A few months ago, I interviewed with Flipkart for a job. They threw me out after the second (and final) round of interviews.

I was really hoping to get through, and to shore up my candidature I decided to create a show-and-tell before the d-day. It was some work/project and even a small little speech that I had done/gave-earlier which clearly (or so I thought) demonstrated that I neatly fit in with the skill-set required and their culture. 

A day before that, I ran my “show-and-tell” through with a friend, who said “Dude, my dad has interviewed thousands of candidates for the Indian Armed Forces and he once told me: more than trying to sell yourself, just answer the interviewer’s questions well and you’ll get through”.

I ignored his advice and went in with guns blazing. Asked the interviewer if I could show him the stuff as soon as I stepped in to the room. He agreed and patiently listened to me go on and on for about 5 minutes. Then he asked a few questions and finally went through my CV.

I was through to the second round. Emboldened, I decide on an encore. Again, went in firing from the hips and again, the person on the other side of the table listened patiently. He asked a lot of questions, which I thought I answered well. I stepped out happy and expecting a job offer.

That’s where the cute bit ends. They rejected me and I received feedback that “he seemed to be desperate”.

After the initial bouts of depression, I had my usual tonic of a drunken night out and lots of blabbering to uninterested friends.

When my head cleared, I thought about it. For your benefit dear reader (and as a reminder to future ‘me’), here’s what I think I did wrong:

I was trying to make a sale and not really answering the questions the interviewer had in their minds. 

Now I’m sure you’ll realize that this approach could have worked in some other situation, however, at the end of the day the interviewer was looking for a solution to a problem he had. His organization requires a role filled and he was tasked with finding the right person. Questions about the same are swirling in his mind when I walk in and start making a sales pitch that nowhere addressed the issues he was facing.

Edit on 11th April, 2012: After seeing the comments on http://therodinhoods.com/profiles/blogs/why-flipkart-rejected-me-after-the-job-interview, have decided to explain exactly what happened.

The profile on offer was Business Development. That is legacy designation (because initially, all Flipkart work meant Biz Dev) for Category Managers of various categories  like Books, Computers, Cameras, Gaming, etc. I went in with my laptop and started off by showing the following

1. Web designing & coding - showed him a hand coded & designed (Notepad + Corel Draw mostly) functioning website I’d made for our startup with non-Flash Javascript animation
2. Sales - explained how we raised angel funding for our second startup and the role I played
3. UI Design - showed some of the design work I’d done for website, college mags and events
4. Culture: Customer Focus/Obsession (Flipkart is crazy about this, and I agree with them) - a blog post written long ago where I exhort that Understanding Consumer Behaviour should be the most important of MBA teachings
5. Culture: Teamwork - showed a video recording of a speech I gave after our team won a college sports tourney. In the recording, I repeatedly talk about teamwork and how as a cohesive unit we beat much stronger teams who fell in disarray.

Then I gave him three business ideas that Flipkart might be able to implement. This was because I still believe that one is supposed to provide value; be it to the customer, the employer or whoever is paying you cash. I thought I’d display that I came prepared with three things that might work.

1. Idea One: Using FK’s customer service division to take feedback from customers by outbound calling. Suppose Nokia launches a new phone (let’s call it E100) and it knows that E100 sales on FK are considerable, so Nokia pays Flipkart to have its Customer Service Execs call people who’ve bought an E100 from FK after a month or so and take feedback. In it’s essence, it’s market research after a product is out in the market
2. Idea Two: Self publishing of books by authors. See details on this Techcrunch article by James Altucher -  http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/why-every-entrepreneur-should-self-publish-a-book/
3. Idea Three: Ok, I forgot this one.

What did the interviewer say after all this?

Ok fine Siddharth, now let’s talk about e-commerce in India.

That right there was when I realized I had answered none of the questions in his mind. And this was reinforced when after discussing e-commerce in-depth, he switched to “supply chain”.

