How & Why HR ? ! ? ! ?

This is a question that has been haunting me ever since I declared my MBA plans to my friends when I was working in my previous organisation... Nothing has changed even today and people still ask me this... Latest being Rajat who said today, “how can you study this kinda *#$# and why did you take HR!!’ So I thought let me pen down some of the reasons that made me choose HR as a specialisation. Now whatever I publish here is public so I will be a bit careful (as I am sure some of my colleagues and managers from office might read this someday :P ). Have just come after writing the 1st paper of the final trimester and discovered that the next paper isn’t very interesting too, so might as well do a bit of blogging...

Anyways, to begin with, if you consider my prior qualifications, then that certainly will make you ponder more why I am in this noble field ( I call it noble as no matter how much ever you work in HR, ops will never be satisfied and will claim “HR never works”.. just for the record, i have been in office for almost 12 hours a day for the past 3 weeks or so.. ). So after my SSC, I decided I needed to get into the earning mode asap; so my best bet was to do a course that would suffice to find a decent job. So I did my diploma in Digital Electronics (as I had my elder sis and a cousin having done the same were making good in those times) and did not care to study much in the final yr as I never had aspirations to do my graduation. Somehow got a 67% in the final year and merrily applied for a couple of jobs. The very 1st call I got, I was offered Rs. 2500/- as the monthly salary and was told that that was all they could pay me even though they knew I was worth more. After that one interview, I realised a degree was needed to make a decent living and hence decided to go for B.E. But then it was too late, I had not studied well enough and I could only get an admission in Pune. Due to some reasons, going to Pune was not an option for me so I decided to give the final yr exams another shot and this time I scored a decent 71%. Had I scored this the prev year; I would have got in to one of the better colleges in Mumbai, but as luck would have it, some quota system was introduced and lot of seats were eaten away in reservations. I had filled up a 100 colleges in the admission form, and luckily I got through to a college I had entered in the 96th position. So what if the college was in New Panvel - 2 hours of train travel from my home, I was not gonna give up. So then I joined Pillai’s to do my engg in electronics and the 3 years passed by. Luckily, got placed in Infosys on campus (from electronics to IT) and that was the turning point in my life. What followed was almost a dream come true with the Mysore training happening. It was a firsthand experience of paradise on earth.... Will skip the details here as I’m sure you are wondering where is the answer to “Why HR” in all this ;) .. so going forward, post training was posted to Bangalore, but luckily by God’s grace got an immediate swap to Pune and I could come home every weekends. It was an irony that I was in the same city which I had refused to go 4 years back but then destiny had its own plans. I was trained on Mainframes and was working on a project for a US healthcare major. The work was mostly related to maintenance and somehow neither did it interest me nor was I cut out for it. It was during my stint there that I took a fancy to the role of HR. The only set of people who were known as the face of the organisation to the outside world as well as the face of management to the employees and vice versa. Some people would argue that there is less intellect involved in that role but then I felt otherwise. However I also used to crib and complain abt HR while I was a soft ware engg. Now I never had a plan to do an MBA. The very fact that I wanted to start earning even after a diploma says it all. But then in order to make it big and save big time in IT, there is one phase that you need to undergo. People call it ”Onsite” and it is the most sought after thing ever since a graduate joins an IT company. Somehow, again due to some reasons, it was not an option for me and hence I was never attracted towards it. So I decided the job profile + the no-onsite thingy meant I had to look at something else. So then came the thought of an MBA and HR was the choice. Although I was big time into stock markets, I somehow despised finance and as you will find many HRs are, I too am a bit weak with number crunching.

