“To this day, I would say that it was always my struggles which helped me push forward and dream big in life. I was born into a family which struggled financially to make ends meet. My father left my family consisting of a mother and a brother when I was still at school. And our mother went to great lengths to ensure to provide us with a safe abode for us.
Even when situations were dire, she never once complained to us rather, always gave us the hope that it would all work out in the end. My elder brother took up a job immediately after completing his diploma to help sustain the family. And when the time came for me to shoulder the responsibility of the family, I rose to the occasion without a second thought.
My first job was at an HR consultancy where I donned the hat of an office boy. I did everything from serving coffee to being the last person to close the office for a day. I have travelled to interviews with clients and helped them fill out job applications and sometimes even travelled a great distance to pass on their certificates which they would have forgotten to take along.
All of this for quite a meagre salary. Eventually, the company closed down and I was left jobless for a while. This is when I decided that I would start a company of my own – a cleaning service that delivered unparalleled service. I printed pamphlets and distributed them to all different areas individually. My first order was to clean a restroom for Rs.500. I still remember my ecstasy upon receiving that order. I bought the needed materials for the job and did an amazing job.
Slowly word spread around and I started to receive more orders from different places in the city. I used to take friends and assistants along and this went on for about two years before me deciding to quit it and start looking for a stable role in an organisation.
I started to apply for roles in HR management! I must have attended anywhere between 6 to 7 roles within a span of 2 months. My experience attending the interview at the 8th company defined my career path for me. I still remember that day very clearly. I was called in for an interview and when I went in, the interviewer seeing my resume, treated me with such dispassion and humiliation and deemed me fit to be an office boy who was worth no more than a salary less than Rs. 10K per month.
It was one of the worst experiences of my life and I was destroyed beyond imagination. They still offered the role to me but I would have to be an office boy! I walked home that day dejected and decided to make the best use of Google to crack the upcoming interviews. And fortune smiled at my hard work and I cracked the interview at one of the MNCs. The joy I felt that day when I was handed the offer letter knew no bounds!
For once in my life, I was given a job at a proper corporate office! Without a penny in my pocket, I ran all the way from the office of the interview to my home in ecstatic joy. From that point in time to now, I have worked my way up from being an HR executive to an HR Business partner. All this while, my passion for my work kept rising and rising and I was rewarded for my sincerity and dedication time and again!
It is so easy for all of us to hurl words of hurt. But we never know the damage it leaves behind. I know so many of them out there to face extreme dejection and give up, but if my story is any indication, I am here to urge everyone to use that dejection as fuel to empower themselves and fight even harder to prove the world wrong. No one has the power to make us feel inferior or less.
I have begun to speak about my journey in some colleges and schools as well to inspire everyone out there to take action and believe in themselves. The journey has just begun but there are many more miles to go.”