for the posts through student syndicates (aka parties) and not as independent candidates. This year too, as all the other years, syndicates were formed but one of the syndicates did not have a candidate to contest for the post of General Secretary Girls (G.S.Girls), therefore were not allowed to contest in the elections. There were only ten days to go (as the college allowed only 20 days to campaign for the elections) and I had Anuradha Kanti and two of my friends and class mates: Syeda Noor Asma and Anitha R.K. approach me to join the syndicate as contestant for the post of G.S.Girls. I was dumb founded as I had never even dreamt of participating in elections except as a voter. I asked for a day’s time to confer with my Grandmother and Maternal Uncle, who were my guardians, to decide on my joining the syndicate. My Grandmother was against it while my Uncle urged me to go ahead and experience contesting elections irrespective of the results. I told them that I had to pay Rs.160/- towards the promotional material expenses: pamphlets and banners and with their permission joined the syndicate the following day. While campaigning, I found that most of the students asked me whether I knew Kannada or not and what I had done for my classmates, to which I replied that I would learn the language if they would help me do so and also that I was not elected as Class representative to do anything for my classmates ~ following the axiom that “Honesty is the best Policy”.
On day three of my election campaign, which was day thirteen of general college syndicate election campaign, I found a small white cloth banner with the Words “ELECT AS G.SECRETARY-GIRLS” covering the length and breadth of the banner with the name (SUNIPA SEN) in blue just below it appearing as the atomic number of some chemical element or compound! This banner, which was strung to the branches of a tree opposite to the college main gate, too disappeared on the seventeenth day of election campaign. The pamphlet too had the name of the candidates of the syndicate at the bottom while three fourth of it was devoted to the manifesto. I was skeptical of even getting at least 9 votes as the promotional materials did not help in giving visibility to the candidates of the syndicates. There were three syndicates contesting and the other two syndicates were campaigning aggressively giving ample focus and visibility to the candidates.
The Election Day arrived and I was quite confident that all the members of our syndicate would get the least number of votes, but was amazed to find that we were the second in command as we lost to all the victors by an average margin of 25 to 30 votes and it was quite an achievement.
I thank my class mates, who elected me as the class representative to student council and the whole class made history by becoming the first to celebrate Kannada as well as English New Year. Go on two-day long excursion to Mysore and Ooty. Get fans and additional lights installed in the new classroom we occupied as students of BA final year. We were also the first batch to donate books to college library as part of our farewell ceremony.
I was reminded of all this while recalling my stint with TeamLease as Programme Coordinator when I was entrusted with the responsibility of organizing Job Fair at Jaipur in the year 2008, with Rajasthan Government’s department for Training and Employment. We had to organize the event for maximum 10,000 people within 10 days and with no prior experience in organizing such an event, we did manage to prepare ourselves with nearly 25 clients and 22 training companies to meet nearly 10,000 candidates during the daylong event; but to our amazement, we met more than 30,000 candidates on that day though we did not have adequate contingency plan to do so nor the required support from the State Government’s sponsoring department to manage such a surprising number of job aspirants, but we did it. We provided employment to nearly thousand candidates through the event. The Chief Minister Mrs. Vasundhara Raje too graced the occasion, as it was part of her election campaign and she too eventually lost the subsequent election and TeamLease too, in the meanwhile had organized its team of professionals with experience in event management to subsequently organize such events. What I learnt from both my experiences was, being a winner or being successful in a venture does not matter, but what really matters is you doing your bit to the best of your ability with all those who are with you and as long as it is being done for the benefit of everyone and not for any vested interest.