You see, dear reader, he didn’t give a damn about me knowing web dev, ui design or any of the other yada yada I was telling him about. He has far better people already handling those jobs. He wanted someone who understood online sales, e-commerce and “supply chain”, the primary differentiator through which Flipkart provides its customers the service that has made it famous.

Once again, we drill down to the basics here: Two ears and one mouth. I should have listened first and then spoken :-)

Viswas Iyer is a Business Analyst working with A3Logics in Jaipur. A3Logics provides IT solutions to customers worldwide and has about 350 employees on its rolls.

Viswas is a high performer who was recently awarded Employee of the Month and is known to engage very well with clients from Europe and the US. So I asked him “What makes you a better performer than the others?”

And this is what Viswas had to say - 

“The others always sell the IT solution. As soon as a client requests a particular software solution, many of my colleagues start thinking in terms of how much will the project cost, how much time will it take and the maximum price at which they can sell it.

However, when I speak to a client, I first ask her to define the problem clearly, to identify the target user group and how she thinks the solution will help. This gives me a clear understanding of the problem and her expectations. 

Then I go about using my knowledge to best solve the problem. In this phase, I’m completely honest with the client. There are cases where the solution will cost lesser than what she had originally budgeted and I tell her so. Many-a-times, I feel more value can be provided by more expensive solutions, and am usually able to convince the client to go for that.”

That was as clear an explanation as I need to understand what was happening.

Most of us try to sell our product/solution/service when we should be trying to help the customer solve her problem. Viswas understands this and he usually has repeat clients specifically asking for him to handle their project, and since he has become more of a consultant than a solution provider, he is able to up-sell (or up-suggest), thus directly contributing to the financial goals of his employers.

So here it is, the 2 minute guide to having an awesome professional and personal life. Simple stuff that I’ve come across on various blogs and websites. Almost all of it is research backed but I don’t remember the references. Will link to them as and when.

1) Professional - You know what’s the primary difference between an average professional and an exceptional one? Well, it ain’t the usual suspects of intelligence, IQ, EQ or networking skills. It is “taking initiatives that are aligned to organizational goals”. That right there is the one most important factor that distinguishes great performers from mediocre ones.

2) Marriage - Researchers don’t know what’s the best form of marriage (monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, etc) but what they do know is that the most stable, happy marriages are based on two correlated things: trust and honesty.

3) Happiness - Remember this and strive towards recreating this situation as many times as possible: happiness is being with people you love and who love you in return. 

4) Love - Is basically your willingness to sacrifice stuff for someone else. Eg. sacrificing your time for that person, money, certain goals of yours and in extreme cases, even your life. The more two people are willing to sacrifice for each other (and know it), the happier and stronger they’ll feel when together.

5) Objects vs Experiences - Don’t buy consumer goods for the object itself, but buy stuff for the experiences they provide. To explain, don’t buy a tv because it’s an awesome tv with super blasting-surround-whirl-around sound, buy it because it’ll provide you moments with your friends/partner/kids/parents that you’ll later remember and cherish.

6) Being good at a certain task or activity - The key to being good at anything is practice. As much as you can. In fact, there’s already an accepted number of hours you need to practice something to become a world class expert, and that’s 10,000 hours.

About a fortnight ago, around 14 of us went to a bar for drinks and dinner. Most were about to leave Kolkata in a day or two and this was one of those “we might never meet again” things.

At the end of the table where I was seated, the other constituents of the party were as below

And this is what happened: the three vegetarians started to decide what to eat. They went at it for a full 15 minutes while the rest of us waited for their group discussion to get over. Finally, they settled on “Mix-Veg and Dal Fry with Roti”. It was only then that the waiter, who was hovering on the sidelines, took the order and consequently, we had to wait about 21 minutes before we got our first round of drinks. The delay was a buzzkill but fine, there were lessons rife in this situation.

What I realized was that in an attempt to take into account the tastes of various different customers, they finally settled on something that had small bits of everything but didn’t fully target anyone (Mix Veg) and since they were trying to keep everyone’s tastes in mind, they did not decide on different stuff that was enjoyed individually, but had stepped down to something that was acceptable to all. It wasn’t about catering to preferences, but simply, meeting requirements.

