Starting Conversations, Building Network

Finding a job in Singapore is not easy. Market dynamics are different and things are not easy if you have come to Singapore for employment. Personally, I have witnessed few people coming here, spending time finding a job and then finally returning to their home country. Have seen many NUS MBA students passing through the same rigorous process. I have gone through this process myself at Singapore as well and do believe that perseverance will pay, however you need to gain the art of conversing with others and building your network in order to reach where you want to be. There had been many weaknesses I learned about over a period of time though I now feel a little content that I have become better at tackling few things that I was completely fearful about during and after my MBA time.

People say that the most important aspect one learns in a MBA program is Art of Networking. “How do you come across as a personality to other people, how do you sell yourself in a job event, how do you make an interesting conversation that could lead you to where you want to be”. These things are exceedingly important in one’s career as he/she will be evaluated more and more on personality aspects rather than technical aspects as one gains experience. And I was not good at this at all the time I joined my MBA school. I, definitely, was not one of those who can get along with anybody in minutes, actually far from that. I was not confident of speaking in public, I had problems continuing (or even starting) a conversation on anything, etc to name a few. Furthermore, my career experience post undergraduation after IIT Bombay was in a technical domain, as a software developer, which is more like an inward job where one gets evaluated more on technical skills than anything else, and does not expose much to interacting with customers often. Moreover, getting a job in IIT does not inculcate that very skill which is so much needed in a career growth. IIT students are given a silver spoon and companies line up to get the best available student, unlike any other university in world where students understand from very start that they need to sell themselves to a prospective employer.

Finding a Job

I have been contacted by many NUS graduates for some time now for advice on career in Singapore, finding about how job market works and others. And more often than not, I feel that students today are lacking the key abilities to position themselves in front of recruiters. I, during my MBA, also committed same mistakes and had a tough time to find a job where I fit well. I did commit serious mistakes, such as - I had more or less same resume floating everywhere for different kinds of job roles, I gave just one read to understand the job requirement, and many others.

Having met few candidates earlier, I see same issues again this and, hence, this is my attempt to explain -

• how important it is to understand a job description
• how important it is to position and up sell yourself according to the job requirement
• how important it is to network with industry people and alumni

I believe I can explain all the above points through a small story, which is quite powerful. I had attempted this on few candidates earlier and found same answers from everybody.

Click on Read More link below.

What To Expect After Your MBA/MS?

I went through this interesting post on financial Times today.


One paragraph enlightens that employers in Europe look for previous experience while hiring MBA graduates. I'm pretty sure that the statement is valid if you replace Europe by Singapore (may be South East Asia?) This is what I had faced exactly during my time at NUS Business Business School pursuing my master. Singapore is a selling market, which leaves very little ambition for companies to train their employees post hiring. Every sales manager bonus is dependent on the performance of his/her teammates and, therefore, who would not be willing to give a chance to a brilliant scholar from a prestigious school to do sales or marketing?

Things have changed drastically in last 4-5 years and getting jobs in a mature market (until or unless you have the relevant experience) is very very challenging. Indians who are looking to pursue higher studies in any market (other than India as I'm not sure whats happening there) should definitely find out about their post-graduation interest before taking the jump. Talk to as many people as possible and form a view about what to expect in your targeted market. Else the frustration can just kill you.

It is not the 2005-2007 time any more.

Singapore - Selling Market

Having stayed in Singapore for close to two years now, I have pretty much good idea on what skills and talent can one sell in Singapore with respect to IT companies. This post is coming out after researching (and further meeting/ chatting) a lot of profiles on LinkedIn. Almost all US MNCs will have regional hub here. So, here is my observation:

Lets Talk

Remember the movie 12 Angry Men, or the Indianized version Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, where 11 of the 12 jurors hurriedly agreed that the convicted boy killed his father and, hence, should be awarded the punishment. Only one of them wasn't sure and in his response he asked all others to talk.

I saw this movie long time back, however, I got to understand the meaning of the whole movie around 10 days back. This, again, is with respect to my dilemma over choosing NUS or ISB for MBA. In this case, I was mimicking the 12th juror and wanted to talk about pros and cons of each institute and, finally, arrive at the conclusion. In the process, I talked to close to 15 people that really made me help taking a thoughtful/fantastically analyzed decision. And now almost everyone I talk to agrees with my reasoning. This was exactly the case in both movies as well.

Now, whenever I'll be confused, I just have to make sure that I go out, meet people and say: 'Lets Talk'.

