Interesting incident happened today. I was at the church, at the end of the normal Sunday service with a lot of people gathered in small groups all around the premises greeting and talking with each other.
Churches and the Sunday gatherings are very important in ones social life. That’s when you meet your childhood friends, share the news and stories and the happiness. All in the 10 minutes after church.
But this was my first time to this particular church and I had hardly anyone whom I knew around me. While waiting for my wife to come out of the church, I just got too curious to eavesdrop into the conversation two young gentlemen were having just beside me.
One, near 25 years of age, neatly dressed, very evidently in the early stages of a successful career. Other, 18-ish, in his polo tees, is the confused teenager.
Elder: So, what plans next?
Younger: Not made up my mind, but thinking of going for ‘degree’ (the vernacular for under grad courses other than Engineering and Medical)
Elder: Oh… (definitely not impressed!) So… which course?
Younger: Thinking of B-Com or Humanities
Elder: At least choose B-Com. Humanities have ‘zero-scope’ (again another vernacular, meaning job opportunities)
Younger: Yeah, everyone is telling me this. So B-Com would be better, right brother?
Elder: Yeah, any day!
I know what you might be thinking. You might have heard similar conversations a hundred times, if not more and many a times, might have been one of the two in the conversation. But this time, it got me thinking.
- Is it the right thing to say to a young boy who is trying to decide where he wants to go next?
- Why are we so obsessed with the word ‘scope’?
- What’s the best way of advising someone at that stage?
- NO. Talking about ‘scope’ of a course is not the right thing to tell someone who is trying to choose a line of study that might live with him for his lifetime.
Why are we obsessed about the ‘scope’?
We live in a country where the employment rates are not ideal, the society is wired to think about education as just a means to get a job. And they cannot be blamed for thinking about the most easy paths towards a job, any job, as the education with the best ‘scope’.
This forced the trend-wave of ITIs and ITCs (skill training institutes) 30 years back because they had huge ‘scope’ in the middle east.
This forced thousands of youngsters from my home state kerala choose nursing as their career a few years back, though many of them had zero interest in it.
This forces us to think that Engineering and Medical education are the only good education systems because they get you a job sooner than the others.
Was it completely wrong to be obsessed about ‘scope’? NO.
Because, in many ways, this has led our society forward and helped millions of our people be financially stable.
But is it wrong to be obsessed about scope still? YES.
Because, the world around us is not the same anymore.Gone are the days where job was a hard-to-grab thing. It is easier to get jobs. But the jobs themselves have changed.
Jobs are no more a commodity. Jobs these days, demand more than just ‘skills’ and ‘education’. Jobs these days, demand creativity, aptitude, enthusiasm, and most importantly the love for the job. Computers are getting better skilled than us in commodity jobs. Jobs of the future will demand more and more creativity from the humans, and only the love for the job can get one to be creative at the job.
Going into something that you do not love, just for the ‘scope’ would make you join the league of thousands of nurses (by education)doing the accounting jobs (the most basic ones) and thousands of engineers doing everything under the planet other than building stuff.
What is the right advice you can give someone at his/her late teen-ages?
I would do it this way. I would ask them this question:
“Think of this hypothetical situation. All the jobs in this world — a teacher, a software engineer, a cricket player or a singer — every single job has the same salary, the same job security, the same work environments. Which would you choose?”
I would give them days to think about this and encourage them to go ask everyone around for advice, not about which to choose, but about how each work is. I would encourage them to think. And their answer will be the way forward for them.
Because when money, job security and everything similar are out of the equation, you would choose what you LOVE the most. And that LOVE is what will create the ‘SCOPE’ for you.
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” – Confucius
What is in it for the HR professional in me?
The HR professional is probably one of the most affected by this healthy practice of people going after ‘scope’. We get people, aplenty of them. But we get very few who do things out of the interest. We get tons of people attending our interviews, but all of them ‘job seekers’. They are stuck in the suit that does not fit them, nor do they like wearing that suit. Each moment they sit inside our walls doing the job that we give them, they curse the choice they made and they curse the job. They do not love the job! That will be the root cause for low employee morale, high attrition, constant complaints, lack of belonging, low productivity, lack of innovation and all other issues you are fighting with in your HR job.
Here are a few things you could do as an HR professional.
- Measure the interest at interviews. We are running into a time where along with the skills and cultural fitness, we will need to measure interest as well. Armed forces offices interviews have traditionally employed a lot of psychometric analysis to gauge the interest that a person has towards the job. It is high time we start employing them too.
- Allow your people to cherish their interests AT work. Make sure your engagement activities are centred around interests of people. Identify what is the ‘other’ thing that the members of your team are interested in, make sure you give them all recognition and opportunities to do those AT work. They will start lovin the workplace.
- Talk about this. being HR professionals, you will be heard as the voice of the industry and job market by people in your circles. Be vocal about how interest, creativity and enthusiasm would drive the workforce of the future and not the choice by ‘scope’.
Jofin Joseph
Head of India Operations, FullContact
His Linkedin profile is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jofin/
This article was first published by NIPM Kerala chapter our 2017-18 Annual Issue of ‘Kerala Personnel’ magazine.