Choosing a Career

All those who watch Bollywood Hindi films must have seen Amir Khan’s blockbuster ‘3-idiots’. There are three college friends studying engineering. Two of them had taken admission under parental pressure whereas in reality they had no interest in the subject. Film ends with the message that one should choose only that field of study which interests him. One of the friends had interest in photography which he finally settled for after failing in engineering. The supporters of above philosophy further say, “If we ask a monkey to swim and a fish to climb the tree, both will fail. One should attempt only what he is designed for”.

Is that really so? Do you all agree with this? When a child is born with raw mind, hardly does he have any interest in study. If he is left in the jungle with animals, he would grow into a Tarzan. All the children want to play and fun around. Elders need to drag them to study and other relevant fields, either by force or by other tricks. So this is the first level where we all may agree that interest is not the ultimate parameter for a kid to march on.

Some children like to sing or dance or play soccer or write stories or write poems or act in films and so on. Should they be left with these choices of their own and not be forced by the parents to go for engg or medical or finance etc? Before jumping to Yes or No, let’s take note of few other factors. Bollywood is a big industry producing one of the world’s largest pools of films. It has the room for how many singers? May be half a dozen. And what is their expected career lifetime? At the most one decade, or maximum two. Similarly for the soccer, maximum of eleven players can be taken in the national team. What is the period for them to remain included in the team? Again at the most one or two decades. Majority of them are thrown out of the team much before. Now if we take the case of India having a population of 1.3 billion, how difficult it is for a singer or sportsman to get into that elite club of dozen or half a dozen? Suppose 1% population (1.3 million) is trying to become singers, what will happen to 1.3 million minus 6? Same case applies to sports and other fields. None of my school time friends who were very popular sportsmen could shine much in life. They are currently owning small shops or doing low level jobs.

One has to check his level of excellence before taking plunge in such highly competitive fields. Lot many other factors do play critical role. A good player sitting at the fence may not get the chance to enter the field. That may not mean he is not a good player. Smile of lady luck is equally important. Bollywood star of the millennium Amitabh Bachchan was rejected in voice test by All India Radio. Later on he ruled the cine world for half of a century and still ruling. His rich and commanding voice played a major role in this unparalleled success.

A person has to mould himself and his interest according to the demand. Suppose you have interest in civil engineering but there is not much demand. The capacity of industry is to absorb 1k persons but 5k students are graduating, where will the remaining 4k go? On the contrary an IT-industry with acute scarcity of workers looking out desperately to onboard freshers, may force a student to change his options in favour of IT course. Now the choice is yours. You wish to stick to your field of interest but sit idle doing nothing later, or adapt yourself according to the market demand.

We all remember the famous multinational company ‘Kodak’. At one time they were ruling the world. But with the arrival of digital cameras and built-in camera in mobiles, his gigantic empire collapsed. Kodak remained stuck to their field of interest but market demand for camera rolls depleted. Same thing applies to a person. He has to make himself sellable. He needs to change himself, train himself and educate himself in order to make him fit what a buyer is looking for.

Easier said than done. It seems but not really so easy to select a field which can guarantee a successful career for the lifetime. At higher school level there are two different streams, Mathematics and Biology. A student aspiring for engineering was studying maths whereas biology student was going for medical. There was need to develop biological/medical instruments and gadgets for which the knowledge of both the fields was essential. Hence few colleges introduced a new branch of engineering ‘Bio-technology’. Since there was shortage of experts in this field, the students graduating as bio-technologists got absorbed immediately. Then there was spurt and mad rush in opening this branch by every engg college. Needless to say, it soon far exceeded the supply over demand.

Let me narrate another true lifetime event. Over two and a half decades back, aviation industry in India was opened to private players. Lot many new operators got licenses like; Air Sahara, Damania, Jet, Spicejet, Deccan, East-West, Modiluft, Kingfisher etc. They soon wanted to begin operations. But the biggest hurdle in the business was to acquire readily trained manpower. It was not much difficult to hire and train the ground staff and cabin crew. But the most difficult job was to get pilots with required minimum flying experience set by the regulator. There was big shortage and poaching among airlines started at exorbitant salaries. This shortage of pilots continued for pretty long time. One of my senior colleagues asked his already employed son to leave the job and join pilot training course. It was a course of few years followed by minimum required hours of flying experience. All this took some time to complete. In the meanwhile, the aviation industry saw lots of ups and downs. These private companies resorted to all kinds of marketing gimmicks to lure the customers, by cutting airfare and increase in facilities onboard. Soon many airlines became sick and either closed their shops or got sold out and merged with other operators. Hence by the time my colleague’s son got formal license of a commercial pilot, the market demand vanished. One needs to have a foresight before embarking on a new field in a hurry.

Professional writers, journalists, columnists, poets, story tellers etc are finding it hard to survive after the onset of TV-media and social media. Readers themselves have become writers on facebook and whatsapp whereas the old professional writers have lost their platforms. Number of people reading newspapers and magazines has reduced significantly. Many media houses producing magazines and journals, which could not diversify into TV or other alternate media mode, have died.

Telecom industry, once thriving and flourishing, is on the verge of getting killed. So many companies ruling the world like Marconi, Murphy, Fujitsu, Alcatel, Nokia, Ericsson, Nortel, NEC, AT&T etc are nowhere or hardly heard of.

To summarize: In this highly volatile and fragile business world where gigantic rulers are vanishing overnight, if someone stubbornly wishes to stick only to his field of interest, then it is nothing but highly risky. One has to diversify, modify, edit and mould himself according to the demand of changing world; and in that process if he is able to preserve his area of interest, it may act as a booster dose. Life is a process of continuous learning and updating for a sustained career growth.