My take from working in the Textile Industry as an NTU Graduate

This April marks my 10 years working in the textile industry, it has been an exhilarating as well as a rewarding experience. Although the challenges working across different roles are somewhat similar but when you are coming from a particular background it has an added flavor. This is because your reputation precedes you and be it positive or negative you have to cope with it.

For National Textile University (NTU), Faisalabad graduates this really is an exceptional journey. Being the premier institute of textile studies in Pakistan for decades, NTU has been providing qualified resource to the industry for many years. Its contributions to the industry cannot be denied and with that it has earned a name for itself and a legacy for its graduates.

Every institute has a unique way of transferring its heritage to its graduates and although every graduate is different based on his personal competency, there are certain traits that get imprinted on their personalities that are somewhat common across the graduating pool and over the years these commonalities are the ones that build an institute’s legacy. In the industry the NTU legacy is so prevalent that it is very hard for anyone to ignore. Now here comes the interesting part, people working in the industry have a multi-dimensional approach to an NTU graduate and each dimension has its own dynamics.

Firstly there are those who consider NTU graduates competent and expect them to excel in their responsibilities, this helps the graduates to take this challenge as an opportunity and quite often meet or exceed expectations. Next are the ones who are critical of NTU graduates, partly because of their personal insecurities and partly because of envy, this becomes an added challenge and if taken positively it accelerates the graduate’s professional growth. Lastly there are graduates of other institutes who often argue that NTU graduates flourish because they are given preferential treatment. All of this makes the journey all the more exciting.

So what is my take, its simple, being an NTU graduate is not a privilege but a responsibility, to carry on the legacy which is rich and majestic. To all those who hold NTU graduates in high esteem, I thank you and hope we don’t let you down. For those who are critical, I would request not to judge a book by its cover and dig deeper. NTU graduates are handling merit positions across the industry with clear KPIs and monitoring systems attached, so it cannot be by luck or favoritism that they are delivering, look closely and you might find their unique selling point!

Lastly, my advice to fresh graduates coming to work in the industry, I can guarantee it to be a perfect journey, exciting as well as challenging. I won’t say it would be easy but that’s the beauty of it, after all the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. One thing I can say for sure is that you are in for a journey of a lifetime.