Taking this to a business situation, it is of utmost importance to understand your target market segments completely and create products that cater to their specific tastes and usage. Sometimes it can be overdone, but I’d still err on the side of over-tailoring instead of over-generalizing.

When it comes to startups, many try to make products that are awesomely complete, which is where they make their first mistake. The better thing to do in most cases is to make a minimum viable product and then keep a short feedback loop with customers, which should guide further product development. What I am suggesting is the release-early-release-often model, for which a huge case already exists. Here’s a good post in support of the same.

One of the best things about being with some really smart people at IIFT was, pile them with strong beer and they’d be on their way unraveling the deeper meaning of life. On one particular occasion, the discussion turned to “What is love?”. 

What I understand is: in their purest forms, love and courage are both “suppressing the basic instinct of self-preservation”. Let me explain.

Love - The most often celebrated form of love is a mother willing to face extreme danger and death, just to save her child.

What’s she doing here? Suppressing her instinct of self-preservation, for the sake of her child.

Another aspect is, a lot of lovers say this for each other “I’m even ready to die for him/her” (see this and this). This is usually accepted as the most you can do for another person.

Courage - The highest award for bravery given in the Indian Armed Forces is the Param Vir Chakra and it is awarded for “the most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self sacrifice, in the presence of the enemy, whether on land, at sea, or in the air.” Consider this; 14 of the 21 awardees have received it posthumously.

What’s my point here? It is that courage is celebrated because it is again, the suppressing of the instinct of self-preservation. In times of war, soldiers do this regularly while they go in to battle or take on situations with difficult odds.

The difference between Love & Courage - Love is when you are willing to suppress your instinct of self-preservation for someone whom you know, are close to & are fond of.

Courage is when you do the same, usually for someone you don’t know. Soldiers giving up their lives for their countrymen, strangers pushing someone out of the way of a moving vehicle and risking death themselves, etc.

The image on top is taken from hj-story.com. Please support him to make an awesome app by donating at www.indiegogo.com/HJ-Story-iPhone-App.

Also, check out the other “Core of the Issue” posts

• Core of the Issue: What is God?
• Core of the Issue: How Democracy leads to Corruption

Political Puppet: A politician or other political figure who is controlled by another (sometimes illegitimate or secret) person or party.

In my 25 years on our beautiful planet, whenever I have witnessed elections & politics in educational institutions, I’ve seen puppets come up. Interestingly, I’ve usually seen their downfall too.

Everything said and done, don’t ever be a puppet. It is one situation where you are almost certain to lose respect and credibility with no way of extricating yourself unscathed. Some of the reasons are:

• In the minds of your peers and the voters, there will forever be doubt that you’re pushing someone else’s agenda and not taking decisions in the best interests of those you lead. Therefore, they stop trusting you.
• There’s the thought in everyone’s mind that you’re not the best person for the job. If you had been, you should have won fair and square. This means your abilities are suspect before you’ve even started.
• The group that has put you up will want its pound-of-flesh. Which means you’re actually constrained in how you work.
• In a democratic setup, if there was a way to put you up, there almost certainly is a way to bring you down. The people who put you up will always use this as a way to control you.
• Everyone makes mistakes. Yours will just be reason for people to remind you of how you got there.
• And if you ever screw up royally, you’re alone. The peers will almost certainly fuck you, but most importantly, the person(s) who put you up will discard you like a used piece of toilet paper. Best of luck when that happens.

All in all, don’t ever be one. Rise on capabilities and not political maneuvering.

To get started, Sherwood College is a boarding school located in Nainital, Uttranchal, India. The school started in 1869 by Robert Milman and has two wings: Horsman Wing (junior school, classes 3 to 5) and Dixon Wing (senior school, classes 6 to 12). In brief, Horsman Wing is where you are the protected little kiddies who look upto Dixon Wing in the same manner that a convict would look out of his cell at the free world. You are constantly brooded over by teachers, matrons and aayahs. Your every action is monitored and you don’t have many opportunities to do things that boarding schools are generally famous for. A bit of fighting, lots of tuck (goodies like biscuits, chocolates jam and tomato ketchup) followed by severe bouts of diarrhea. Sports are introduced early on (in my school before Sherwood, till class 7 you were only allowed to play carrom, ludo or chess maybe) and competition is cut throat (something that continues right till you pass out in class 12).

