All posts tagged: job

The career quest

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Yesterday, I attended a career talk by BCG (Boston Consulting Group). It was almost intimidating to enter a room full of people who exude such an aura of intelligence. I suppose it is universally accepted that some of the world’s smartest people work / have worked at BCG, and they won’t disappoint you when you meet them in person. The presentation was impressive, of course, but contrary to my expectations, it was also soft-selling, casual and rather humble. The intimidation has been replaced by admiration. I wonder if people who are now on the other side of the line, who are happy with their jobs, successful even, were ever in the same boat as so many of us soon-to-be-graduates. Did they know from the start what they liked, what they wanted to do, where they belonged? Were they aware of exactly where they stood, with respect to smartness, intelligence, skills and capabilities? Did they have the perfect attitude to begin with?  I wonder if like many things in life, our career has a defining moment …

Working in a bank

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For a long time, I thought banks were plain evil. I guess it started with how everyone (almost everyone) in college wants to get a job in a bank, some bank, any bank. To me, it came as a stark reminder of how people are all rowing their boats towards the same lighthouse, and how they’d probably crash on the same rock. It isn’t for the love of the work. Only money. A series of poor judgments and a phase of desperation later, I find myself working in, well, a bank! It puts my ‘principles’ on dubious grounds. It makes me a two-faced hypocrite. It took nothing less than courage to walk into that office, stamping over everything I had quite believed in. A week and a half into it, I’m almost proud to say I’ve survived. I must admit how baseless my “logic” was. At least as far as Marketing is concerned, a consumer bank is extremely similar to any other consumer goods company. They merely sell financial plans, like a telecom company would …