We just wrapped up our first community meet in Kochi and it couldn’t have been better. It is always exciting to talk to the community and get to know their dreams, aspirations and expectations. Each city is unique in its own way and Kochi, I must admit had the most interesting bunch of 25 women; from image consultants to entrepreneurs to stay-at-home-moms & teachers – the meet had a very vibrant audience.
We started off with Anish Aravind, Principal Consultant, SS consulting sharing his 16 years of experience as an HR professional. He shared great tips for people coming back to work:
For instance,
1) Stay updated
2) Take psychometric tests to access your skills and figure out what works best
3) Keep your social and SHEROES profile updated, you never know someone might hire you after looking at that
4) Communicate well
Anish also happens to be a work-from-home dad and spoke about how companies need to improve their assessment of work from home employees. Although being in HR, he feels work from home professionals don’t take their work seriously and the shift needs to be from both sides.
Our second speaker was the very cool Bhadra B, currently the Joint Director at TiE Kerala and Ex-Deputy Mayor of Kochi. Her talk was more centric to the entrepreneurs in the house and she encouraged everyone to take the plunge. According to her there are abundant opportunities and there is no dearth, women aren’t aware and need forums like SHEROES meets to tap these opportunities.
Post this session, the entire group shared their stories and experiences, some had questions for us. A very interesting insight that came out of this meet was about people thinking that 'not speaking English' was a barrier. They felt that it makes it harder for them to find jobs. What do you think, does language really matter?
Thank you Kochi and Nasscom for the warmth and a great meet, we will be back soon. And folks don’t miss the action in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Indore – we will be in these cities in June.