The Corporate Gratification

Instant and Long Term Gratification in Career ---- The Indian View

How many of us do encourage our children to take up careers which can enrich them rather than give them instant gratifications?. In our generation we had been literally running behind corporate jobs.

Why is this ? Why did we not wait and prepare ourselves to enter into research centers like ISRO , DRDO , CLRI  or CSIR ?

The reasons are complex :
One of the main reasons is such institutions are mainly funded by the government  and the government has a reputation of being infamous because of its bureaucracy and lack of transparency.
So we don't want to get into this red tape and opt out of all this.

The other could be that we have conditioned ourselves to get into this trap of getting money instantly , being recognized quickly , climbing the management ladder swiftly , umpteen number of international travels etc etc. All of this looks rosy and appealing to the most of us.

For the start it is all fine. But 10 years into the corporate life you are choked with all the so called goodies around you that you have lost yourself  and have literally started behaving like a robot conditioned to work only in a particular way.

It is not only about jobs in research centers as far as the Indian mindset is concerned very few parents encourage their children to pursue studies like Investigative Journalism or Criminial Law.I have seen people who argue that even the branches of study in medicene like Podiatrist or Endocrinologist are not so sought after because you can't instantly start earning money from them.

There are many ways to look at it. One is that we should not repeat what our parents did. They just encouraged us to find something which can only give you instant gratification.(One of the many reasons could be that they all come from a lower middle class background and would concentrate on their children settling down as early as possible with an own house and a car).

We as parents of the next generation should not only allow our kids to pursue their passion which not only means to let them take up art /sports as their career but also educate them on what could actually fetch them a full fledged completely gratifying career like working in a research center like CSIR or probably by properly understanding the Criminal Law to become a Supreme Court Judge...........

How Professional are we?

Have the present day educational institutions really gone far away from the actual concept of grooming people into responsible citizens and have really become concrete jungles where from  any one and everyone can walk in , read a few books ( so to speak a pretty much a 'reto' way of memorizing facts) and walk out with a degree certificate?

Well on the one hand while this whole concept of machinery approach to churning out professionals has created a huge Unemployability problem in the present day job market on the other hand these so called professionals lack the knowledge of even basic workplace etiquette.

Candidates from such grossly flawed system severely lack basic analytical skills (I am a Training Head in a Placement Consulting Company where I get to meet Electrical Engineers who cant even articulate Ohm's Law properly) , aptitude (I came across a candidate who didn't know to post comments in a blog , well after repeated coaching she really didn't have the aptitude to learn) , severely lack communication skills (Candidates who cannot speak few sentences continuously in English despite their medium of instruction having been English in School/College).

To a great extent the above scenarios weigh very less when we think of qualified people not following basic etiquette outside of their home. Right from the point on how you greet your interviewer to the point that how you have to politely reject the job that is offered to you .

While all these institutions who want to boast of conducting Personality Development Programmes (the College or School in particular) for their students should really be responsible enough coach them in basic etiquette outside of their home. How to greet a person in your workplace , How to articulate your salary expectations in a polite manner , How to reject your job offer in an assertive manner , How to engage with your colleagues in a mutually beneficial manner etc.

All these indeed are really going to groom them into a wholesome person , with a compatible personality traits and also into responsible citizens despite their so called academic/communicative / economic shortcomings.