A 'Marketing guy' with a 'Marketing soul'

B.E. Computer Science, MBA Marketing, looking for a job in back-end support for a financial firm. This is the profile I took along with myself on Monday, 22^nd Feb, 2010, for a walk-in interview at Northern Trust-a custodian bank with only back-end operations in India. Reasons were crystal clear- creeping up frustration due to ‘unemployed’ tag as a result of lax placement season of my college this time-due to economic slowdown (as the placement cell says) and a bunch of useless fellows in placement cell (as most of the unplaced students think). I am not trying to create any backdrop for a suspicious story, neither its some excerpt from some whodunit, so let me tell you upfront that I didn’t get place there either, so the ‘unemployed’ tag continues.

Now, this is an interesting phenomenon that during placement time, there’s always a huge crowd which says the job’s profile is not interesting, or the salary isn’t decent, so even if they are appearing for the process..its just for the name’s sake or experience, but once the process starts, and as those least interested candidates start moving up the process, their criteria for career, their philosophies in life start transforming , the night shift which was apparently Suckkking, starts falling in the “ain’t so bad” category. The profile somehow starts turning into a little-less-than the dream job, and the salary..ahh cm’on its just a ‘hygiene’ factor not a ‘satisfier’ according to the Theory of Motivation, so doesn’t matter much.

If the candidate gets the job, then obviously he is the decision maker- to take it or reject it, but if he doesn’t….did you notice he just escaped ruining his career by choosing a wrong path. That was anyways not his cup of tea, and salary was of course meagre. With that salary, to think of surviving not to forget the escalating real estate, food, and transport prices in metros, its next to impossible, and who’ll repay the education loan for heavens’ sake? And believe it or not, he loves sleeping, and working in night shifts seriously Succckkss.. !!

And now here’s my part of related experience. When I had joined IBS for MBA, if someone asked what kind of job I was interested in, I used to say confidently that I am not sure about what I want to do, but I am dead sure of what I don’t want to and that’s that I don’t want to go for any banks or financial firms. So, I had been very choosy since the placement began (a nice of way of saying that I got shortlisted for very few..:P) . But placements turned up really bad. And, towards the end it became a ‘take up whatever comes up’ situation. So, I landed up at Northern Trust on 22^nd Feb for interview.

I was comfortably giving answers the HR was asking, when she finally asked me a million-dollar question- “You are interested in Marketing, right??”. With 6 out of 8 subjects of Marketing, 1 IT and 1 Operations, and more effectively not a single finance subject, I was trying to concoct a crafty answer, and I did say “Yes ma’am, I am. But as a fresher I want to keep my options open. And I can comfortably do a finance job too. Apart from that there’s no bank which doesn’t have some marketing interface, so may be 1-2 years down the line when I move up the hierarchy, I will fit in some marketing role. ” By then I guess, she had scanned my Marketing soul and hammered it once again “But, still..you are interested in Marketing, isn’t it??”. Hell what could I say..”No ma’am. I detest, abhor, abominate Marketing. Its just that 6 marketing subjects in MBA are written on my CV, but what runs in my blood is FINANCE..FINANCE..FINANCE..!!” Anyways, what happened next was something which even I didn’t expect out of myself. Despite knowing what answers she wanted to be convinced I couldn’t fake it. I couldn’t and did not want to say that I am not interested in marketing. So, I said, “Yes ma’am. Of course. I have specialized in Marketing and I am interested in Marketing ”. I didn’t stretch the answer, did not use ifs and buts and just stopped at that with a smile. And that’s it. I didn’t get the job.

All those feelings I mentioned above, that it wasn’t my cup of tea, wrong career path, sucking night shifts, frankly speaking did rush through my mind too. But there is something else which I want to admit proudly. At the time of answering the HR and after that and since then I have felt one thing very strongly, very uniquely that I am a ‘MARKETING guy’ with a ‘Marketing soul’, may be I never noticed that ever when I was studying it and when I was writing my exams, or call it a late realization but they say, in pressure and atrocities, what comes out is the real you, and that’s how even I discovered it. I could really let go a job in such adverse conditions just to make myself feel more “Marketing”. No denying the fact, that for a job offer of 6 lakhs or above keeping all conditions the same, I could have compromised with my wishes, and opted for the same job. But that’s a different discussion altogether, because life at this time isn’t so humble and opportunities are carrying some arrogant attitude. But, one thing what I am clear about now is, if I have to work for peanut salaries, i.e without a hygiene factor, then definitely some satisfiers have to be there , and which is predominantly a marketing profile, even if it’s a bank or any other financial institution.

I am trying hard to survive this struggle of looking up for a decent job if not ideal or perfect but God forbid if I don’t succeed in it or I succumb to the atrocities initially, here’s raising a toast against all odds in a bollywood style..”You can take Nishant out of Marketing, but not Marketing out of Nishant. Cheers..!! ”