SP Jain PGPM Profile Sheet Question : Please mention any International Work Experience in your profile along with the details for the same.

                                                  (in not more than 300 words)

Fortunately I have received multiple opportunities to travel abroad for work and experience the work culture there from my own eyes.

The most recent international work experience for me was when I travelled to XYZ in 2015. I have travelled to XYZ a few times before(2010, 2011, 2013), but this visit was different because this time I went there for pure business understanding rather than technical assignments as was the case in earlier visits. This visit also gave me confidence to shift my role from technology to business analysis. My earlier visits were equally fruitful for the technical work that was expected of my role. In all these visits, which lasted a total of 5 to 6 months, I learnt some of the important qualities of XYZ colleagues, such as adhering to meeting times or following deadlines, taking ownership of one’s work without need of supervisor’s push, and most importantly high number of women in the workforce (almost 50%).

Prior to that, I travelled to ABC from my previous employer in 2009. In this assignment, being the only person representing my project, I performed the role of analyst, developer, tester, documenter and held important business discussions with customer. This assignment, lasting about 7-8 months, taught me to perform in all roles that an employee at my role can be asked to do. Here I learnt several important attributes of ABCian work culture, such as informal style of communication in the workplace yet high commitment to work, socializing between colleagues, and their multicultural ethos which make it easy for outsider to gel.

I have been using the learnings from my all international deputations into my daily work and plan to continue doing so.

SP Jain PGPM Profile Sheet Question : Give a detailed description of the roles, responsibilities and achievements at your current /last place of employment.

                                                 (in not more than 300 words)

I currently work at India office of XYZ, as ABC. XYZ is an IT products and services company based out of PQR, employing about 15,000 people. My responsibilities include Business Analysis, Functional Understanding, and Customer Interactions etc. I also additionally look after Design Discussions, Technical Definition, and Sanity Testing etc. I manage a team of 5-6 people and am responsible for assigning them work and delivery of their work to customer. I have undergone 3 designation changes in little less than 6 years that I have been with XYZ.

Talking about my achievements, I have been given the Company’s ‘Employee of the quarter’ award – twice, once for “Leadership, Commitment, and Dedication” and another one for “Generating Ideas for Increasing Revenue”, in 2011-12 and 2013-14 respectively. Only a handful of about 2000 employees have received the award twice, making it special for me. I was also one of the 2 member team representing my project in front of jury members for the contest ‘Best project of the Year’ in 2013-14, and instrumental in clinching the title eventually.

However, the biggest achievement in terms of personal satisfaction is being part of the LMN team that is chosen by management to represent the company at different external and internal forums. The LMNs are chosen after a rigorous screening that includes essay writing, group discussions, and recommendations from past and present supervisors. We have been arranging several promotional campaigns, college campus connects, job fairs, recruitment drives etc. Also I led the celebratory events for company’s xx year anniversary in India in 20yy, conducting several events, quizzes, and distributing souvenirs for employees. I have received several accolades from management, including the India Head and HR Head of the company.

SP Jain PGPM Profile Sheet Question : Explain a situation when you were a part of a team where the group process and/or intended outcome failed. What was your role, how did you contribute to the process or outcome, and what did you learn?

(Answer in not more than 200 words)

Ok, disclaimer. This is not the ideal answer that I would have liked myself to write. But this was my first application :), so do take it with pinch of salt.

While working in the role of an acting project manager for an ongoing project, there was a partial failure in software delivered to customer.

The original project manager was away due to a personal emergency and I had to step in until he was back. Despite not being involved from beginning, I worked hard with the team to complete unfinished work. The test cases were prepared when project was in design phase, and relevant ones updated during implementation when there were minor requirement changes. Somehow this was not done for a couple of test cases, and we failed to realize this. Hence despite our belief that we have done foolproof testing, the application failed when customer tested it, and was not pleased with our efforts.

Though this delivery was partial one, customer was hoping highly from it and this failure caused a few escalations in my senior management, prompting me to explain the situation to them and promise the customer of no more failures. 

The experience taught me importance of being thorough with complete scope of the requirements, and not always relying on others to do so. This failure also ensured we did not repeat our mistakes in future deliveries.

SP Jain PGPM Profile Sheet Question : How have your professional experience shaped your current competencies?

Since I work in a multicultural corporate environment, the needs of such work culture have shaped my current competencies, a few of them being cross cultural communication, ownership of work, and adaptability.

My current work involves regular interactions with customers, management and my own teammates which involves extensive cross cultural communication. Since my customers and management belong to Nordic region, their comfort level with English language is not necessarily at par with Indians. Hence it becomes extremely important to talk in slow yet steady, and short yet meaningful statements. For written communication, concise statements are preferred to verbose elaborate details. It has taken me significant efforts to become good at how the receiver will perceive a communication, and I was given an initial responsibility of overseeing the communication of new/junior members of the team with customers.

Another aspect of such work culture which helped me was a sense of ownership. In Nordic cultures, when a person is handed over a task, it is expected that he/she will perform that task independently without a needless follow-up from supervisor. Manager is accountable for the task but he may not be necessarily responsible for employee’s work. I tried to learnt this quality and have been using in my daily work, so often tasks assigned to me or my team are done independently or within the team but managers do not directly control the way of work. This gives me sense of freedom and surely gives the supervisors time to focus on other important tasks. Self-ownership goes a long way in organizing yourself without need of a push.

An additional skill I learnt in my previous organization and which continues to guide me even today, is adaptability. The organization was known for quick and cost-effective solutions to customer. This meant that the dates promised to customer for delivery had to be adhered to, even if it meant stretching beyond regular working hours. Moreover, at times same person had to perform multiple roles, such as development, documentation, testing etc. Hence it was very important to be flexible in my approach to work, making me an adaptable person so that project does not suffer. Today when I promise my customer of something, I ensure that timelines are maintained and the team is able to adapt itself to each other’s needs.