Job dilemma, how much to 'consult' etc

[Couldn't publish the blog at airport as battery got dried, later no internet, finally publishing today]

I have been thinking on writing about this. Sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to Guwahati has given me enough time and space.

Do you remember my logic while deciding on returning to India leaving McKinsey?  Consultants can’t be the real impact maker; they can only consult, give advice, analyze data, but they can’t take decisions. I want to be a decision taker/change maker, not a helper.

Any get together with BSG folks question what am I doing

By the time, my condition forced me desperately pray for NISG result, all my logic about ‘consultancy’ was destroyed. I seriously needed a job and the ‘government’ quotient was more than sufficient to make me bite the bullet. 

But after spending more than a year, I should reflect back now. And the McKinsey logic so much relevant today. There are multiple dimensions here, let me try to put down:

1.       The so called career progression of Indian bureaucracy does not have provision for outside & contractual consultants. Department of Personnel has no clue how many consultants are there with different ministries, what they are doing, what’s their career look like (I did a RTI). Even within one ministry, recruitment happens in divisions/groups. So, the cohesive feeling never comes. Consultants only think for their particular group or project, not for the entire ministry/department. Even inside one department, nobody knows the career progression bit.

2.       One of the reasons for the above conclusion is the asymmetry in the objectives of the consultants and the management. The management, who are civil servants have zero incentive to think about the career plan for the contractual employees. They are measured against deliverables, where number of documents prepared by consultants may be one parameter.

So, one way of looking at this kind of role is to make money (short term consultancy pays lot of money, but recruitment happens mostly with contacts) or a placeholder for a few months. You just can’t plan a long term career. And, the high time is slowly coming for me to take an alternate path.

So, what’s next from NISG?

One possible role I was looking at the government affairs/public policy manager type of role in industry association or private sector. In fact, I was thinking very highly about those positions and making efforts. But the Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCCS) brainstorming meeting on 12 April changed lot of my perspectives. The meeting was attended by industry association (NASSCOM, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, ICA etc)  and people working in government relations type role (Ankhi Das of Facebook, someone from Microsoft etc), as well a few from NGO (Aspen Centre, ORF etc)

What these people are doing is not much different from what consultants do. Or, maybe brokers /lobbyists do. The verbal spat between the founding president of ICA and Facebook’s public policy director at the start of the meeting was a shocker. I didn’t find any of their suggestions praiseworthy. Even from ministry’s point of view, we did not call them expecting big knowledge. It was just to show inclusiveness and to get some money as sponsorship. If I really look from impact point of view, it was an eye-wash, with some spending of public money for tea/snacks. But wait, we will showcase that meeting as something ‘awesome’ and move file accordingly. The attendees were also given impression they are the experts and they are dictating government. It was a perfect case of win-win scenario.

Do I really want to get into those jobs? What’s the future for them? With no business knowledge, they are certainly not going to be CEO of a company. With no political background, they are not going to be people representatives. With no civil service, certainly, they are not going to an IAS too. So, after 3-4 years , they will switch the company and do the same things for another couple of years, and so on.

So, here comes probably the big issue of my career.

I am nowhere. I am not a software engineer (like Akash, Alvaro), not a public policy guy (like Rajat Shetty), not an MBA (all the private sector biggies), not an academia (no PhD), not been able to get a job in International org (Like Mehreen, Qingling etc). Which way should I go from here? Old people asked to stick to a domain (medical, engineering, lawyer etc), and I can see a point in that argument now. You have to tell people the area where you are an expert one day and also rise in that expertise area.

With the above thinking, I think should I apply for PhD now? Would I be a different person then? Or, MBA (Stanford-Reliance one again?), Alibaba’s AGLA programme, A job in WB etc would have been great. But job getting takes exceptionally long time for me.

Talking about jobs, I have applied for around thirteen jobs until now- NITI Aayog, Gates Foundation, Alibaba, MasterCard, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Catalyst, UN, IPE Global and so on. Except rejection from a few, I have not even contacted a single time. From my job searching experience post- Microsoft and post-Oxford, I am not much surprised though.  But the question remains- why?

Why I need to drag so long? What’s wrong in my profile? Is it the fact that the jobs I am applying does not care much about profile, rather contacts? This is a valid argument though. But how can I improve? NISG can’t rescue me all the time.

I had to go through my old pictures and blog from Harddisk yesterday to regain my confidence. I was feeling very low. Anyway, let's see. I hope this home trip will bring something.

Are you sure? Have you forgotten how many home trips you planned this way from Microsoft? Ha ha !

I am still at airport. It is 6-24 AM now. Flight is at 7-45 AM. But good bye anyway.