The Perils of a Summer Job - The Training

The training was to go on for a week. And man what a week it was going to be!

On the very first day we got a glimpse of what was to come. The training was taken by people who were supposedly Businees Analysts. But they did not know a thing about what they were speaking. The Powerpoint presentation were also dull and boring. I have made Powerpoint presentations a thousand times better than those in a few hours (that does not mean I am great at making Powerpoint presentations it is just that I never spend more than a few hours on any presentation). In the whole of the presentation there was only one guy (Mr. X) who knew what he was talking. All the others had a great strategy, they just kept on saying that "Mr. X would be the right person to answer your questions". They say that summer jobs help you learn a lot. And in that very moment I learnt my first lesson: That whenever during any presentation (in the class or later on in the corporate world) when you dont have an answer to any question just point to one of your collegaues and say that he/she would be the right person to answer that question (this is a hint to all people who are going to be in my project group next year, please beware as I might just pass the buck on you whenever a difficult question is asked).

The whole NMIMS or rather now NMHIMS group conviniently took up the last row of seats as we were pretty smart as comapred to others and realzied pretty early on about the futility of training. The others were slow to realize that and by the time they realized it we had already stamped our authority on the last row of seats and no one dared to sit there.

Best part of the training was on a day when 3 members of the firm gave a presentatiion at the same time. One (Mr. X) started the presentation and briskly moved through his part. Then Ms. Y came and gave or rather tried to give a presentation, but could not say a single word as she did not know much. So Mr. X had to take over her part and again briskly moved through that part of the presentation. And then came the Amitabh Bacchan of the firm. The man who just knew absolutely how to give a presentation without any one realizing that he was actually giving a presentation. He also did not know anything at all. But he used the classic strategy of what I now call 'Speak to the Laptop screen in a monotonous murmur so that no one understands what you are saying and hence cant ask any questions' strategy! I have never seen a person who has been so obssessed with the laptop screen. It was as if he was enamoured by its presence and was so dumb founded that he could not speak. We asked him to be a little louder but he understood our intentions and still stuck with his strategy of looking at the laptop screen and babling something in Scandanavian! That was my second lesson learnt: No matter how much others try to understand what you are trying to speak if you are not sure of what you are saying that keep speaking in a monotonous, hypnotic tone so that everyone falls asleep!

After such an enlightning and a stimulating one week of training all we could think about was to go out there and start the project! That was the thrid lesson: When you want your sales and marketing people to be on the field instead of motivating them to go out and acheive targets (like Dessler says in his HRM book) the easier way is to just make them hate your organization so much that they would just look forward to be on the field and not come back to office. That way you dont need to motivate them again and again to go out there, they themsleves will be internally motivated to stay out there and work!

So now was the time that we needed to go out and prove ourselves. And thats what we exactly did. The actual project and our first week of cleint meetings in the next section: The Perils of a Summer Job - The First Week of Actual Project

OM MBAYAH NAMAH!