Take Salary from Present Employer, Work for the Next One!

Take Salary from Present Employer, Work for the Next One!

Many recruiters, during course of interviewing, come across candidates who give low salary and increments as a reason for wanting to quit their existing jobs. Many times interviewers also feel that many candidates are not putting in their best in their existing jobs. During discussion, such candidates also give low salary and low increments in their existing jobs as a reason for their below par performance. They state that if given salary, increments and promotions as per their liking, they would really work hard.

I conduct a workshop ‘Seven Steps for Success’. Exceed Expectations and Work Hard is one of the seven steps for success, other six being Thinking (how high), Attitude, Goals, Inter personal relationship, Self Image, and Character. I also come across many above type of participants during this workshop.

A typical conversation with a few such participants post workshop runs something like this: “You say that we should always exceed expectations, we should always work hard and do our best; but why should we? We neither get good salary nor good increments nor good promotions. We are willing to do what you say provided our employers give us get good salary, increments and promotions”.

‘Take Salary from Present Employer, Work for the Next One’ is a capsule of above workshop I have developed to convince such participants futility of this thinking and the damage they are doing to their career by this type of attitude.

The conversation proceeds further on following lines:

My response, “Agreed. Everyone must get good salary, increments and promotions in order to work efficiently. Now, as a few of you are not satisfied about your present salary, increments or promotions many of you must be applying for new jobs”.

Slight nodding of several heads!

 “A few of you must also be getting interview calls and attending interviews”.

And nodding becomes more furious.

“Without even checking with any of you, should I tell you the result of your interviews”?

Anxious wait for my further response!

“The responses you generally get are: Thank you very much for coming to meet us. We will get back to you after a few days and no one gets back to you. Some of you might even be getting offers which are in similar and many cases worse than even your present package”.

‘True! But, how do you know this’?  is what the look on their faces say.

And I explain to them what I think is the main reason for above response.

‘In 100% of the interviews 100% of the candidates are compulsorily asked one question. Tell us about what you have been doing from the time you have started working especially where you are working now. What are your achievements’?

‘As you do not put in your best efforts, you do not have many achievements to discuss. The interviewer asks you reason for your below par achievements. Low salary and low increments is the reason many of you give as reason for your below par performance. Of course, you assure the interviewer that you will work really hard provided your prospective employer assures you of good salary, increments and promotions’.

‘Alternatively you will inflate your achievements and mention what you have not actually done and achieved. There can be no third answer’.

Sheepish grins on a few faces confirm that this is exactly what actually happens.

And I continue:

‘Imagine that you are not the candidate but the employer. Will you employ some one who has just now told you that he/she is not doing his/her best in the present job’?

‘Obviously no’ is the immediate response.

And I continue,

‘And, when you give second type of answer don’t you think that your body language, tone and inflexion of voice gives you away that you are telling lies’.

A few more sheepish grins!

And I continue,

‘Now tell me, will you hire a liar who is telling lies in the interview itself’?

‘Obviously no’ is the immediate and loud response.

And, suddenly the realization dawns on them about the reason for their rejection in interviews.

‘So, here is the take away from this workshop’, I tell them.

‘The reason you get rejected is that you have no convincing answer which you can give confidently and convincingly about your achievements in your existing job. So what ever be your situation in your presently, what ever be your salary, increments or promotions, always do your best in your existing job so that during interviews you can answer the question about your achievements in the existing job convincingly and confidently’.

‘So, even though you draw your salary from your present employer, always think that you are actually working for your next employer so that whenever you are asked the question about your achievements you can answer it convincingly and confidently’

‘Aim for excellence all the time. If you do that, you do not have to look for new job. New and better job will come to you searching for you’.

‘There was a dialogue in the movie ‘Three Idiots’. Don’t chase success, chase excellence and success will chase you anyhow’.

And many of them do get convinced about futility of their thinking and the damage they are doing to their own career by this type of attitude

Hence, the title of this article:

‘Take Salary from Present Employer, Work for the Next One’!

Are you interested to get this and other such workshops conducted in your institute? Please write to me at englishacademybaroda@gmail.com or call me (Sarwan Singh) at 91-88666 80407. Please also visit the link http://slidesha.re/1vtxYuO for details of our ‘Smart Student Program’ and http://slidesha.re/YT9SPn for details of our ‘Shaping Young Minds’ under our ‘Project Wisdom’.

We offer many free as well as paid workshops for educational institutes.

