SELLING HOURS
Before you continue to read this I would like to state a few
things which I would like to request you to keep in mind!
- I barely passed my
O-Levels and do NOT have a college degree (had a party for four years in
Florida) so this blog is based on common sense.
- As I don’t have a
graduation the only thing I am fit to be hired as is a salesman – and oddly
enough I REALLY love it!
- People run companies Brand
names don’t
Ever since Pakistan became conveniently democratic what has
happened is that licenses have been bought and sold like mad for any or every
kind of a business available. Today amongst
some of those most lucrative business verticals is the Education vertical. In the 1990’s so many colleges and so called
universities popped up that it did three things.
- Gave the masses a cheaper
option
- Broke the IBA & LUMS oligopoly
for being the only respectable place to go to for a college education
- The focus on further education
was not limited to BBA / B-Com, Accounting & Medicine only… New paths
of enlightenment took the preferred choice amongst the most commonly loved
and out of those the most commonly known today are IT, HR, and Arts &
Humanities.
However, this blog / article is NOT on education it is about
HR practices and why I being a salesman I am writing about HR when I have
nothing to do in HR and am more so even not educated in HR. Here are my reasons. In order to understand
this you need to think as I do so here is a situation, read on…
Imagine you are a CEO of any Multinational in Pakistan. You wake up, polish your shoes, iron and wear
your Ralph Lauren Shirt and press your own Hugo Boss Suit. Come down make your
own breakfast, then wash your dishes and go to your fancy office provided BMW 7
series with your 4 kids in the car and your office bag. On the way you get a
flat tyre and then take off your coat and change it whilst answering all your
calls on the cellphone in the 11am Karachi Sun and eventually after dropping
your kids late to school you get to the office.
Once there you collect your mail from the reception power up
your laptop and head to the pantry to make a cup of coffee only to return
finding 20 unwanted people banging at your door for cheques. So you stop doing it all after wondering
where the security guard went and walk to finance, make the cheque find the stamp
and eventually hand it over. Now you
have lunch so you go to the pantry warm up your home made sandwich and the
first cup of coffee eat it quickly and then wash your plates and go back to
your desk to discover another nightmare has occurred in the form of 10 more
people who you really could not and did not want to deal with. I will stop here…
The point I was trying to make here is that “PEOPLE RUN
COMPANIES – NOT BRAND NAMES” so we need to understand and respect each and
every member of our business. It does
not matter if we have a parchoon ki dukaan or we run a billion dollar MNC bank
we need to understand that people are extremely important especially our very
lower staff towards whom we are very unforgiving and consider to be cattle
which we can throw away. We need to
respect everyone.
Now going back to Education – whilst the industry boomed and
colleges printed degrees by the billions it made the workplace realize that
there were cheaper options available and really messed up the job market. More supply at a cheaper rate vs. the same
demand and that too in an unstable and diminishing economy where the average
working days in the year were only seventy to ninety (if we were lucky). As an Islamic republic if you count every
weekend (two days) and then all the Islamic Holidays and then add all the days
that are unexpectedly counted as “Na Maloom Afraad Holidays” you will see that
the numbers do add up to what I was saying… Take 2012 for example…
When someone who has had a (for example) manufacturing concern
and has been running it for the past 3 decades with stability under these
circumstances their priority is to sustain stability. From my knowledge I do not know any old
stable business that has decided to be so bold to try to take any new risks in the
form of any investment where their guaranteed stable income would become insecure
or they would not be able to sustain their professional families. So when one looks at hiring the IBA &
LUMS graduates are at a loss because nobody in Pakistan wants a fresh textbook
smart graduate to walk in the door and tell them how to run their business that
they have run beautifully for the past 30 years… They simply cannot risk it. Also now they have cheaper options that come
from the likes of colleges who are willing to start in less than 20,000/- and
that also includes mobile and fuel expenses.
When we work we sell our most precious commodity which is
time… Some of us get for 15 minutes of our time (doctors) some monthly (most of
us and some of us periodically – every three months (architects) But seeing
that it takes people to run companies the HR field trying to fill that need has
used everything possible to do just that in the form of pop up HR consultancies
to web portals (technology) etc. Today
there are more HR companies in Karachi that promise some form of employment
from the same pool of people.
The HR industry has become a joke because if one looks at
DAWN or the NEWS today on a Sunday the jobs classifieds is almost
finished. In the 90’s it was the most
successful business unit for the Jang Group and Herald Publishing. Most HR Consultants do not consider the fact
that their clients entire business needs to be understood also everyone drops cliché’s
like ‘we don’t search the web” or “we are head hunting specialists” In this field
I know only one such lady that works independently but has the ability to
understand the needs of any organization and not waste its time and oddly
enough 90% of the times she delivers extremely good results. This HR professional is brilliant because (this
article is not about this one woman and please note that she HAS NEVER gotten
me a job EVER) she has a track record for delivering the most sought after
human resource in the country.
