Colloquia: March 13, 2007, Mr Pradeep Menon
Executive Vice President and Director - Operations for Quadrant Risk Management International
Careers and Challenges in the Field of IT Consultancy
An ASB alumnus Mr. Pradeep Menon addressed 120 students of the first year MBA students on “Careers and Challenges in the Field of IT Consultancy” on March 13, 2007.
He enthusiastically talked about how with a humble start as an employee in a start- up company in the year 2000, today he is the Executive Vice President and Director- Operations for Quadrant Risk Management International in the Middle East. He emphasized one thing throughout his talk, no job is big or small, but it’s how you perceive it. What is required is to always keep the big picture in mind; otherwise you will be sucked into the meaningless drudge of corporate life from where there is no way out. It is important to have a very clear idea of where your strengths and competencies lie and analyze as to which job would eventually exploit your strength to the maximum. One should not lose focus and should keep positioning himself/herself frequently to make sure that one doesn’t lose track. Very rarely does anyone get the right job right in the beginning. It’s a process of climbing the ladder to reach your ultimate goal. One should keep trying to get recognition internally but if it does not happen one should go ahead and get one’s work published in various magazines and journals to get external recognition. Once external recognition is received internal recognition will follow. Instead of doing the necessary most people either keep complaining about the job they are doing, or some get so caught up in the day- to- day work life that they lose track of the big picture they had painted and get sucked into the corporate work life. You end up being nothing more than a frustrated employee if in your mind you are not clear about what exactly you want.
When we students asked him which companies should one look at for summers, he said that big brand names are always preferred by everyone but it’s the small/startup companies which give you mileage, as there are tremendous opportunities for exponential growth. It is always seen that people who work hard and take up challenging roles early in their career, gain an advantage and eventually reap the benefits of their hard work later in life. “Hard Work Always Pays, if Smartly Done.” Much hard work is possible only in the early parts of your career as responsibilities are low, there is more time to experiment with various career options and decide on the most leveraging one.
Addressing some of the queries of the students regarding the various supplementary certifications on risk management, he talked briefly about Global Risk Management and Personal Risk Management. Also he talked about the latest developments in IT in terms of IT’s convergence with Finance. How IT has become a facilitating tool for various financial operations in terms of developing cost models to calculate ROI on new technology investments in an organization. He parted with some good news for those of us who were interested in Systems and Finance saying that there is a dearth of professionals in this field, giving rise to a whole new range of opportunities in IT.
By,
Ajit Mohan
Megha Agarwal
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