Campus to Corporate: Boss & Me

Students are struggling to find the right jobs and Industry is complaining over the lack of talent. Isn’t this strange? The real problem is that the education system is building the theoretical foundation in campus but it takes a lot more to become Corporate ready. I will be covering the key areas through a series of articles on this topic. Here are the 7 key areas:

1)???Know Your Company (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/campus-corporate-17-ankit-bhargava/?trackingId=zSfrgGvDR66gf26CQjCASw%3D%3D)

2)???Acquire Domain skills (https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/ankitbhargava1_learning-career-development-activity-7063726850446884864-xoIb?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop)

3)???Soft Skills are a must

4)???Boss & Me

5)???Socialize to capitalize

6)???Dressing as a tool

7)???Know the Strict No

Today we are going to cover “Boss & Me”

In continuation with my previous article on what it takes to make a successful transition from Campus to Corporate i.e. Managing your Boss. There are a few important areas of this aspect.

Understand Your Boss’s Work Passion:?Every Person is driven by a passion especially in senior management else they generally don’t reach the top. Decoding what drives your boss is the first step towards understanding how he / she got to the senior position. It’s a good indicator of what the organization looks for while deciding who to provide long term growth to. Some organizations prefer workaholics, some are sales first, some are Operations first, some are process driven while others are innovation driven. It will also help you to decide the duration of your stint with the organization.?

Be the “Go To” person: Don’t be a Yes Man but be the person who your Boss makes the first call to whenever there is something critical. In order to make your boss dependent on you professionally, start with making sure that you go out of your way to do non-critical work tasks of your boss.?The more tasks you take up over a period of time, the more hands on training you get which helps you to grow into your next role. Trust the process, no training is as inexpensive or provides better learning than this. Today’s “Go To” employee is tomorrow’s Boss.

Learn More to Earn More:?Once you become the Go to Person of your Boss, it will not be long before your dependability will get you more critical tasks. In order to do those critical tasks, you will need to come out of your comfort zone. It will take effort to learn the new skill and sometimes you will wonder why when others are hanging in the cafeteria or going at 6 pm, you are busy slogging to learn new skills. After all everyone gets the same salary for 9 hrs. The hours you are giving are not to the organization but to yourself to get future income and not necessarily current or next year. A promotion provided one year before others can lead you to a much better financial path (upto 50% more corpus when you retire) than others over the span of your career. Be the first one to raise your hand when tasks are being handed out!

Work Harder & Smarter Than Anyone Else In The Room: Working Only hard will exhaust you, working only smartly will ruin your stamina of working, doing both will make you a prized horse in the race called Life. Your Boss must know that when a fine balance between repetitive tasks and smart work needs to be done managing the intricate balance between both, you will have a “situational approach” and not be traditional. Innovation mixed with hard work is the key to a successful and satisfying career and your boss knows that!

Boss To Mentor Conversion:?A good mentor is one who will take interest in your growth as a professional and as an individual. Every Boss is capable of being a mentor. In order to ensure that conversion you need to develop an emotional connect with your boss which goes beyond work. The best way to do this is to find common interests and talk about them in a more relaxed atmosphere. If your mentor starts seeing himself in you Voila! You will always have a mentor to bounce off and that will continue even when he ceases to be your boss.

A Word of caution:?None of the above are manipulation techniques as they are based on hard and genuine effort to further your career based on sound foundation. They should not be confused with tactics to please your boss by being a Yes Man or Boss Pleaser. If your Boss is worth his salt, he will know it and it will hurt you more than help you. Be genuine and your Boss will be you greatest asset for your life!

Link to the Marathi version of the article published in Sakal paper this week

https://www.esakal.com/education-jobs/ankit-bhargav-writes-career-update-understand-the-boss-pjp78