“If I had learnt anything from a decade of thriving in the corporate, it is this – never hesitate to ask for what you want! At the very least, the answer would be a no and it is up to you to decide how you take it. I would even go on to add that, it is this very mindset which has now landed me in a senior leadership position with one of the largest organizations in the IT industry with the responsibilities of a multi-million $ portfolio, the role that I have come to love at a very young age!
Growing up in a fairly normal middle class household equipped me with few essential life skills which have, in turn, helped me scale up the corporate career! Like any other millennial of this age, I went through the usual route of school and engineering shortly after which, I entered into the iron gates of the corporate world!
But what happened after that is what stands out in my life. As a software engineer, my role was to develop software for different client requirements. Two years into the job, I threw up my hands and started looking for a change. When you can’t bring yourself to like the work you do, there is absolutely no point in pretending.
Using my contacts within the workplace, I started speaking to people who then connected me to roles within the organization. This went on for a while and here, I would like to add that I had some amazing mentors who coached me and guided me through this phase of fitting in!
Finally, when an opportunity opened up for hosting a very important conclave, I volunteered to go the extra mile to host the conclave at Mumbai where it lead me to work closely with one of the officials from the senior management!
And the rest is history, as they say! This person eventually started to rope me in for all future engagements now that the trust and confidence have been established. He coached me further to help me move to a position based out of New Jersey, USA and eventually saw me through the end when he had to leave the organization!
After coming to the US, after a series of unlearning and unravelling the conditioning, I won the best salesperson of the year award after winning a million-dollar deal with a client where the business was dormant for the most part. The cherry on the top is that I was the youngest in the history of the company to have received this award.
Most of the times I’m also the youngest in any leadership council working on important strategic initiatives with the senior management. It is true what they say about compromises when taking on bigger responsibilities. But when you grow to love what you do, the responsibility doesn’t seem like one and you strive to outdo yourself each and every time!”. The key is to remember to never get complacent, to keep challenging yourself with new responsibilities for beautiful things will unfold! Every 2-3 years I wanted to do something more and wanted to take up new challenging responsibilities and that’s what kept me going and success followed every single time.”