Training

Gone are the days when people spent decades with a company and moved through ranks and then the company took care to ensure the employee was trained for the next role, invested in getting them up to speed and the HR team probably had a big role alongwith the team in which you worked to ensure this happened. But with shortening spans of employment tenure, people shifting across different organisations and careers I am sure it is a nightmare for an organisational HR to take care of this. The skill sets are different, they are measured and recorded of where you stack up in a different way, the record of how you stacked up in the past place is never available, so IMHO training is being neglected in big manner or is being delivered in a way which is inherently flawed and badly targeted.

In my short career I have been with 2 large organisations and 1 small upcoming business, changed 3 careers and don't remember when I was trained for a specific skill set. My learning has been on the job mostly and on the softer skills - its training by watching your boss- more an apprentice model. So if you got a great boss and you could watch and pick up the skill, you honed yourself well. I was lucky I had some incredible bosses and picked decent selling skills, client management skills and people management skills. I am a reluctant cold caller and hate making a sales call on the phone but put me in front of a client and I will breeze through.

Every year in the offsite, during the appraisal discussion I have fought, pleaded, cribbed, requested for more training in areas where I feel a need - it just doesn't come through. I think its to do with the growth in the market, then business couldn't think of training people -you had to execute and the last 1 year we were surviving. We could have trained and made our people ready but we didn't know if we needed them then, if we could hold them or they would stay when things turned around - so we didn't train.

Now I have decided I have to tackle this myself - depending on the company is stupid. The technical skills are the easiest to capture although India is still way behind on offering specific short term courses which are friendly for working executives at a good time payoff. I am more scared/ worried/ occupied of where I can get those softer skill sets. I need a good feedback to understand shortfalls - a self appraisal should always be backed up by a 3rd eye. Post the identification, I am unsure of how to get them. I have written in the past about getting a mentor but I am unable to put into practice.

This is something I need to crack, I have specific requirements of areas I need to build on for the time I intend to be within the corporate world and then as an entrepreneur. Any ideas are welcome and leads appreciated. Will update once I have a game plan on this.