“Nazia! If you feel uncomfortable and unsure as to what’s happening around you, remember you are in the right place and doing absolutely fine. Feeling overwhelmed is fine as long as you are making an effort to learn.” These were the parting words to me from Shruthi Bopaiah, when I left for US for a consulting assignment recently.
It was a BA role which required certain level of HR domain expertise and involved working directly with the client. It was a recruitment based tool, that my company was developing for the client. And it was a billable project. For the first time in my career, I was not an overhead but I earned revenues for my company. Although it was a heady feeling which came with lot of expectations and apprehensions from my side, I was up for the challenge. Not being from a technical background and getting exposed to Agile development jargons, extensive self-learning and making sense of the task in hand, so that I could add value to the client was what I continuous strived for. All this made my consulting journey extremely exciting and challenging. I think, my learning curve was at the peak in last few months during this assignment, if I look back at my almost 9 years career span at Infy.
Another beautiful aspect of such assignments, is the exposure one gets by traveling to a new place, meeting new people, learning about a new culture and how to adjust and enjoy all these. One of my friends, who is all set to travel to a different country was asking me, couple of days back, about my first assignment to US. She was interested to know, if I was feeling apprehensive and scared about traveling all by myself to an alien country. Strangely, I never felt any kind of fear, even for an instant during my first trip. I had it in my mind, that its just another country, same humans though! Work would be little bit different, but again, dealing with employees who are part of Infy family after all. That level of assurance and comfort was always there in my mind. Second trip was like, returning home! Because, of the number of friends I made during the first trip.
On personal side, if I think about my biggest learning being in US, was the life skills that I learned! Most importantly, cooking! I don’t boast that I became a Masterchef, but yes, I can survive anywhere now. There are a plethora of examples, of when I was touched by the kindness and generosity of strangers in that strange land and I hold those memories very close to my heart. One particular incident really stands out in my memory. It was day 2 for me in USA. I was supposed to go for my I9 appointment to some office in the city. I could not book a cab due to some issues. I was at the reception of my hotel, looking all worried due to this reason. The owner of the hotel came up to me and started chatting. After getting to know the cause of my worry, he kindly offered to take me to the I9 office in his car, waited for 20 mins till I completed all the formalities and then dropped me at my Infy Office. I was truly grateful to this stranger, for the kind gesture. Its because of incidents like this that, one starts to believe about the existence of humanity after all.
Now, coming to the professional front. I have always believed that a manager’s role is extremely critical when it comes to designing the career path for an individual. We keep on hearing from all possible sources that a career is an individual’s responsibility, but I beg to differ. I feel, a manager’s guidance and insight is what actually makes a difference. While it is upto the individual to make things happen, without the managers mentoring and gentle prodding towards the right path, the individual would be like a rudderless boat in a stormy ocean. And I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been blessed with such mentors at work.
I started my career as a part of Employee relations team in Bhubaneswar DC. 3 years down the line, my manager who also happened to be my mentor, told me that I need to explore the Business Partner HR role. After almost 3 years as BP HR, I took up Geo HR role in USA for 18 months and once back I moved on to take up Account HR Partner role. While in the AHRP role, I was selected for the HR consulting assignment. So I got the opportunity to delve into 4 diverse roles in 9 years, hence the learning has been tremendous to say the least.
Was doing some research on net and found out that one of the top most reasons for “Hipot” attrition with a work exp of 8 to 10 years is the learning graph hitting a plateau. Rest assured, this can never be a reason for my attrition!
You must have heard of the common adage, “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” One has to constantly move out of one’s comfort zone and try out unchartered waters to learn and grow. Change is scary I agree, and trying out anything new makes you feel flustered and confused, but that’s when you are actually doing something worthwhile. So never be afraid of challenges and the unknown path ahead! Feel glad and proud that you made it through!! Be a game-changer, it’s ok to be overwhelmed, its fine to try out new and interesting things, because after all, it’s the crazy-ones who change the world!
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