In Search of an Ideal Job !!!!

Hoping that a Masters Degree in Information Technology (Trust me I wasn’t sure if I really deserved one) from a reputed so called T-school would kick off my career which it ‘almost’ did.

However I must admit that inspite of being a Post-Graduate I was as confused as ever, infact even more confused than I was after Graduation.

I was lost among a whole bunch of professionals who call themselves IT Consultants, Information Security Consultants, and Project Managers. With due respect to them, and to be honest to myself I felt I didn’t deserved to be one among them.

May be I was right, I ended up being a Engineer in a Network Operations Center in an MNC BPO, working for the Americans who are not quite as bigoted towards Asians particularly Indians as we normally imagine or they are projected by the Oscar nominated movies.

Oh yes, this blog was supposed to define an ideal job which never exists in reality, and about an Individual who leaves behind a job in MNC BPO which is a 10 minute drive from his home, and ends up in a city 1000 miles away to join a small company which most people would not have heard off, or would never hear in the near future, all this neither for monetary benefits, nor for career growth, but in search of an ideal job. Yes how foolish can one be ?

Yes an ideal job is a paradox, but since I have started to define, let me make an attempt without focusing on the end result.

1) QoW: Quality of Work, Learning, value addition are terms that seem that you often hear from college pass outs, very few carry the zeal forward into their later stages of the career. Yes, Monday Mornings are tough, they get tougher when you end up doing repetitive, non challenging, meaningless work, or sometimes no work at all, I sometime wonder how my mom and dad never got tired of doing the same work for over 3 decades, without cribbing !!!

2) Family Support : I often think about people from cities like Chandigarh, Patna, Bhilai, Luckhnow work in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Banaglore, Hyderabad, I bet they wouldn’t want to go to Chennai. But for most of them going back home would be a distant dream, yes after-all who doesn’t want to go home at 6:00 in the evening and have the home made delicacies. I have seen people sacrifice almost everything just for a job in their hometown, yes but if I was back in my hometown, I wouldn’t have been writing this blog.

3) Social Life: Ever Since the concept of MNC BPOs came into existence, I catch up my friends only through Instant Messengers & Social Networking portals for the fear of calling them during the wrong time of the day/night. Yes a 9-5 job 5 days a week remains a distant dream.

4) Repect: Yes Respect for who you are in the organization, and respect for the work you do. A Software company respects its Software Engineers, and a BPO respects its Call Taking Agents, a Networking company respects Networking Engineers, don’t make the mistake of joining Software Company as a Network Engineer or Vice-Versa, you would never be considered as a revenue generator.

You don’t expect appreciation from the CEO of the company for every project I complete, but a little appreciation from your immediate manager would cheer you up, and makes you responsible, which most of you would agree.

5) Monetary benefits: Yes Money is not everything, but it is definitely something that the world goes crazy about. Yes it may not be able to give you the respect you deserve, or bring your family closer, or give you work satisfaction, but most of you would accept it as a substitute for the rest.

Yes, Just 5 factors would be an ideal definition for an ideal job, a 5/5 doesn’t exist, you should call yourself lucky if you have a 4/5 job, and shouldn’t be cribbing if you have a 3/5 job, and crib and let life pass by if you have 2/5 job, and probably use timesjobs.com, monster.com if you have a 1/5 job.

Yes, I am the Idiot (according to many) who probably had a 0/5 job and has come in search of this ideal job.

But to be honest, I never could have even imagined that my first job would last for 10 months, considering my mom and dad haven’t switched companies for the past 25 years.

Yes the last 10 months have been the toughest, Swapping shifts twice or thrice a week, working on the weekends, working on Indian Holidays, working on American holidays, getting tinkered by your manager, working on excel sheets filling up useless data, and earning half of what my best friend in college is now earning HURTS !!!!

So having come a long way, the biggest lesson life has taught me is very simple one

My Ideal job is how ‘I deal’ with it !!!!