In Horsman Wing (‘horsy’ from now on), the first time you venture towards the small swimming pool, you expect lots of fun with splashing and screaming. Big blow to your expectations and happiness, the swimming coach is standing there with a 8 foot long stick shouting at a random kid to try and swim along the sides in an anti clockwise direction. The more adventurous and daring little brats were rewarded with a whack on the back, and all adventure and enthusiasm evaporated combined with an opening of the sphincter muscles. Of course, very rarely did one come to know about a boy peeing in the small pool, but going by the number of times I did it (mainly because I was didn’t want to miss out on the action by going to the toilets), I reckon 3 to 4 did it every time we were in there.

Horsy also involved a lot of fighting, some detective work (you tried to figure out who crapped in XYZ’s shoe in the night, and who ate ABC’s chocolates) and a lot of bickering over the most trivial of issues (I can say that only now, at the time they seemed to be of more importance than anything else on earth). The heroes and champs of the class would be those who were good at sports, seconded by the teachers’ favourites; these two groups invariable landed the plum jobs of class monitor and dorm monitor (positions of great importance, mind you, you got privy to staff politics, were allowed to come in late for dinner after locking the class rooms, and one word from you could earn an erring kid a sharp reprimand).

In class 5, our Math teacher, who was also the Junior School Headmistress, started a ‘Star Chart’. There was a big chart on the notice board with the entire class’s name written in alphabetical order, with space to put in the ‘stars’. If you did something good, like answered a difficult question, good behaviour or did your homework very well, you got a silver star. If you did something outstanding, like topped a difficult test, solved a problem which no one else could, or something similar, you got a much coveted gold star. Now the most important part, if you screwed up in class, you earned a black star. These would be awarded if you used used foul language (‘bloody’ was the foulest it got, and none knew what the word meant), if you scored poorly in a test, were caught talking or dreaming and couldn’t answer a question in class. Now, I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, but the guy with the highest number of black stars in 1996 was me, with a grand total of 45 black stars. The nearest competitor, Rohit Yadav was on 43, and we left the rest of the field behind, the third highest being something like 21. The yellow star holders were, obviously, immaterial.

A tale involving Horsman Wing cannot be complete without ‘Smiley Man’. We never got to know his real name, but this particular gent had been coming to Sherwood for almost the past 20 years (a very conservative estimate). With him he brought a box which contained packets of daal, candy, various namkeens and his famous smile. We’d get pocket money (a princely sum of 10 rupees) twice a week and his arrival was always eagerly awaited by almost 120 little boys. The chappus, who were the teachers-ass-licker types looked forward to the ‘Fruit Man’ s visits. They’d buy a bunch of flowers and gift it to Ma’am XYZ, ensuring a place in her good books.

The day I joined Sherwood, I got the roll number that would identify me for the rest of my stay there. Your name is not as important as your roll number. It is what you are know as and I was ‘roll number 318’. Even today if someone were to shout out that phrase, I’d instinctively respond, just like you do when your name is called out in a large gathering. I also got allotted a house - Little John (L. J. for short), our colour was yellow. For the next eight years, I cheered for the the LJ cricket, atheletics, badminton teams and was part of the LJ football, hockey and table tennis teams. 

Horsman Wing also made me an adept practitioner of the freestyle martial arts. I was constantly getting into fights and remember cutting open a classmate’s forehead by banging his face on the serrated edge of a large tin can. Knocking out another fellow (or at least he acted “knocked out”) got me my first “Yellow Card” in class 4. Three Yellow Cards = 1 Red Card = Explusion from the school.