In the past 3 years I have known her to have had a hand in
making many people in top tier to lower masses take the plunge and leave an
organization after 15 years of service because they invested intelligence and
convinced them that where they would be in the future was very benefitting to
not only the organization but also promised and ensured the human resource
would not be a number or treated like a piece of meat once the cattle was
slaughtered. Since I have rambled on about
“thIS one woman” I think I should tell you about one lady that I professionally
& personally respect immensely Ms. Nasira Hoori. Now enough about her let’s focus further on
the topic.
Today the HR field (consultants) only looks at numbers (what
they will get in the form of revenue) most of the consultants do not even
realize that the wrong person hired can destroy and entire organization. Two examples which I would like to present
that have happened in front of me. The first is where I have seen an entire
court case get thrown out of the window because the contract (Service Level
Agreement) drafted by the law firm had a full stop where there should have been
a comma. This oversight cost the entire
organization such a huge loss in Pakistan that the FBR almost broke them. Bear in mind this is a multinational FMCG I am
talking about. The second is when a
technology company hired a textbook smart developer as a cheap resource for its
client that was a Telco. This guy to
prove he was asset wrote the code for an additional software to be added on to
a SAP module and due to not having enough experience destroyed the entire financial
history and archives of the client.
HR is a very sensitive field and today who we choose to help
us support our endeavors to feed our professional families is extremely
critical. We need to consider our
options very carefully and not give business in the form of jobs or contracts on
references. It is so advisable to try
and maintain the current human resource as they are readily trainable and have
a firm back ground. The problem with
hiring new people is that the 90 day period is ridiculous because it is a
honeymoon where everyone is on their best behavior. Time brings out the true colors in any
relationship and once the insecurities are gone a new hire can actually have a
free mind to be able to learn the culture of any organization. So actually this new resource becomes
productive after about 180 days of being hired. According to me I believe that
any organization that takes away the HR powers from its CEO & Board of
Directors and allows it the ability to function independently with any
interference whatsoever is a place I would like to call home.
I have physically witnessed tons of organizations where I
have been contracting to sell training on how to sell where one witnesses corporate
feudalism. I have been on sessions in
SEA where I witnessed how Relationship Managers would serve their Branch
Managers who would entertain their regional managers with special presents in
Bangkok hoping to get a fantastic appraisal.
All of a sudden I realized that words like “Town Hall” & “retreats”
were nothing other than a formal display where one say how someone who had a
salary of 50,000 would spend (invest) in Johnny Walker, & Durex immensely.
When someone in Pakistan says that it is a man’s world
ironically that is extremely true, because being The Islamic republic of Pakistan
under Sharia Law if a woman were to be unfairly treated or a victim of a heinous
crime she would require 4 witnesses who actually saw the act before she got
justice. (I am referring to before the
word democracy became the war cry for any politician.) Today it’s all over
social media and when the world has witnessed such an act and verified it she
suffers immense humiliation and if she is lucky she actually might not get
flogged for allowing it to happen.
Why did I go off on a tangent about women’s rights? Well it
is very relevant. I was working in an
office where we had halls and being technology we only had developers or
salesmen. To sell technology is
ridiculously difficult because it is not tangible and results show up much
later after implementation. When selling
technology one needs clarity and peace and quiet to focus on what they have to
convince someone to buy. I was in sales
and I did not have any peace and quiet because 85% of the developers &
gamers I know were and still are hard core fundo’s who found technology to be
the best form of an answer to a profession because it is halal and there is no
sooth involved. Also most gamers are developers whilst all developers are
gamers. Now these chaps have ego’s
because it is true without them the world would not function (technology world)
and boy are they rude loud and noisy.
Basically a law unto themselves I was at logger heads with them and I
had to build a team of people for sales.
I sat and thought and in the stack of CV’s eliminated each and every
male no matter how competent they were.
I hired four girls who were professional and had a grip on our
religion. Within minutes of the announcement
of the news of their hiring there was complete silence. Each and every developer the next day was
smelling nice had combed his hair and also the beard. There was silence in the
entire hall and people actually started being extremely polite and
courteous. It was a strategic gamble I
took and as I had hired them as support staff I hit way over my numbers that I
had committed immensely. After that day
my contractual employer who is my client today never questioned my ability of
not having a degree. (These ladies working for me were convinced by a trusted friend
to join the organization who was in the HR field – Today I am happy to say that
each and every one of my direct reports are heading their own business units in
the technology field)
I have gone on long enough in my ramblings but I would like
to end with the statement that any organization should outsource recruiting /
hiring or whatever you call it to a professional who has the ability to understand
your needs as well as your business as a whole.
Today you need a trusted confidant who can externally give you an
objective look at how to restructure your most precious asset which is “people”
and will respect your time. Today it is
extremely hard to find a HR consultant who is a part of the solution and will
not add to the problems you already have by eating away your most precious commodity
which is time.
Let's be professional friends - (please see my reccomendations) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amynaghulamali/
If you would like a direct FREE consultation please contact me on - amyn@ghulamalis.com
