Who gets the exact realisation of the quality of a country’s education better? It is neither the academician nor the examiner. It is the person who interviews them for employment. Why? When they appear for an employment interview, they are at the peak of their preparedness and attentiveness.
We are blessed in that. In our official capacities as CEOs, COOs, Directors, Project Managers, HR and Finance executives of various companies, we have conducted over 1,50,000 job interviews. Besides this, we must have supervised, managed and taken major career decisions of more than 100,000 employees.
We witnessed people of high academic calibre and talents miserably fail – to find a job, retain a job, perform a job with dignity, and derive satisfaction and success. Their failures affect not only their companies but also their families peace. They take home less money. Seeing this, the youth is losing hope. The hopelessness is dragging them to alcoholism, drugs, and even suicide.
As successful professionals in our chosen fields, we decided to do our part. Mother Teresa’s advice looked apt, “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”
We put our collective industry experience into finding lasting solutions. We conducted the largest ethnographic survey on the Indian Educational System, did extensive research, and developed new technologies and methodologies to ensure we develop “things start as hopes and end up as habits” – the habits that breed and sustain success!
It took our 158-member team over six years to develop these game-changing concepts and products. We are happy that our efforts transform millions of lives.
From our studies, we realise most of our highly qualified professionals suffer from “unconscious incompetence” – they don’t know that they don’t know. Therefore the first step is to make them tactfully realise about their short-comings, and bring them to the state of “conscious incompetence”. That could generate a spark within and put fire in their belly. The journey to success begins there!
Dr. SURESH NAMBOOTHIRI MTech, MBA, PhD is a product design specialist – in automobiles, consumer electronics, home appliances, computers, telecommunication, multimedia technologies and Artificial Intelligence – with over 30 years of industry experience.
When he resigned from the corporate world to contribute to Indian Engineering Education he was Chief Operating Officer with TATA Group. He was part of the team that developed the first Indian car – Indica. He has designed and developed over 200 products, including washing machines, refrigerators, desktop and laptop computers, smartphones, and accessories – many of them for the first time in India. He has traveled to over 22 countries and closely worked with engineers from 8 countries.
He is a highly sought-after professional interviewer for senior positions in engineering and management for Indian and MNCs operating in India. The insights gathered from interviewing over 12,000 candidates made him investigate and research the state of Indian Education, particularly in Engineering Education. The findings eventually led him to associate with a global team of 158 industry professionals and two Ivy-league universities for a pan-India ethnographic survey for un-earthing root causes and finding sustainable solutions.
Dr. Suresh Namboothiri has co-founded two companies: Shillibear Coaches Private Limited – India’s first Coach builder with Computer Simulated All Steel Body, and Espoir Technologies Private Limited – Education Innovation Organisation. He conducts Faculty Development Programmes in the topics of Outcome Based Education, Critical and Creative Thinking, Pedagogical Excellence, and Artificial Intelligence, etc. He is currently collaborating with HEIs like IITs and NITs and other premium Institutions for building start-up & entrepreneurship culture in students. He is a passionate, result oriented mentor for students, teachers, researchers and executives.
He is a B. Tech (Mechanical), MTech (Production Engineering), and MBA (New Product Development). His PhD research subject is “Cognitive Rigour Requirement for Start-up & Entrepreneurship.”
e-mail: suresh@namboothiri.in
