SAST Wingees

Comments (20)

Successful Resume Paradox

In my experience, I had seen many resumes of various professionals from recent college grads to Senior Enterprise Architects and Business Consultants.  I also conducted many interviews – technical, situational, personal etc. I also attended many interviews – both client interviews (I work for an IT Services Company) as well as other job interviews.  And in almost every resume I ever saw in my life, including mine – there are NO failures.  This, to me, sounds like a paradox. Here is my explanation.

We know that in any endeavor – project goal or individual goal – a realistic or a stretch objective will be defined. Though there will be some ambiguous projects like when customer doesn’t know what he wants, but still will adapt some Agile methodology to iterate over some vision until it gets concrete. Just for theory sake, let us assume, there is clarity in what needs to be achieved.  What is the probability that every such endeavor, an individual is part of is an astounding success?

Sometimes in interviews, to keep the conversation honest,  I often ask about some lessons learned from different professionals. Many people share interesting lessons learned ranging from team politics to technology failures, but almost never, I encountered anybody who told that they goofed up something and they did learn something valuable.  I think, I rather hire a person, who had ample set of failures, who is self aware, who learned a great deal during the crisis, than someone who thinks never made any mistake.  I am perfectly aware that a resume is not a memoir and need not publish everything. But it should give some pointers that the candidate is a balanced person and a great individual.

Imagine how much, we all appreciated Amazon and Facebook when they explained the root cause of failures and remedial steps that are undertaking to prevent them.

Now my confession – sometime back I was in control of production. It was late in the evening and I was “Wired-In”. I was debugging one production issue using an SSH window. I also opened another SSH window to release a feature into Staging where I had to shutdown App Server . After few minutes, suddenly, phones started ringing like crazy. oops – I realized the mistake – I shutdown production during a peak usage time from west coast. The story ended well, we had some data loss – in flight transactions, but nothing major. So damage control was done.  Next time onwards – I never open  production window and multi task. I also changed the background color of production connection in SSH client to be Red.

Here are some questions, I would like to hear from the community

1) What is the best and subtle way to reflect some lessons learned in resumes (or is it an insane idea)?

2) When we interview, what is the best way to understand a person’s overall profile – accomplishments as well as some mistakes?

3) In your experience, have you encountered anything that you would like to share with the community regarding these resumes, goof ups,  interviews etc that can be safely shared with all of us?

Comments (23)

Sankara Student Leadership Summit – key insights

Updated July 3, 2011:  The Hindu newspaper covered the .

Prolog
Yesterday the alumni of Sankara School Adyar organized a Student Leadership Summit at TIDEL Park Auditorium. We had 500 students/teachers and the principal and vice principal of the school in attendance. It turned out to be a fabulous 4 hours. I want to share the key insights I picked up with all of you.

1. Principal Subala Ananthanarayanan – Education is not about teaching people it should be about making men. She quoted Rabindranath Tagore’s brilliant Gitanjali – where the head is held high.. [I get the goosebumps everytime I listen to this. It is with such a vision that she and her team have made Sankara one of the top schools in Chennai]

2. A.K. Parameswaran, AVP, Cognizant, Sankara alumni, one of the key organizers
His grandmom said “keep mentioning that it is a good school and it will become one” – capturing Sankara’s journey into becoming one of the top schools in Chennai – the power of expectations. He compared Imagination [Imagine was the theme of the conference] to eating, walking.. and said Imagination is the only thing that has no limit. He also said that we have chosen people from Extremistan careers to learn from. [Excellent context setting speech]

3. TM Krishna, celebrity carnatic vocalist
we generally tend to choose what we are good at rather than what we are passionate about [He mentioned that in the context of how he was torn between Economics and Music both of which he loved] Everyone says creativity is about breaking the rules, but that can only be done by people who understand the existing rules deeply and have humility and respect. Everyone has an artist within them that may yet be not awakened. [His speech was as brilliant as his music]

4. Chittu Nagarajan, Head, Community Courts eBay/Paypal
there are no limitations – marriage can’t stop you, birth of a child can’t stop you, age can’t stop you.. Be passionate about things and course correct on the way. She entered the Legal profession but didn’t like going to the courts and started working on Online Dispute Resolution, an entirely new field which is at the cusp of technology and legal fields. [Heartwarming story of a woman jumpstarting a whole new field in India and putting India on the map after she got married and had a child]