Synopsis of a Workshop on Student’s Behaviour Management-Part 1

Synopsis of a Workshop

on Student’s Behaviour Management-Part 1

Recently I conducted a workshop on ‘Student’s Behaviour Management’ in an Ayurved Medical College. Following is the synopsis of this workshop:

The workshop opened with watching a video clip titled ‘I am a Teacher’. Please visit the link http://bit.ly/1weYSbi  to watch this video clip.

Following this, the participants (who are lecturers and professors in this college) to think back to their school days about:

1:  The classrooms where they felt safe, accepted, and valued.  To bring to their minds those teachers who inspired them to put in their best efforts.   Participants were further requested to write at least 3 traits or qualities about these teachers who inspired and motivated them. 

2: Participants were also requested to write three traits or qualities of those teachers or 

     bosses who made them feel fearful unappreciated, resentful, or discouraged at any time in their career.

This was followed by a discussion on what the participants feel is the biggest threat to their career as an educator. Was it:

1.    Increase in class size,

2.    Incompatibility with co-teachers,

3.    Staying current with the latest curriculum & having to “teach to the test”,

4.    Expanding duties being placed on teachers, or

5.    Problems with managing student’s behaviour.

Four Stages of Teaching

After this a discussion took place on various stages of life as a teacher. It was discussed that there are essentially four stages in life of a teacher.

Stage 1:  Enthusiastic,

Stage 2:  Helpless,

Stage:      Resentful,

Stage 4:    Motivator.

Stage 1:    Enthusiastic New Teacher

This is when a person enters teaching profession. She/he is definitely slightly nervous but will be optimistic. With memories of good and bad teachers still fresh in the memory, the new entrant enters with the determination to be like the teacher she/he admired and never to use traits of the teacher she/he disliked.

Stage 2:    Helpless Teacher

However, slowly and slowly the students start showing their true colours and our shiny new teacher finds it virtually impossible to control them. ’Honeymoon‘period is over and attempts to reason with students have no impact. Our ‘Enthusiastic New Teacher’ now starts feeling Helpless. She/he starts feeling more and more disillusioned and disoriented.

But what is the effect of stage 2 teachers on their students?

This is a very serious stage when the new teacher starts to lose will to control the class and just starts to swim with the tide. However, this attitude has a very serious impact on disciplined or borderline students; as described below:

Many students, lacking self-discipline,   misbehave just because they can do so. 

Well-behaved students are placed in   a difficult situation.  They want to learn, but compliance with a teacher unable to manage the class places them at a lower status than the non-respected teacher. Being in that lowly position sets    them up for victimization by bullies (just as the teacher experiences).  Many potential “model students” misbehave in order to gain favour with bullies.

On the threshold of being 

from helpless teacher to resentful teacher

Stage 3:    Resentful Teacher

The hurtful teacher now starts feeling that she/ he has lost the will to control the class. Hence; instead of finding out how to control the class behaviour the teacher becomes resentful towards way ward students

Mentality of Resentful Teacher:

Punish students who irritate.  When light penalties fail to change the behaviour, impose stricter penalties.

 Here is an important behaviour changing principle to keep in mind:

When good behaviour is rewarded, we get more of good behaviour.

But; when bad behaviour is punished, do we get more or less of bad behaviour?

The answer we all know is that we get more of bad behaviour.

Therefore; does the answer to Student’s behaviour control lie in punishing bad behaviour till they fall in line or somewhere else?

Obviously, the answer lies somewhere else.

Before discussing how a teacher can move from stage 3 (Resentful) to Stage 4 (Motivator) a video clip of Zig Ziglar (Attitude Makes the Difference) was shown.

Please visit link http://bit.ly/1j1kg0A to watch this video clip.

This brought us to the close of Session 1 of the workshop.

What is the root cause of the poor student’s bad behaviour and what needs to be done to control this behaviour formed second part of the workshop.

The same will be presented in Part-2 of this blog.

Are you running an educational institute or an industry/company? Are you interested to get this and other such workshops conducted in your institute?

Please write to me at englishacademybaroda@gmail.com /sarwansingh6644@gmail.com or call me (Sarwan Singh) at 91- 88666 80407.

Please also visit the link http://slidesha.re/1vtxYuO (for educational institutes)  and  http://slidesha.re/YT9SPn (for industries and companies) to know more about our programs. Some of our programs for educational institutes are pro-bono.

