The Job Hunt Begins…

Yes, I am employed.  But as my management training comes to an end, I (and 11 other colleagues in the graduating class for this program) have begun the process of finding a real job.

For the past 2 years, I have moved 4 times across business lines, functional lines and geographies as part of my training at this firm.  It’s been an enriching experience and has been somewhat of an extension of business school, albeit with a much more real-life bent.

So, what’s next for me?  I don’t know.  I’m keeping my options open at this point – I haven’t necessarily boxed into a particular function (Marketing, Finance, Operations) but I am slowly but surely leaning towards operations.  There’s something about solving problems, making processes more efficient, and doing more with less that appeals to me.  I suppose it’s hard to shake the engineer out of me.

Anyway, over the next month, we will receive a list of potential jobs that we can interview for.  These jobs require 10-15 years of experience.  So they’re presumably ’stretch’ opportunities for us (purportedly future leaders of this firm) to prove our leadership skills in.  We will pick the opportunities we find interesting, interview for them and hopefully get some offers.  By October, I should have transitioned into my permanent posting.  It’ll be an interesting summer for sure.

Another Job Search

As the management training program I am in comes to an end, I am seriously starting to look around for what I want to do on a more permanent basis. Often in life, I feel like I am at a crossroads (And yes, I always remember Frost’s The Road Not Taken at these moments). Professionally, one of the things an MBA has given me is the option to pursue multiple functional careers. The question is: Which do I choose. Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations, Technology or Risk? When you’re in a company as large as the one that I work for, it does seem like choice is unlimited. And with that choice comes great confusion. .

On a more personal note, we have a decision to make about naturalization in the U.S. Do we want to become American citizens or stay Indian? I’m not sure. This question is relevant when considering our children. Should we get them American passports or Indian. Twenty years from now, perhaps it’ll be far advantageous for them to be Indian rather than American.

Now that we have a little one on the way, I find myself thinking about the future so much more than I ever did (and believe me, I did that a lot even before). Where should they go to school, public or private, montessori or not, go to college in India or the U.S., will I be able to afford to send them to college, do we return to India to bring them up in an Indian environment…?

The list seems endless. When I’m driving to work and back, when I’m swimming, when I’m showering, I find myself asking these questions and not really coming up with any good answers. Perhaps there aren’t any…