Are You Working towards a “Career Path” or Building “Career Portfolio”? Time to invest in Latter! Say Bye to “Career Path”!! Read this Interesting Perspective!!

Dear Friends and Students

Few days back, I received a Harvard Business Review article from one of my WhatsApp friends written by April Rinne (a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, one of the 50 Leading Female Futurists in the world).

Initially I ignored, however, as I see deep, started contemplating and reflecting, making sense and confident that it is going to be future trend. If you are interested to stand before future rough career weather, No more focus on your “Career Path” but Build “Career Portfolio”.  

What is this new concept? Is it old squash in a new make? Yes, it is not new but it was not in focus in the past. 20 years back, someone joins an organization, he/she was focusing only on how to excel in the current job, learn skills, impress manager and management and raise in the ladder.

 “Career Path” is a singular pursuit (study hard, get a job, work hard, work for the next promotion, wait and work for the future promotions and get retired). Employers were looking for such workers. Aspirants used to respond to the Employer’s ask at a cost of their divergent thinking and skills.

“Career Portfolio” is relatively new word (language necessary to design a future career), a new philosophy and thinking. It is a response to the diverse professional journey, various twists and turns, whether made by choice or by circumstance. It is combination of skills, experience and talents, with best blend.

Though “Career Portfolio” coined in 1990s by Charles Handy, it did not became a choice for organizations and people. It is a process of Broadening your career focus and professional identity. The future of the work demands independent and adaptable thinkers. It looks for people with “Career Portfolio” than people with impeccable career path.

HBR article Author’s (Ms. April Rinne) “Career Portfolio” include- Author, Speaker, Futurist, Advisor, Lawyer, Hiking Guide, Global Development Executive, Investor, and Yoga Practitioner.

Career Portfolio is developed over a period of time! It cannot be done during a 4 year Degree!! Career Portfolio includes any help rendered to orphans, you are taking care of your old parents, community service, passion projects, hobbies, parenting, etc.

Why New age Employers are closely looking for people with great “Career Portfolio”? - Unique professional identity, lifelong learning, your ability to cross-pollinate, tackle challenges, ability to face a world of uncertainty in a business.

What you need to do after your develop good “Career Portfolio”? – Do Portfolio Narrative!! You need to narrate your story, else the entire effort becomes useless!!

What is the role of Futuristic Institutions? New age Institutions including existing IITs, NITs, Deemed to be Universities and Regular UG Institutions need to upgrade their CDCs (“Career Path” Development Centers) to CPDPs (“Career Portfolio” Development Centers). CPDCs need to narrate their story well so that Employers pick up their Future Real Talent there!!

My Story! After Reading this article, I started contemplating, whether I do have any “Career Portfolio” or not! Me being in my 40’s, If I look back, be it plan or accident, I attempted to develop “Career Portfolio” to some extent. My Portfolio Narrative-

• When I was studying my Bachelors, I attempted to “teach” +2 Students (Chemistry) in a Junior College.
• During my masters, I attempted to do “Home Tuition” for similar age groups.
• During my Wipro Stint (14 years- Coder, Business Analyst, Pre-Sales, IT Outsourcing/Offshoring Consultant, Project/Program Management, Quality Specialist)
•  Post Wipro, Started a Consulting Startup (Srujana and Dukeship Consulting) but Miserably Failed
• Started “Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement” for last 10 years, still counting
• Joined Educational Institution as Director, Center for Innovation and Incubation, still counting
• Started offering Career advice to set of students, still counting
• Attempting to take care of my family including old parents, of course, family should tell & feel whether I am of any help to them or not !! J
• Mentoring and helping a few startups and still counting
• Attempting to be a YouTuber, Blogger, and handling Social Media with a purpose

Dear Students,

What is your “Career Portfolio Narrative”? Can you write? Helpful for your employers!

Build “Career Portfolio”!

