A Great Receptionist

Recently, I visited an Indian MNC office, who is supposed to be one of the biggest IT players of India across the World. I simply went to the receptionist of that office and asked for Mr. XYZ, a dear friend of mine. Surprisingly, I was asked a very strange question from the other side of the table. The receptionist asked “In which group, Mr. XYZ is working”? I said that I don’t know. I was surprised about how come an outsider knows about which group his friend is working. Anyways, I got one more response from receptionist saying “You should ask about Mr. XYZ in other office premise of our company which is located at ABC location”.

I asked again about one more known person of mine working in the same company. She again asked the same – “In which group ...........” Finally, I raised my voice asked her the question “Please tell me one thing. How come I aware about the group names of your organizations?” In respond, I got an answer which gave me some thought food about that company’s policies. The answer was “Sir, we are not supposed to tell anything about any employee of this organization unless and until the visitor is aware of the group name of that person”. I countered attack that lady asking how come this is possible for a visitor to know about the same. She said “I don’t know”.

Finally, I came back without even meeting with any of the persons whom I want to meet.

Still thinking what was there in the back of the mind of policy makers which redirected that receptionist to act like that.

Sanat Sharma

You are destined to be an entrepreneur !!!!!!!

Recently, I have gone through an objective exam on the internet which claims to be an Entrepreneur Readiness Assessment. I answered those questions as per my capabilities and got the following assessment:

You are destined to be an entrepreneur!
You love to tackle a new enterprise, venture or idea, and are willing to assume responsibility and accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. You see yourself as an ambitious leader whose dream is to combine labor and capital to create and market new goods or services.
You recognize that entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, resulting in a high risk of failure, but this is only more energizing to you. You long to be a business founder, and create value by offering a new product or service, and by carving out a niche in the market that may not exist currently. Your preferred approach is to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organizing resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.
Observers see you as being willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue opportunity. You probably dream of yourself in the category of some well-known names, including such people as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates. You tend to look at problems, and see them as opportunities.
If you work for another company today, you probably also feel that your ambition is being held in check by corporate red tape and incompetent management. You are driven not so much by the need to make money, but by the need to make your dreams a reality. Money is a byproduct of this motivation rather than the motivation itself.
You are a participant, not an observer or a fan. Generally, you are an optimist, and believe that with the right amount of time and money, you can do anything. So go for it!

I don't know how much true the assessment is?

Let's hope for the best.

Sanat Sharma

Resume Jokes

Now days, I am going through numerous CVs for some of the openings for my organization as well as for some of my clients for consultants job. I am encountering many jokes in the resumes of the candidates which I am going to summarize here.

1. I got one CV of a professional having 3 years of work experience in Telecom domain. He had mentioned something very cute in his “Personal Details” section. He had mentioned his “Marital Status” as “Never Married”.
2. One of the CV had mentioned the passport status as “Police Verification Stage”. The resume was of a fresher.
3. Passport status on of one CV, I have seen, was “will be applied next week”.
4. One CV stated career objectives as “To become a successful professional in the Industry”. The CV was having an experience of 2 years.
5. On one of the CV, address was mentioned without any Indian state name.
6. “References” – “If required” was also very funny.
7. “Career Objectives” – “I am a quick learner” was also cool.

Most of the CVs are nothing but itself a joke. In case of fresher’s, project on which those guys have worked in their college as a part of course curriculum, is like a big question mark for them. 90% of the fresher’s were not able to even present their project for 15 seconds. I don’t know what they have done in their engineering.

As far as experienced professionals are concern, 50% of the CV holders are not able to describe 50% of the technologies that they have mentioned in their respective CVs. A very funny answer in that case is “I studied it a lot but never implemented it” or “I need to brush up the fundamentals”. Even if I ask a basic question about any mentioned technology in their CV, the answer would be same.

Using this blog forum, I would like to say all my readers that you should mention only that stuff in the CV which you have actually worked upon practically. This will make your life easy in the interviews.

Sanat Sharma
www.xtremeedge.in