GreyB’s Buddy program – A guiding light for the budding careers
This week a lot of cool and talented people joined our GreyB family straight outta college.
Remember what it was like, your transition from college to a job?
The knot in the gut, the heart throbbing, and the brain exploding with a thousand questions. Wishing to see one familiar face you can rely on. Almost similar to the transition from school to college right? A new place, so many new faces, and then there’s one person- a senior, a super senior, a buddy, a guardian in the crowd that you find and stick with for the rest of your college years. Your go-to person.
Finding that one person in the office is a tad bit difficult, especially when you’re meeting them on the laptop screens.
So with the heartiest welcome, the laptop faces also received an email from Pooja Sehgal, HR at GreyB. An email that rather came as a comfort to the disquieted minds.
What was it about? Let’s read in Pooja’s words who is our dear HR at GreyB.
SUB: Guardians of GreyB – Buddy Program
Pooja Sehgal
Sr. Manager HR
Hi Folks –
This is a juncture where you all are transitioning from a college environment and getting exposed to the work culture. You will have expectations. And while a lot of these expectations will be fulfilled as you move ahead in your careers – a few will be shattered too. I still vividly remember the day of my admission to B. Tech. Finding so many people going through the same emotions, having passed through similar stages of examinations and evaluations to reach an institution. A sense of achievement (or disappointments) on everyone’s faces. Joining your first job is very similar. It marks the beginning of how your professional personality will be shaped.
Once you have spent some time in the college, you will always find a few people (batch-mates/seniors/pass-outs/faculty – sometimes siblings/parents) who over the years of college become your go-to folks for discussing any situations you are embroiled in. It doesn’t matter who they are. The common traits among all these folks are that they will be open to listening to you. And will have enough exposure as well as experience to know about your situations. Because more often than not they’d have gone through the same situations or observed others going through them. Things that appeared to be huge and serious situations suddenly become explainable after talking to them. You always get out of conversations with them feeling light-headed and a little less serious about the situation you discussed.
They don’t do your assignments for you. They tell you how they handled such situations. Neither would they tell you how to get into your dream companies. They tell you how somebody they knew smartly went into their dream companies. Nor would they solve your problems for you. But they do let you know the 10 ways it can be solved based on their experience. Sometimes, all they do is listen to you without any suggestions on how to tackle it. These are the people who are open-minded enough to not judge you or your situations – but understand or relate to them.
We all need such people in our lives.
Having such people in your professional life is always advantageous. They are shortcuts (or ladders) that can save you going through things the hard way. And even if you go the hard way, they can help you go through it with more understanding. More importantly, they do not have a direct stake in your lives, your successes, or your failures – they are impartial about sharing knowledge and that makes any knowledge coming out of them unbiased.
At GreyB, you have mentors or project managers, who do the same things. They teach you the trick of the trade that you are in. They are the people who have most recently been through the same processes and experiences that you are going to go through. But they do have stakes in your success and failures.
There are others who have gone through such experiences and so much more a long time ago and are now far removed from the actual work you are doing. They are at a stage where they can be the go-to person to help you realize the best self of who you want to be. And they are not your managers, they will have genuine unbiased suggestions on your situations. They are the Guardians of GreyB and its work culture.
Although GreyB does not have an environment where your communication is limited by hierarchy. However, sometimes there is still a shyness in you to approach such people for the types of situations you are in. To kill this shyness, and formally open this channel where you can talk to your go-to person directly, we are introducing this Guardians of GreyB program. You will each be introduced to one such person who can be your guiding light in your budding careers. You can take advantage of such people to understand ways of adjusting to the work culture, to understand how rapid success can be achieved, to get out of situations that pressurize you mentally – and most importantly who will not be hesitant to share their knowledge and experiences, however small that may be.
The trick is, you have to find the best way to use their exposure in your favor.
You all are invited this Thursday, Feb 10 where I will tell you more about the program and who would be your Buddy’s.
Kind Regards,
Pooja
No matter where we go or what we become, there’s always someone who’s been there and done that. Someone who can tell you that they have put their hands in that fire and burned badly. Someone who can tell you that the steps you see in front will lead you to success if you can follow through.
There may be no shortcuts to success, or to learning, but there sure are experiences that can put you on a fast track. And may I just say, if you find someone with those experiences you better walk with them until the end.
