Smile make life more beautiful, but, when coupled with wrong choice of words can be disastrous.
Credit : Deccan Herald, Education
"What has been taught to you in Placement workshops?"
"To Crack a job"
"What do you mean by cracking a job"
"Getting a Job sir"
"What else is taught"
"Check who all will be in the interview panel"
"How does that help"
"It helps sir, if there is HR, trainer told to smile at them to crack the job sir"
I was shocked and equally surprised at the responses from a scholar from a reputed B-School during a recent campus interview. If this is the outcome of pre-placement training, surely I have an opportunity to train the trainer in few areas. Looking at it differently, this is also could be a result of vendor (trainer) finalisation based on least quote, clearly doesn't provide best results most of the time. I wonder, do best of the B-School too have such selection criteria in their SOP? Not-so-right way of selection of trainers to enhance capability of students for corporate interviews.
We all agree, lot must change in our systems, we always talk and hear about innovation, this is a serious need in training. Training differently to spark learning needs a thrust. Trainers need to motivate scholars and provide them real associations and scenarios rather than providing standard scripted presentations in classroom settings and tit bits of random information.
From case in example, B-Schools (and others too) can do a lot better using technology to gather best resources for their pupils, enable enhancement of curiosity, inculcate practising reflections which leads to better student experience, thereby making their learning a better outcome.
In my career spanning 30+years, I am teaching management for 10 years now, training first time managers for over 7 years and coaching senior executives for over 2 years. I have seen exponential growth in working professionals when they learn through reflecting their past. At the end of the interview I suggested this scholar to reflect on the conversations we had and write back to us on his thoughts. His prompt email a week later had regrettable mention of his folly about Smile at HR response he had provided. Reading it I smiled to myself noting about another case of ‘Learning from Reflection’.
Oscar Wilde had said "Experience is the hardest type of teacher which gives you test first and lessons later.