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

Source:https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2021/10/why-you-should-build-a-career-portfolio-not-a-career-path

2021 Campus Hires! (2018-22 Batch) The Great Resignation! What should be your Response?

Dear Accomplished and Aspirants

A race run, a dream job landed, a little victory…It’s one of life’s great joys to you and to us to see you accomplish what you have been hoping for and working toward.

You started this run 5 to 7 years ago (Foundation+Intermediate), dreaming for IIT-JEE/Engineering in Reputed Institutions! The single point agenda was to crack the rank! Many of you could accomplish that objective and reset your goal to get a Placement or GATE or CAT or Starting on Your Own.

First in the line comes, Placement! This gives morale boast and kick start to aim better and bigger!

Thanks to the Institution’s Placement Department Coherent efforts, your sincere sweat & god gifted intelligence and upbeat favourable market conditions, today your way looks bright and blossoming.

Congratulations to all who landed into job! We are equally confident for the rest as they could land easily as the Land looks highly fertile for next 3 quarters across the globe.

No doubt, you need to enjoy this moment and celebrate the time!

Having said that I would like to give piece of advice. Please heed this if it makes sense else ignore this intelligence!

2021 Job Market is witnessing different situation. The Great Resignation, also known as the Big Quit, is the ongoing trend of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs, from spring 2021 to the present, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Top IT companies witness an “all-time” high and record attrition rate. Analysts predict that The ‘Great Resignation’ is likely to continue, as 55% of Americans anticipate looking for a new job!

Reasons are many but predominantly The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed workers to rethink their careers, work conditions, and long-term goals.

High attrition in the industry is opening the door for the fresher! From Amazon to TCS to Infosys to Wipro, India’s IT sector is in hiring spree! This is good news for you and for us.

Having said that down the line after 1 year or 1.5 years, it might lead to correction. You might ask what happens during the correction process!

Have you heard about, Winnowing?  It is the process used to separate the rice from hulls. It is to put the whole rice into a pan and throw it into the air while the wind blows. The light hulls are blown away while the heavy rice fall back into the pan!!

Winnowing in IT hiring means, people with decent coding skills, good communication skills, and team building culture remain back in the pan, rest becomes hulls! You cannot ignore it.

On top it, IT industry is going through transformative process. As of today, we have following roles:

-       Visionary IT Architects,

-       coders who help in the achieving this vision,

-       repetitive coders who use these products and build pipeline,

-       People Managers who manage emotions

-       Sales

However, Industry is slowing moving towards Low Code and No Code Platforms. The job of repetitive coders is diminishing. Given an opportunity, they are the first to get eliminated. Now you have a choice to make what type of programmer you want to be!

Next 2 year is highly critical for your batch as Winnowing might take place right after Great Resignation process! Don’t overprice yourself, it is the end of your career. I am not saying join low paying job. If you get a job now, try to stick to the same organization for some time, as companies are waiting for an opportunity for the correction. Great Resignation is causing a lot of stress to companies and they are serious about it. Don’t get trapped into the package mania.

It will not help us to learn. Let’s take an example. You joined a company X in Jan 2022 as Intern and later as converted to FTE in June. Here is the process

-       You need to understand company culture,

-       You need to go through training process,

-       You need to adjust with your manager & team,

-       You need to be comfortable with your customer team

-       You need to be familiar to master with the technology

-       You need to adhere to the quality process adopted

-       At the same time, you need to start making your family happy and make a new life!

If you join Company Y in a Year or 2, you need to repeat all above steps at a cost of Package. How hard it is for you and for your family. Think about it and make a wise step if it is absolutely necessary. For e.g. there is a famous Harvard University Quote –"People don't quit a job, the saying goes — they quit a boss"(https://hbr.org/2018/01/why-people-really-quit-their-jobs)

The immediate 3 tasks for all you for the next 2 months (Nov-2021 and Dec 2021)

-     Develop 1 end to end application using Full Stack skills- HTML/Java Script, Python or Java using some framework (Django or Flask / Ionic/ Flutter if it is mobile), MySql or NoSql or any DB of your choice (You never know where do you fall in your internship)

-    Start talking to your friends in English (I paid a huge price as I did not do this during my college days. Please don’t repeat this mistake)

-    Start using Word, Excel and Ppt heavily. Best thing is develop a Business Pitch Presentation using ppt and start writing in Word (esp. mail communication is critical) and grammarly check

People who are aiming for GATE/CAT/GRE/UPSC/IES, continue to keep your efforts without any deviation, using these spirits!