My First Management Lesson

I got to learn my first management lesson from my elder cousin brother, Sachin, when I was in a huge dilemma over finalizing NUS or ISB for my MBA. When ISB result was declared on Feb 10th, I had a mixed feeling as I had admit from NUS as well. I called up Sachin's elder brother, Nitin, who is working in Shell (Hague, Netherlands). We decided to have a conference call in the night. After that I called up Sachin and told him to attend the conference. He agreed. Then he asked me what is Nitin suggesting. I told him that he would place his bet on NUS.

Around 11PM we started the conference. Nitin preferred NUS and Sachin ISB. In the middle, I was analyzing their opinion. After approx 40 minutes, having discussed a lot we departed. It was an inconclusive talk. I knew I had to research more to make a decision. For next 2 days, I talked to ISB alums/students and made up my mind to go to ISB. I called up Sachin and told him about my position. He sounded amused at my decision. I told him that even you preferred ISB that day. He laughed and told me that he asked about what Nitin is inclined at only because he could take the other side and represent ISB. Otherwise, there was nothing to discuss in the call. Both of us would be talking about NUS and I would have got influenced by a biased conference call. He then told me that he also thinks that NUS is a much better destination at these circumstances. I, then, told him that I've only talked to ISB's alum/student for last two days. He quickly pointed me that this is because I've heard only one side of the story. He asked me to talk to people representing NUS.

I talked to many NUS folks then and finally I'm headed to NUS. During these 4-5 days, I got to learn my first Management Lesson (thanks to Sachin brother): "It is important to have views from all sides while discussing a strategy/case. If not, then your final result/decision is biased."

MBA Journey - Part 1

My journey to get into an MBA college has finally ended. I applied to 3 universities: Kellogg, ISB and NUS, this year and got admits from NUS and ISB. Earlier Kellogg gave me a false admit. It was a tough decision to choose NUS over ISB, but, after talking to so many people choosing NUS seemed to be more strategic.

In this post, I'll just discuss about my preparation for the GMAT exam.

Well, to be frank, my journey to MBA started during my last semester in IIT Bombay. My elder brother, an IIM Bangalore Alumnus, preferred to do a foreign MBA over an Indian MBA and, hence, guided me to prepare for GMAT examination. He told me to take the exam before graduating from IIT because the score remains valid for 5 years and, hence, makes sense to take the exam before getting into the corporate world. I did a one month preparation and scored just 660. I was kinda happy because I targeted 650 and I heard that above 650 is a good score. But, once I entered the job market I realized that at least 700 is a must to apply in good colleges. I was in no mood to take the exam then, so deferred it. But, importantly, I made a conscious effort to read articles, editorials seriously to improvise my grammar. I did that for almost 3 years. Truly speaking, learning grammar is a fun. There are rules, so if you know them it becomes a cake walk to spot a mistake.

Then after 2 years, ie in 2006, after making a trip to California I decided to prepare for GMAT seriously. During this time, one of my very good friend, Dhruv Garg, took the exam and scored 760. I took complete advantage of him and discussed strategies to click the score. One of most important ones I remember is to take the date when one is half done with the course. Mostly people take the date first and then start preparing. Bad Idea. What one should do is familiarize oneself with the course, take some practice tests and identify how much time is needed to be completely fit for the exam. With this intention, I prepared for at least one month and then took the date keeping in mind about the limited time I had for studies. Another strategy we discussed was to never take Kaplan tests. Standard of Kaplan test is way higher than the actual GMAT standard. So, why bug yourself with difficult questions. Kaplan acts as a de-motivator.

When I started, I felt quite comfortable in solving sentence correction and critical reasoning questions. I had some serious trouble with reading comprehension. I was scoring reasonably well in stars, biological related comprehensions, however, when it came to philosophy, humanities related comprehension I was getting screwed big time. So, I discussed this problem with my friend Dhruv and he suggested me to change my strategy to answer such types of comprehensions. I tried several strategies such as writing a line about what has happened in a particular para, writing only keywords (such as however, therefore, but etc.), reading the question first and then reading the comprehension, etc. The one that really worked was writing the keywords. Writing these keywords helped me understand the tone of the paragraph.

I never spend too much time on Maths. For essay writing, I understood the basics from Official guide to GMAT and gave one week time of preparation. I referred to following books/materials for preparation:
1. Official Guide to GMAT
2. Manhattan Sentence Correction (Awesome Book)
3. 1000 questions on Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension, Critical Reasoning (search on net)
4. ETS and PowerPrep Tests (I scored 720 and 740 in 2 ETS tests)

This was my strategy to crack GMAT and in the end it worked out pretty well. Scoring 750 and 5.5 (essays) was something I never thought of, but then while I was writing the test I got the feeling that I would score more than 700.