A regular feature of the first year in school was diarrhea. It struck everyone and brought us to shame at one point or the other. My first “loosies” experience was basically a ninja attack. Went in the morning to the bogs to pee; farted while peeing, and there it was in my pyjamas. I had no idea why I’d just crapped my pants, specially since  the previous night, I’d felt none of the impending signs in the form of anal discomfort. Anyway, what was done was done, and now the most important job was to save face. So I walked back the most “normal walk” a seven year who has wet shit flowing down his thighs can walk. Once I got back to my dorm, I slyly took off the soiled stuff and tried to hide it in my dirty-clothes bag. 

Unfortunately, that didn’t work. If my memory serves me right, it was Saurabh Chawla, from two beds away, who smelt something shitty; saw the fugitive look on my face; put two and two together and made a mad dash to our Matron’s office. Asshole, it was okay if he’d just run and informed her, but for added effect he first shouted “Chee, Deswal has done kaka in his pyjama”. So there I was, standing next to my bed, adorned in shame, the entire dorm giving me the dirtiest looks that a collective of seven year olds can give, while I waited for the Matron to come.

She came, she smelt, she screwed her face in to a scowl, she pulled out her bamboo stick and used it to pick up the pyjama. Then she held it up, as if she were Sherlock Holmes who’d just found the final piece of the puzzle and was displaying it to the awestruck bystanders, and dumped the thing on the floor in front of my bed. I tell you, dear reader, I can feel the blood rush to my ears right now. The memory of that incident still makes me go red.

AND THEN THERE WAS THIS ONE TIME, WHEN THIS HAPPENED.

Yup, another bout of diarrhea. On this occasion, I knew it was coming. And this was right after lunch. So I ran to the Infirmary. Unfortunately, I still didn’t know what the loosies were actually called. So I told the Sister “my stomach’s hurting”. She gave me a pill and told me to gulp it down with water.

Dear reader, piece of advice: water does not induce immediate relief to a shaky anal opening, because water has no electrolytes. Therefore, don’t drink water when you’re fighting the crappy battle in public. 

Continuing with my tale of shit, well, I ran to the dorms from the Infirmary. I was wearing shorts. I lost the battle within seconds of ingesting the water. I left a trail of crap. Am going red right now. Seriously.

Most of us have, at one time or the other, wondered about the existence of God. I did too, and this while I was in an autorickshaw on the way to college. A little pondering and methinks I’ve kind of got it.

God is a lack of information. You see, dear reader, you’ll find yourself taking the name of God most often when there is not enough information for you to confidently predict something. Examples, the outcome of a closely matched game, a big job interview, when you intend to propose a relationship to someone and you’re not sure how they’ll react, and so on and so forth.

Most of the Roman and Greek gods were the gods of something that wasn’t predictable. The god of war, of love, of agriculture, etc. I’m sure the same holds true for the others too. In case of the one-god religions, there was a SPOC (Em Bee A \m/).

Now how did I stumble upon this little epiphany? I remembered that whenever I was in an aircraft and it was taking off, I could see people join their hands, close their eyes and mumble. Yet, no one ever does that when a train starts its journey. In the latter, the passengers are busy waving goodbye or chatting or arranging their stuff. Why does this happen? Because the variables in aircraft travel are far more than in train travel.

To validate my hypothesis, I did a quick dipstick survey of some friends and that confirmed it; they usually say a quick prayer when commencing air travel but never so when on rail. Another way to look at it is, a lot of the olden gods were about weather. Taking a personal example, Indian agricultural communities almost always have a prayer which is specially said for rain. However, that’s hardly ever used now. These days, you just switch on the TV and watch the weather forecasts.

Now, as we are able to gather and interpret increasing amounts of information in the world around us, will the usage of “God” reduce? Almost certainly. Will the usage of “God” come to a stop? No. There’s still way too much incomprehensible information floating around and some stuff just cannot be conclusively proven, like life-after-death.

This brings me to another point, should you trust/believe in God? One side of me says don’t rely too much on it. A strong “faith in God” means you might not have the incentive to control those variables of your life which you could if you tried hard enough, and which could lead to a much better standard of living for you.

