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Soft Skiils
Reading between the lines
Anand Chatterjee gives valuable tips on how to understand
the unspoken truths about a company and the job role while being interviewed
 I
have been part of the IT and consulting industry for quite some time now. Over
the years I have attended numerous interviews as well as conducted a number
of them. Having matured in this industry it is interesting to see a pattern
often emerging in most of these interviews. Today, I often have a hunch and
sometimes a strong premonition of what the next question will be or the answer
to a certain question will be. In this article I will try to explore some of
the most predictable answers, which sound like cliché.
- We have a strong and long pipeline of projects:
The pipeline always is strong and as long that anything never seems to come
out of it. Jokes apart if one ever ends up asking what project one is expected
to get into. The most likely answer will be that projects and clients are
confidential and hence cannot be disclosed or that the project pipeline is
so strong that projects are just waiting to be grabbed up the moment one joins.
There is a small and tricky calculation why pipeline of most
of the companies look strong. For example if a Request for Proposal (RFP) worth
a million dollars is released in the market. That very moment it appears in
the pipeline of at least ten companies who would be vying for it. Each of these
ten companies would claim their chances of winning the contract being the brightest.
Thus the golden rule is don’t count your chickens before they hatch. So
the moment you hear that the pipeline is strong, consider that it may not be
worth the paper they are written on. Bidding cycles of some of the projects
almost stretch for two years. For these two years they would be adding to the
pipeline a number of projects.
- We offer a good balance between work and personal life:
If any organization is claiming that it offers a good balance between
work and personal life, please take it with a pinch of salt. In this fiercely
competitive world and projects experiencing shrinking margins (rising rupee
value is doing no good to the project profitability margins) very few organizations
can claim that any meaningfully engaged person on a good project can claim
to have a good balance between work and personal life.
 So
most probably you will either end up adding to the bench strength or will end
up solving a few tickets (problem reports) on a maintenance project. A long
gestation maintenance project is the bread and butter for most IT organizations.
Hence most IT consultants end up working on such projects, which are not very
demanding in nature, and thus one can have a good balance in one’s life.
So gone are the days of working eight hours a day and five days a week.
- If you are looking for money we are not the organization
to look for; we offer good work: One often hears this the moment the selection
process enters the compensation negotiation round. The fact is if you have
good skills and the organization knows it can put you on high margin projects
they would be willing to pay you unforeseen amounts. On the other hand, if
you are being recruited to add to the team strength (sometimes just achieving
some KPI, like some managers have a target to achieve on team strength) or
being recruited for low margin maintenance project then you are just a commodity
and not a valuable resource for the organization.
What is my growth path and future role going to be? It is good that you have
asked that question. This organization offers a variety of options. You can
choose a role and a work according to your potential: Read it as, ‘I don’t
know how you will grow and what your future is going to be.’ The reality
is that most managers when they recruit they don’t have a horizon of more
than six months to a year. With an attrition rate of more than 15% and an average
tenure of an IT professional in an organization being two to three years, most
of the managers don’t even waste time on these pestering and inconclusive
issues. Most often they themselves don’t know if they would be there in
the next appraisal cycle to answer your hard biting questions. Also managers
try to follow the eternal truth that most of the issues die their own natural
death and it is best not to face them upfront.
- Join us immediately: ‘We not willing to wait
for the two or three months notice period you have to serve. We have immediate
projects and we can’t wait that long.’ If one hears these statements
but sees no urgency in the recruitment process i.e. between each round of
interview there was a gap of couple of weeks then most likely there is no
urgency. Most of the time organizations are not willing to wait just because
they don’t want to give you the time to hunt for other options or the
time to think much or do a background inquiry with your friends of what is
the actual reality of the work and projects.
This article is not meant to make one cynical and pessimistic.
It tries to offer a pragmatic view of the hard reality of the IT and ITeS sector.
Hence the next time you appear for an interview and you hear any of the above-mentioned
statements please weigh your options carefully before taking a decision. Of
course, don’t try to read too much between the lines in an interview as
then you may end up in not having any offers. Any change of job has its own
set of uncertainties and risks associated with it. There are no perfect answers
to most of the questions that we as candidates have. Answers often unfold as
time passes by and time and experience is the best teacher.
The views expressed in the article are that of the
author and do not represent the views of his organization.
Anand Chatterjee is working as a Consultant with a software
MNC. An alumnus of IIM, Calcutta, he can be contacted at ‘anandc2002@email.iimcal.ac.in’
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