Tag: process

Two Paths

Scenario A:

You are a student. You are currently an undergraduate student, majoring in field of study X. Having spent near enough three years studying courses in field of study X, you have now realized that this is not your calling in life.

You now wish to study abroad, but in a different field of study, say Y.

In order to get into a “good” university in field of study Y, you need to show that you have acquired some sort of expertise in that field of study. How does one show this? Can we show that you have worked in an organization that specializes in the applications of that field of study? Can we show that you have attended conferences related to that subject? Can we show that you have published papers, written blogs about that subject? Can we show that you have interned with a professor whose specialization is that field of study?

How do we build a resume that shows you to be passionate about that particular field of study?

Scenario B:

You are a student. You are currently an undergraduate student, majoring in field of study X. Having spent near enough three years studying courses in field of study X, you have now realized that this is not your calling in life.

You now wish learn more about something else – a different field of study, say Y.

You read some articles about that field of study online. While reading about these articles, you start to communicate with some of the leading practitioners in this field of study. Maybe you reach out to them via LinkedIn, maybe you meet them at a conference that you learnt about because of your research online. Maybe you write a series of blogs as you read these articles, and the magic of the internet means that some people reach out to you to talk about what you’ve written. Maybe you create Instagram Reels about your learning. Maybe you help somebody create a podcast about it. Maybe you start a YouTube channel about it. You spend three months, maybe six months, maybe a year learning more about field of study Y. You have some projects, some work experience, some collaborators, some followers associated with this new passion of yours.

Given all this, which university should you pick to learn more about this field?

Which approach is better?

Which approach are you more likely to advocate?

Which approach are you likely to pursue yourself?

What does karmanyevaadhikaraste mean?

CV’s are overrated

… as are examinations, marks, submissions, assignments and NAAC reports. I speak only of my current area of work, but this is true in all walks of life, of course.

There are two aspects to work: doing it, and showing that you have done it. A CV isn’t work, it is showing that you have done the work. So also the list above: none of it is work, it is showing that you have done the work. Meta-work, if you will.

Anybody who has conducted an interview has read the line “Proficient in MS-Office”. And each and every person who belongs to this tribe has rolled their eyes when asked about how many of the people who have written this line actually are proficient in MS-Office.

(My personal favorite among the variants of this line is “Intermediate level knowledge of MS Excel.” It signals to me that the writer is honest enough to acknowledge that they don’t know enough about Excel, but also can’t bring themselves to say that they don’t know enough.)

But ask yourself: what is a CV? It is a document that is supposed to showcase the work that you have done.

It is, as all of us know (but none among us would like to acknowledge) actually a document that showcases work that we hope will land us a job, no matter how tangentially true the content of the CV, and our association with said content.

This argument holds true for examinations as well! Examinations – and the marks you score in an examinations – are supposed to be a reflection of how well you know the subject.

It is, as all of us know (but none among us would like to acknowledge) a process in which we minimize our efforts to maximize our output. It’s even more problematic because the output isn’t learning, it’s marks.

NAAC reports that are submitted by colleges are in essence a manifestation of the many voodoo dolls that students have pricked at over the years, hoping to gain revenge for all the meaningless assignments/submissions/vivas that they have been subjected to while earning a degree. For colleges submit the NAAC reports using the same philosophy that students do while submitting their assignments:

“It doesn’t matter if it is a reflection of what reality is. It must be shown as a real thing on paper.”

We have created, as a society, a culture in which we measure the work that we do through these proxies, and collectively pretend that these proxies are a reflection of reality. Worse, we now spend a vast majority of our time on creating the proxies, rather than actually doing the work.

But to come back to my point (and yes, I do have one), the internet holds out the possibility to change this. At least where CV’s are concerned.

  • Don’t say that you are proficient in MS-Excel. Create, instead, a YouTube channel, or a blog, or an Instagram post, or a Facebook page, or a podcast where you show that you are proficient in MS-Excel. That is your CV, or at least a part of it.
  • Don’t say that you worked on project xyz with company abc. Write it up, and put it up on a blog. Writing’s not your thing? No worries, speak about it, and put it up as a podcast. Prefer video? YouTube!
  • The fact that you are reading this on an electronic device, by the way, means you do not have an excuse to not do it.
  • Worried about “how it will come out”? Do it ten times, and keep all ten up on the internet for people to see. Those ten variants of you describing your internship project is a much more powerful argument than a line that says “willing to work hard to improve myself”. And hey, if you do it ten times, it can only get better, not worse.

Showing that you have done the work tends to make you focus more on the showing, and less on the doing. Measuring work by analyzing what has been shown rather than what has been done is even more problematic, and that’s why firms tend to underrate grades (and increasingly, even CV’s).

Or, if you want to put it in economist-y terms, recruiters these days are like citizens of the Weimar republic. They know that the currency that is being issued is not worth the paper it is printed upon.

Any economist will tell you what happens next: a flight from currency, and into other assets.

That other asset in the context of the CV, is doing the work. Put it up for public consumption, and let the internet work its magic.

As a former India captain was very fond of saying, it’s all about the process. The results will take care of themselves. God, as Navin Kabra reminds us, says much the same thing!