5. TM Karthik, stage actor/corp trainer
there is a story in all of us. Even the most mundane things have a story. He narrated his own experience of going to the USA, for the first time, in the form of a humorous story which had the audience roaring with laughter. [Humor and storytelling is quite a gap today and TMK shows us the way and he got a standing ovation, the only one of the evening]

6. Kartheeban, Cognizant Outreach/Team Everest his friend who couldn’t even buy a longsize notebook for Rs20 made such a deep impact on him. His message – follow your heart even if it means great risks. With extraordinary risks great results follow. His work has already touched 300,000 poor student lives in India. [Audience connected with his story of a young man driven by his passion to serve society throwing away a promising career in software. Goosebump moment]

7. Sairam Kumar, Student Leader, XII-A
He showed how limitless imagination truly is, with several examples of his imagination. [Really loved his idea of vacationing in outer space]

8. Kathadi Ramamurthy, 73 year-old, veteran/celebrity stage actor
he emphasized the importance of presence of mind with several great examples with trademark kathadi humor. In stage acting, if you make a mistake it can’t be corrected unlike tv/movies where mistakes can be edited out. He said life is also like that which is why the presence of mind you learn from stagecraft is crucial. It is very important to have a plan for your life. [His passion for stage acting at his age is very inspiring and admirable]

9. Sandhya Shekhar, CEO, IITM Research Park
3 important reasons why India is the next big land of opportunities –
1. Native Intelligence – to solve problems in India, being Indian is a huge advantage.
2. Frugal Innovation – it is in our nature to be frugal. Gave examples of Nano, Mitticool and Rural ATM which cost a fraction of developed world products.
3.The third is values – values can’t be taught, they must be caught. India has deep cultural traditions and value systems that are soaked in our DNA. Other countries may copy our skills/knowledge but values can’t be copied. 99% of CEOs say they hire for values – skills/knowledge is secondary. She said Sankara school excels in this area [My experience in Sankara School concurs. This is a brilliant point on values. Another goosebump moment]

10. Aditya Maheswaran, Cognizant, India’s youngest Distinguished Toastmaster
he failed 7 times before making a 2 min speech at a toastmasters club he joined when he was 18. Communication is the one common key to success in any field.

Confidence is only one step away, one extra opportunity away. Take the opportunity, more opportunities mean more opportunities to learn. Keep sharpening the axe, learning is continuous. [His stage presence, jumping down from the dais and connecting with the young students was fantastic. No wonder he is a DTM, highest recognition for public speaking by Toastmasters International]

11. Suraj Srikanth, Student Leader, XII-A
the havoc that corruption is wreaking on the country citing statistics (20,00,000 crores black money..) [ He imagined a corruption free India which I’m sure all of us dream of. Wonderful speech]

12. Vote of Thanks by self
Thanked the speakers who took the time from their busy schedules to pass their learnings to students. The student MCs Akshaya and Nikhil (both from class XII) did a fabulous job and so did the timer Dhanya of Class IX who kept the time and helped us finish exactly at 6pm.

Thanked the organizing commitee – Subala Ma’m, Meenakshi Mam, and alumni – Gayathri Viswanathan, AK Parameswaran, Sangameswaran, Padma Murali, Narayanan, Pravin Shekar, Sriram Mukkai, Swami and several others. Everyone has done a lot of hard work to pull this off amidst their own busy schedules.

Thanked the sponsors – Cognizant, Sankara School and several individual Alumni donors. Thanked the Event Managers – Rajeev Menon and team of Cognizant, who had made flawless arrangements at the audi, audi/video, food, water, security.

Thanked the audience, one of the best student audiences I have seen.

It turned out to be a memorable evening. We hope to do better next year.

P.S. The live twitter feed from the event is at hashtag #SSLS11

Comments (29)

Hacking Happiness

Prolog

Priya Raju had written 2 wonderful posts on Happiness Quotient part 1 and part 2. It may be worth your while to read them both, before reading this post.

Upside of Irrrationality

I wanted to add another dimension to the topic based on some recent learnings from Dan Ariely’s brilliant book Upside of Irrationality (I strongly recommend this book to all of you). Based on the book I and Priya Raju had some discussions and this post is an output of those discussions.

In the book, Dan has a chapter on a phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation. Without giving away too much from his book, Hedonic Adaptation is the process by which our mind becomes accustomed to pleasure and pain.

