While talking on ‘What India needs from managers today’, he emphasized that the manpower shortfall varies anywhere between 25-75% depending on the company. “The opportunity to engage in dialogue with 150+ potential middle managers was just too much to ignore. On behalf of the senior HR professionals in my vertical, I’m here to ask you to exercise your power to be the solution to our problems,” urged Mr Mehra. He also pointed out that the ‘year end’ happens to be an extremely critical time for HR professionals in the industry as it is the time for the annual appraisal cycle to be initiated.
During his discourse Mr Mehra introduced the audience to ‘OfficeTiger’, the brainchild of two Princeton graduates– Joe Sigelman and Randy Altschuler. These two chose Chennai as their base by using a very scientific technique as this city enjoys daylight when New York on the other side of the globe, sleeps. Obvious benefit ranged from lower input costs to the ample pool of the skilled manpower they required. Randy stayed back in New York to source the work and Joe headed to Chennai to set-up the processing operation. Having grown from those humble beginnings, today OfficeTiger is a 10,000+ people strong, professional services firm providing more than 70 different services to almost 50 different clients all of whom are Fortune 100 companies. It has a global footprint spanning 9 countries with 29 delivery centers and 41 onsite client operations. Its revenues are projected at approx. USD 1 billion this fiscal year.

Coming back to the discussion, Mr Mehra raised two fundamental issues– “48% unemployed and 70% job vacancies.” He went on to add “I will give it to you in one word, EMPLOYABILITY. Today’s job aspirants are skilled, well educated, looking for jobs and are unable to find them because we the companies think they are unemployable. Employability is a single word that encompasses a lot of traits that employers look for and are unable to find. If we were to pick each one for discussion now we’d be here all night. I’m going to pick a few for us to talk about,” He stressed upon four things a prospective middle manager should do in order to increase his employability- invest in yourself, know yourself, be aware of yourself, and above all to believe your own self to be true.

“Reading the financial papers end-to-end every day is not preparation enough for the corporate world. The degree/diploma isn’t an end, it’s a beginning. Being qualified for a job is no longer a strong enough reason to get it. As a manager you will have to have a proper client interface. Are you prepared? Communication is an integral part of a manager’s job, can you communicate effectively? The bottom line here is that as a leader of the people please present yourself also as a leader of the business,” said Mr Mehra.

Then he went on to emphasize upon what he meant by ‘know yourself’ i.e. what exactly do you want from life? For a company to find a right-fit job for you, you need to have a proper shape. I know what to do with a round peg and where to slot a square peg, but do you know what kind of peg you are? The bottom line here is: If you don’t know what you want to do, how on earth are we expected to know?

“Be aware of yourself- do a personal SWOT. Then do it again and this time preserve it. Repeat the exercise every six months. You aren’t a vegetable, you evolve daily. Know your strengths and build on them. Know your weaknesses and acknowledge them. Don’t hide weaknesses, we all have them and expect you to have them too. Forget the failure just remember the learning. The bottom line here is to admit a failure and move on. We’ve all failed before. We assess you on what you make of the setbacks”, said Mr Mehra.

Finally he pointed that the qualification from any institution is a blank cheque and it can be en-cashed not just once but a couple of times. The opportunity for fast-track growth is very real. He urged the budding managers to plan and play for the long term and develop their own visions.

The talks concluded with a number of interesting queries that arose in the question-answer session. Here he further elaborated the points he had already made during his discourse. About 250 students attended the discussion.