Handling People

As a member of the placement co-ordination committee, one of the primary functions that I must perform involves handling people. All kinds of them. The students, the visiting executives from companies, my colleagues in the committee and scores of others that are directly and indirectly party to the process. It truly is an exercise in crisis management. In the sense that not only is one expected to manoeuvre through crises that crop up, but take pre-emptive and preventive action against ones that we cannot afford.

People drive the placement procedure. Across the globe, as organizations look to hire talent, they design strategies to get the best people to work for them. The Placement Co-ordination office is the singular point-of-contact between the recruiters and their prospective employees. There's people involved on both sides and when you're the medium of exchange, you'd better be good at handling them.

An oft-repeated but seldom comprehended fact is that no two individuals are the same. As a natural consequence of this, you certainly can't hope to have a single interaction strategy for everyone. It is something that must be done on a case-by-case basis, which is what makes the task all the more exciting, albeit challenging. To add to that you must multi-task. You are constrained for time and resources and yet you must employ both equitably to achieve an optimum level of satisfaction for both the students and the companies.

Right since the time I entered junior school, my father has impressed upon me the importance of judging people. If you're able to judge an individual accurately within a narrow margin of error, on first impression, more than half your job is done. When you begin to appreciate what a person needs and how he may behave in a given situation, you have the advantage. This is when you know you can handle the man. After all most people are predictable. When you've identified and accounted for definite patterns in their behaviour, you're in the zone.

As most of the important things in life, people management is a never-ending lesson that must be updated on a continuous and regular basis. In the dynamic world that we live in, change is the only constant. Situations change and as a natural sympathetic reaction, people change. As a sincere learner one must adapt to and embrace change.

If I must point out the single most important thing I've learnt during the past week, it's got to be the imortance of the smile. Cliched as it sounds, the smile is one of the most potent weapons at one's disposal. It's a weapon of mass placation. Someone once rightly said, "I thought I'd never make it through the tough times. Then you smiled, and I smiled.... and all the rest was easy"