Since happiness is associated mostly with pleasure, we will look into pleasure.

Diwali Dress

To illustrate Hedonic Adaptation, let me share a story. When I was a child, my parents used to buy us a new dress once a year during the festival of Diwali. The sheer anticipation of the new dress and the joy of wearing the new dress for Diwali still lingers in my memory.

Through the years I have bought so many clothes that, buying a new dress is more like a chore, these days. No more joy left in buying a new dress.

This is how we get accustomed to buying gadgets, cars or in general objects/things. This may also be the reason why our wise ancients have talked extensively about why material possessions don’t give us happiness.

Obviously, we can’t all renounce our livelihood and walk off to the Himalayas and become spiritual beings, whatever that means 🙂

How do we beat Hedonic Adaptation then?

One of the ways is to avoid the focus on buying things and focus on experiences like vacations (many researchers have pointed this out). Since we tend to go to different places every time we go on vacation, Hedonic Adaptation can be avoided.

One other way, self and Priya spotted is art – as Keats said long ago “a thing of beauty is a joy forever”. Thanks to Priya, we have a collected a lot of art objects in our home. Every time I feel down, I look at them and feel instantly better. Even when I’m not feeling down these art objects give me happiness and inspiration. Hedonic Adaptation doesn’t seem to occur even though these are still objects.

I have been thinking and reading recently about Zen Buddhism and Mindfulness. I haven’t fully understood mindfulness to be able to practice it. But the emphasis on staying in the present and enjoying every moment might offer a way out of Hedonic Adaptation.

Epilog

What are your thoughts on Hedonic Adaptation? Are there other ways to beat Hedonic Adaptation that you have discovered?

Comments (18)

Power cuts

Please welcome another author to this group Blog – Mr Anandan, father of our friend Kumaran. Please encourage Mr Anandan by posting comments and interacting with him. – Priya.

The summer is on; and so is the POWER CUT

When the necessity of power for echelons (fans AC Central AC etc.,) increase in this period;
and ironically the availability of power gets reduced due to numerous causes’

Even the lower strata of the society, in the recent decades have accustomed themselves
to electrical equipments like lighting to almost all of them fans to very few fridge etc/.,
especially people forced to live in crowded areas, small one-roomed hutments.

This is especially true for men even women who have had a hard day out need some rest
to get themselves ready for the next day’s chores. The power cut is quite irksome.

TRUE and ACCEPTABLE.

But hold on a moment!!!!!!

Go back a few decades, may be a few centuries, imagine the plight of the people before electricity was invented…

How much of ancient mankind, even those living in affluence might have suffered????

Probably the truth of the matter may be they might not have suffered much, since power was not invented; they took the vagaries of nature on their strides easily.

They may lament what a weather, terribly hot, cold, windy snow, etc., but their scientific knowledge , advancements and absence of POWER made them to accept the harsh reality as basic elements of nature.

Today, the woman, naturally man also, should console herself (himself) that she is much better equipped than her ancestors who were ignorant of electricity in an ironical manner.

FORBEARANCE should be the VIRTUE OF THE DAY.

Have a NICE day!!!

Comments (2)

FTOTW – Happiness Gene, Adequate to Amazing, Self Control, Bribe Kids…

Fine Tastings Of The Week – Here are the best links of last week from my tweet stream.

1. RT @ravimohanv: I have this—‘Happiness gene’ discovered – Telegraph http://bit.ly/iSui2P ~ vv interesting

2. RT @Digitaltonto @HarvardBiz: How to Turn Anything from Adequate to Amazing http://s.hbr.org/jTSOKS ~ vv insightful

3. RT @priyaraju Lawrence Wright: Did USA unintentionally aid Al-Qaeda by funding Pakistan?  http://nyr.kr/j7hhFC ~ excellent except the kashmir part

4. RT @jonahlehrer: How to bribe the kids, by the great @garethideas(aka Gareth Cook) http://t.co/9S6m9Dc ~ vv insightful

5. RT @DanielPeterson: Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: Predicting NFL Success By What Draft Picks Say http://t.co/Dx31Jgp ~ vv interesting

6. /via @_siddhesh http://bit.ly/mr1AET how to get indian families to have more girl children by @melHM ~ vv insightful

7. RT @danariely: Wait For Another Cookie? http://wp.me/p5oiR-yM ~ vv insightful

References

I use a certain ratings scale for my annotations which are explained here.