The other side of me says you should, because believing that a greater force has your welfare in mind and is coordinating things so that life turns out well for you means you experience greater satisfaction with whatever you have, and worry less about the future.

Putting these two together, I’d say if you’re the ambitious kinds, say a quick prayer in the morning and then go out and get stuff done. If you’re just looking to be happy and are not really interested in the rat race, then yes, you should go to mountains, try meditation, maybe join the local chapter of your chosen religion and so on and so forth.

Edit: Greater minds have already covered the issue.

See http://biologos.org/questions/god-of-the-gaps and the image below.

I recently caught a good friend of mine sneaking in to the hostel at 3 AM in the morning. For the purposes of this post, let’s call him Aberle and only because it is a cool Austrian name. He was appropriately buzzed and was looking to tell someone the story of the night gone by. Being the good mate, I eagerly lent him both ears.

Aberle had been invited out to “dinner and drinks” by a lady friend of his. They hit the usual Park Street spots like Olypub & Someplace Else for alcohol, had enough to “make us sway but not fall”, forgot all about dinner and then headed in the direction of Tantra with the intention of “having some fun”. Before going on further, I am obligated to clarify that their’s is a completely platonic relationship, therefore, kindly wipe that smirk off your face.

So we have a dude and his female friend entering a dance club together, each looking to find someone of the opposite sex to hookup with for the night. Aberle goes first, while the girl takes up position as wingman.

1. Aberle spots hot 33+ lady standing with two firang friends. Aberle fancies himself a firang babe for the night.
2. Wingman lady friend understands Aberle’s isharas and saunters over to the multinational trio, asks for a smoke and then indulges in small talk.
3. Wingman friend is back and reports that lady is hot and her firang pals are bored with the men of Calcutta.
4. Aberle puts on his appropriately sexy cute-boy smile, puffs up his chest and makes his move. Ten minutes down the line, the firang babes are still bored with the men of Calcutta and Aberle in his drunken stupor figures he probably still has a chance with the 33+ hot lady.

Now this is where it gets interesting. Aberle is tasked with attracting the immediate attention of a lady who’s clearly very experienced when it comes to handling males who’re on an alcohol trip.

He steps closer to her; she leans in with an ear, half hoping today’s youth have come up with some interesting pick up lines. And that’s when he says…

“You’re beautiful.”

Yup, of all the strategic options and all the tactical executions in the world, our man Aberle decides to play the “Classic” card with the corny execution.

But please, hear it in her own words:

“That’s really sweet, thank you. I’ve been through your age & phase long ago, and am not really looking for anything right now.”

This is when I fell off the bed laughing and Aberle got a little pissed off. After about five minutes, when our centres-of-gravity were back in the correct places, we sat and made a 2x2 matrix of the entire situation (yeah, we’re MBA candidates, remember? The world is a 2x2 matrix for us.) 

This is what we came up with

If this works for you, kindly leave a comment :)

If it doesn’t work for you, you might as well vent, so kindly leave a comment :)

(Image courtesy The Brads, one of my favourite webcomics)

Have you ever felt like this after talking to a marketing professional, or after reading a report about the research done on brands, ads and social media campaigns?

Well, it happens to me all the time. Specially when someone comes up and says stuff like “urban, educated and socially connected consumers between 25 to 35 think we’re a very mature and trused brand”. This regular occurrence in MBA marketing classes, where there are lengthy presentations that discuss the clever ambush marketing tactics as executed by HUL against P&G or by Kingfisher against Jet, with GoAir jumping in on the fuckfest. These guys are the exact counterparts of the economists who love their graphs and mathematical equations for theories that have little proven use in the real world.

What’s the problem here? Just that ambush marketing isn’t about the consumer; it’s about tactical one-upmanship between marketers. How does the ad effect your target group, those who actually fly with your airline or buy your shampoo? Did anyone ask them what they thought or how it made them change their minds? In the end, these clever tricks end up in Internet meme dumps like ROFLIndia where people say “lolzzzz!! awesomest ad ever….kingfisher is still too expensive”.