Corporate Marriage

Lets take a quick trip down the imagination highway...

Then again, for some of you, it might be experience, for rest it will still be an imagination... come along anyways...

Lets call that person X for now.

You and X meet for the first time. Someone introduced the two of you and now you find yourselves meeting face to face. You've just met to see if you like each other and things can work out between the two of you.

Even before you met X, you did some research about X, checking the background, what X does, how much X earns, everything about X.

X did the same about you, trying to learn as much about you as possible.

From the moment you guys met, you clicked right away. You have common interests, you like each other. After meeting a few more times, the more you meet you start liking each other even more.

Wow!!!... it looks like you were made for each other.

You decide to come together and spend the rest of your lives together...

The next few days are just perfect. You enjoy each other's company, life just couldn't be better...

And then... reality started hitting the happy couple.

You realise that X is not just the appearances on the first few meetings. You realise there's more to X's character than was visible in the first few interactions.

You start realising that X is very different than you originally thought. The way X works, the way X relates with you, the way X looks at your problems, the way X cares for you. Everything has changed. Infact, you are thinking right now "How did I ever like X"

Let me break a news for you, you might find it shocking but X is going through the same right now. X is thinking the same about you right now. Right now, X is thinking "What on earth did I see in you that I liked"

Is not this the experience of a majority of you reading this post?

The reason I'm writing this post is not because I have any troubles with my marriage. Over the last couple of years, I have worked more and more with people in my organisation. Like any other organisation, people keep joining and leaving all the time. The more I work with my people, the more I learn about the human nature. Infact, the last couple of years have given me more revelations than all my working career put together.

You might be thinking, why did I switch from a marriage topic to work.

Well, I was actually talking about work all this time.

The reason you thought about marriage is because there are more than a few similarities between marriage and work.

In a marriage, you meet each other, like each other, enter into a long term commitment, maybe things will work out for the two of you and you'll spend the life with each other, then again, maybe you realise things are not working out and decide to part ways, go look for the next partner.

In a job, you meet each other, like each other, enter into a long term commitment, maybe things will work out for the two of you and you'll spend the rest of your career working there, then again, maybe you realise things are not working out and decide to part ways, go look for the next company.

Another thing which is similar is the fact that marriages used to last much longer in old times than they do today. So did the jobs, you probably saw atleast one of your elders retiring from the same company they started at. But you wouldn't know anyone in our generation who intends to retire from the same employer.

I've conducted my fare share of interviews looking for the right people for my team. I don't ask what you know about the company because I get the same recorded response everytime (one based on my own company's website). My favourite question in every interview is "What do you know about the job you've applied for". Interestingly, almost everytime I see that the candidate has not done any research on the kind of work they have to do once they join.

It's because they are not even interested. All they are interested is in the amount of % hike I'll offer over and above their current employer. (This pattern reminds of some professions I can't discuss on this blog.)

Even the guys in my circle have a similar thought process when they are looking out for a job.

How many of us have actually put in the time and effort in identifying the next employer we want to work at, done the research and then done everything to find a job with that employer?

Lets be honest, not many of us...

But we did that while searching our life partner. Atleast some of us did.

You would be spending about 8 - 12 hours at your workplace. If you exclude the daily sleep time, you are actually spending more time at workplace than you do with your loved one. Which is why I call your employment as a Corporate Marriage.

You might ask - "Gulshan, what's the point you're trying to make???"

I'll keep it simple - 

Finding an employer / employee is like finding a life partner, if you put in the right kind of effort and focus, you might find yourself in a more satisfying and longer lasting relationship.

Think about it.