Sarwan Singh

(M) 91- 88666 80407

Acknowledgements:

Many presentations/articles and video clips available on Slide Share, Author Stream, You Tube and other sources on internet were studied and analysed for this workshop. The presentation put together was a combination of inputs from such sources with my own inputs. Hence, thanks are due to creators of all such inputs who I am unable to acknowledge by name this time as their original work was deleted after study. All such sources will be acknowledged in future.

Synopsis of the workshop on Employ ability Skills of 21st Century for Success

Synopsis of the workshop on

Employ ability Skills of 21^st Century for Success

The intended learning outcome of the workshop on ‘Employability Skills’ was following parameters:

1.      Understand the importance of skills/competencies in 21^st century and be what employers look for in employees,

2.      Identify which skills you have and how to give its evidence,

3.      Identify strategies and resources for enhancing and developing skills you want to develop.

In 21^st century, technology has converted the world to a global village. Practically all the information and everybody is now just a click away. This has brought in following two major changes in which work is carried out these days:

1.   21^st Century has become the century of self promotion,

2.   Work is no more the place you go to; work is the thing you do!

 Positive Attitude, Communication and interpersonal skills have become the highly desirable attributes by all employers. In fact as per a research carried out by Harvard University, interpersonal skills contribute 85% towards our professional success. Contribution of our technical skills is only 15% towards our professional success. Stanford Research Institute further corroborates this finding and states that share of soft skills in our progress is 87.5%.

In addition, Critical, Thinking Media, Literacy, Communication Skills, Information Literacy, Collaboration and Creativity have become other critical attributes to be successful in 21^st century.

Following are the other habits of valuable employees which all employers appreciate:

15 all time desirable Habits of Valuable Employees

Good Communicator	Self Motivated	Hard Worker	Adaptable and Flexible	Effective Leader
Team Player	Avoids Gossip	Exceeds Expectation	Self Disciplined	Honest
Dependable	Ethical	Healthy	Polite	Punctual

In addition in future the working is going to change even more.  Four major changes will take place in the working arena: In future work will be

1.      Transparent,

2.      Flat,

3.      Competitive,

4.      On demand

1.      The work will be transparent:  

      Now time and task tracking tools track productivity in real time. Hence contribution of every single individual towards the overall objective of the organization can be measured in the go. Hence more productive a person is; more money he/she will make.  Besides, it will not be possible to hide anything as it will be possible to cross verify any information/data from multiple sources in real time.

       

2.      The work (organizations) will be flat:

Because of advances in information technology, it has become possible for a person at any level in an organization to interact   with anybody at any geographical location. Hierarchies have broken and organizations have become flat. In fact many organizations allow their employees to work from home and many other have adopted flexi working hours. In future location will become irrelevant. It will be possible to hire employees from anywhere in the world.  And they will be working from any place of their choice.

3.      The work will become more competitive:                                                                                                                   

It has now become common place to hire vendors and temporary experts from anywhere in the world. Hence choice for vendors/employees is not limited to any geographical location. It is now common place for work teams to resemble movie production teams in which several people having diverse skills collaborate to make a movie. They all go their different ways once the movie is made. Innovation rather than location will be the key word in future relationships between employees and employers.

4.      The work will be ON DEMAND:           

In future people having specific skills and expertise rather than degrees will be more in demand. Knowledge and not formal qualification will be the key factor in hiring a person. Hence informal education will become more and more important. As every type of information and education is available on net virtually free, not having proper knowledge will not be acceptable. Hence those having experience and skills   in a particular field will be more in demand as compared to people just having formal qualification.                                                                                                      

Hence in future employers will have greater access to employees across the globe. Same way even employees will have much greater choice. Most importantly, in future the earning will be linked to the merit and experience and not to geographical location or qualification.

In short 21^st century worker will:

. . will use technologies that haven’t  been invented to do jobs that don’t exist at present,

. . will be networked,

. . will be multi-tasker,

. . will be digitally literate,

. . will crave interactivity,

. . will have strong visual-spatial skills,

. . will be tethered to the internet,

. . will want to learn things that matter,

. . will want to be challenged to reach own conclusions.

Are you interested to get this and other such workshops conducted in your institute?

Are you interested to get this and other such workshops conducted in your institute?

Please write to me at englishacademybaroda@gmail.com or call me (Sarwan Singh) at 88666 80407.

Please also visit the link http://slidesha.re/1vtxYuO and http://slidesha.re/YT9SPn for details of our workshops for industries and educational institutes.

Sarwan Singh

(M) 88666 80407

Sarwan Singh

(M) 88666 80407