Now come some of the other reasons that compelled me to take up HR. I am not exactly a social butterfly and you can even classify me as a kind of a loner. This was not what I wanted but somehow it is that way... So here was one way wherein I could interact with thousands of people including the top guys of a firm as well as the person working on the floor... I thought interacting with people and solving people issues would be much more interesting than interacting with a mainframe server and debugging 30 year old codes. Besides, I thought there would be greater satisfaction in making lives of people at work better at the same time contributing to the firm success in a different way. Now I know most finance and marketing people would jump saying they are the ones who bring in the moolah, but then we are the ones who bring them in!! And we are the ones who ensure that their lives are made simpler... essentially being the support system of the organisation. Now you may call it “just a support system” or “An important and strategic support system”.. thats a perspective which is debatable. Attracting, nurturing and retaining talent can be as important as bidding, winning and servicing a client contract.... Having just entered the role, I am sure I am missing out many other things about this cool role and I will definitely get back to this post as and when I find more... but ya.. one thing that I always hear from my friends is that the only cool thing they find about HR is the ladies :P ... well... no arguments on that, but then I guess you do need some respite from the constant criticism and pressure from the ops and so you do have the ladies who are high on EQ and at times GQ (Glamour Quotient if I may coin it that way) but then as goes the old saying... there are 2 sides of every coin.. wouldnt talk about the other side here as most of my classmates and colleagues are of the fairer sex and I don’t want to be bashed up in college or office.... Chalo time to wind up this post as the PDFs and PPTs on Knowledge Management are waiting for me and I gotta pump in some gas into my system to let it off in the paper tomorrow... Adios!

Jaago Grahak Jaago?? ;)

Yesterday evening when i came back from office, Mom said the geyser had stopped working! Now that was scary news for me as i just cant bathe in cold water!! But there was no way i cud have got an electrician at that hour and hence decided will call one the next morning. In the mean time, being an electronics engg, and having that curiosity to open up any electrical/electronic gadget i get to, i thought i'll give it a try and see of i can replace it. ( Normally i am the in-house electrical consultant cum toilet flush consultant cum electrician cum repairman that my mom has! ) So i took a screw driver in hand and went about opening my main board as the main switch appeared to be the problem. After 2 screws and a close look at the high voltage area i decided it would be better managing Human Resources than managing 240 Volts of electricity, that too at a place where one goof up could blow up all the circuits of my home. So then i gave it up.
Today morning somehow i gathered courage and poured a bucket of cold water on my body, followed by a second one and slowly managed to take a quick and shivering bath! Then i called up an electrician and he told me he will be there later. So i told mom about it and left for college where i was eager to attend the HR Faculty feedback session! On my way to college, me being a rash rider, i managed to run over an area on the road which was almost a bed of nails! So i managed to get one in my tyre and voila! had my 2nd puncture in as many months :|. Some how managed to drag the bike to a mechanic and got my tyre tube replaced. The cost when i enquired was 200 bucks! Now only last month i had got it done for 170 bucks! Now my frnds know how cranky i am when comes to being overcharged! So i tried to argue but then the mechanic managed to get the 200 out of me after lot of arguments. I had no MRP to look at so i could not argue much and so i gave it up as i had already missed the college session and din wanna be late to office.
When i come back home later in the day, i am glad to see a new switch that was fit to solve the geyser matter. I asked mom what was the charge and how much he took for the spare part and the service. So mom said its Rs. 150! 110 for the switch and 40 for the Majuri ( as they say ). Now its understood that these fellows, be it electricians, service guys, mechanics or whoever, they try to overcharge you and specially when they see a lady they know they can overcharge for electrical stuff! So i asked mom for the empty box which contained the replacement switch, and as expected, the MRP tag was scratched off! Now after having faced a similar situation in the morning this put me off! So i took the box and hurried to a shop to enquire about its MRP. As expected, it was not 110 but Rs. 70. So then i went to the shop from where the electrician had come and got an opportunity to let my steam off! ( Its no secret that i only need a small trigger to verbally blast people :P ) So after a lot of arguments and calls to that electrician finally the shop owner gave in and told me that they sold it for 85 and hence they can only gimme Rs. 25/- as refund for the switch!
The whole episode reminded me of the regular "Jaago Grahak Jaago" ads that keep coming on the TV and i handed over that 25 bucks to my mom as if i had won 25,000/- from somewhere!

But the moral of the story, no matter how much my frnds call me a miser, but i always say that its not that and its more about value for money and about not being cheated! In the past many times it has happened that a ppl have overcharged me, or more so when mom's alone as ladies are soft targets for these thugs and they get away with it. The matter is not of Rs. 25/- but teaching the guy a lesson and trying to do your bit to do away with such practices. I am sure next time that electrician will think twice before overcharging. I know that its nothing great that i've done, but what the hell.....