Best wishes to all of you. Keep in touch using any of the following handles

Am Happy to help/mentor during your internship/job process for a healthier career planning. Reach me over LinkedIn. Happy Learning.

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

What is Your Score? Intriguing Assessment Tool on Real Holistic Education? Try this if it helps you!

Dear Friends and Students

Today I received a Thought Provoking Message from a scholar on the occasion of Vijaya Dasimi!

What is Real Holistic Education? Please fill the following assessment questions.

• -          If your score is >=8/10, you are receiving right education and are on precise track
• -          If your score is >=5/10,  you are managing well but needs an improvement
• -          If your score is >=3/10,  you need to recover a lot
• -          If your score is <3/10,  there is something wrong and needs a big correction

Assessment Questions

1. Are you responsible in your studies? (having motivation to study and understand without any external push from parents and teachers)
2. Is your book time more than screen time (virtual entertainment)? (online classes or virtual classes should not be counted)
3. Are you having 30 minutes of dedicated physical activity per day?
4. Are you eating healthy food for 5 or more days in a week?
5. Did you stay with and help grandparents for more than 15 years in your first 20 years of life?
6. Are you keeping 1 hour per day towards your career goal or skill?
7. Are you keeping 4 hours per week to fulfill your passion?
8. Are you spending 3 hours per week for any creative or art work?
9. Are you spending 2 hours per week to develop leadership skills?
10. Are you spending 2 hours per week for any service activity or spending with Nature?

Check Your Score and implement- Wish this Dussehra 2021 give you all intelligence and confidence to fulfill your wishes.

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

 

Nation Salutes Ashish Takhur! Cremating the Abandoned dead with Dignity!

 Dear Friends and Students

As part of Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement, Last 2 days I was contemplating what could be the best topic to write or speak for this Dussehra. I have chosen the Story of Ashish Thakur, a banker from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, who is doing an amazing service. I have chosen to speak about him. Please watch this video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP6a6hAZi18

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

Learning or Earning? What is more important in your Job? Diff is just 1 Letter but ...Read this Perspective!

Dear Friends and Students

Before reading the story, Let me take you through a simple python program! Don’t worry if you are not conversant with any prior programming knowledge! Learning Python is not complex. Just read it as storyline! Today everyone is computer literate! If you are reading this story, you are already!!

#Declare Your 2 words – Learn and Earn

MyWord1 = "Learn"

MyWord2 = "earn"

#Convert MyWord1 and MyWord2 as Sets using following command. You might have learnt set theory in your 7^th class mathematics right?

#Essentially the following 2 python instructions converts "Learn" to {"L","E","A","R","N"} and Earn to {"E","A","R","N"}

first_set = set(MyWord1)

second_set = set(MyWord2)

# Find the difference between these 2 sets using python symmetric difference method

difference = first_set.symmetric_difference(second_set)

# print the difference using print command! You wrote a medium level python program! Yes true!

print(difference)

# Output comes as follows

{'L'}

 

The letter “L” makes all the difference. If the primary goal is to “Earn”, world need not become this complex. World wouldn’t have reached this level of sophistication. Many inventions and products are offshoots of people with learning attitude but not of people with earning attitude!

People with earning attitude can never make innovations or creative outputs. They take the existing creative work, simulate and monetize with their talent. However, it cannot be sustainable for a long. It lasts for some period and they get frustrated quickly.

Having said, learning alone cannot happen without earning! Both learning and earning are equally important, but without balance, the value of each diminishes.

One philosopher says, “The more you learn the more you earn”. Career development happens only with learning but by earning.

There was a famous question asked by someone, “Should we work to learn or work to earn?”! The popular answer was as follows

·     First, for a decade or two, learn, and do not worry about earning.

·     Then, for a decade or less, earn, using the previous learning.

·    Then, for the remaining decades, leave it to God, let God decide what is it for you? Don’t worry about both!!

I love this response!!

Students who are planning their career, Choose your option wisely! You can learn and earn at any time but you cannot earn time!!

Happy Learning, Enjoy Your Earnings. Earning need not be always your salary, assets and travel! Earning can come in the form of good sleep, hygiene food, healthy life, great association, live in nature and finally leave with nature!

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

Hey Software Developer / Student Aspirant!! Did you estimate the risk of your skill becoming obsolete? How to survive in Software Industry?

 Dear Friends and Students

This year large number of students are getting recruited in campus placements. Many companies are recruiting 2-3 years of experienced professionals at huge packages! The digital transformation is taking at a brisk pace. The demand is high.  Till here the story is great! Students are happy. Software Developers are Excited. Parents are in euphoria.

However, “the world of programming” is shifting towards “universe of automation platforms”! When we were working in 1990s, we used to code HTML page, Java Script, CSS together for client side Web Page development, Java Servlet for business logic and connecting to database (server side programming) and finally we used to design Database from scratch.   Similarly, C or C++ is used for all mission critical or processing time sensitive applications.

Today as of 2021, developers are relying on Python or R for Data science or analytics. Still C++ or Java is used for processing intensive jobs. Here is the catch! It took 20 years to make python popular for Datascience! However, thanks to heavy investments on Low Code Platforms and No Code Platforms, it would not take not more than 4-5 years to make python obsolete for a developer!! Is it confusing?

 Yes, true. Low code platforms and No code platforms are becoming popular. Gartner predicts by 2024, “low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity. Low-code is a visual approach to software development. With low-code, you can abstract and automate every step of the application lifecycle- rapidly design, prototype, develop, deploy, manage and monitor applications with the help of a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI).

How does it help? The developer typically has to hand code only about 10% of the application's functionality. The low-code platform handles the rest!! It gives equal opportunity to Mechanical or Civil or MBA or Medical students along with CSE/IT students.

Ricoh replaced legacy systems with low code platform which helped them achieve a 253% Return On Investment and a payback in just 7 months. (Bloomberg). The average company avoided hiring two IT developers using low code tools. This reaped about $4.4 million in increased business value over three years from the applications designed. (Forrester) (https://research.aimultiple.com/low-code-statistics/)

On average, a developer creates 70 bugs per 1000 lines of code. Fixing a bug takes 30 times longer than writing a line of code. 75% of a developer’s time is spent on debugging (1500 hours a year!). In the US alone, $113B is spent annually on identifying & fixing product defects (coralogix.com). This can be avoided!!

AutoML from Google, Spark AR from Facebook, and Lens Studio from the Snapchat are futuristic No Code Machine Learning Automation Systems. You just need to focus on collecting right data and defining problems. Platform would take care of complete steps involved in machine learning or deep learning algorithm setup.

Low-code Platforms include OutSystems, Quixy, Visual LANSA, Creatio, GeneXus, Zoho Creator, Appian,  KiSSFLOW – BPM & Workflow Software, Mendix, , Salesforce Lightning, Microsoft PowerApps,  AppSheet, Google App Maker, FileMaker, etc are going to rule the future software development.

Dear Students and Early Stage Developers

What is it for you? What is your new role and responsibility now? How do you self-nurture yourself?

Here are a few tips!

Continue to be good in fundamentals (Basic understanding of Programming and Data Structures, DB Concepts, Statistical approach). You should know what to use when?

Spend more time in participating in various Business Hackathons or Technical Challenges- This process help you to collect right data, identify the problems, designing various questions and solutions, quick prototype using Low code or no code platforms, and convince customers, presentation skills. Rest your platforms would take care of it!!

Are you ready for the New Game in the Software Development? Set your priorities!!

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)