Bad Leaders

If good people escape and shy away from leading, any kind of person takes the lead. In general, Bangladesh is full of two kinds of people. Corrupt doers and escapist beholders.

Certification, or Not?

Any kind of certification tries to assure a minimum standard of the certificate holder. 

To get the certificate, you shall have to go through their process. Now, the problem is you can go through their process, get the certificate, without achieving the minimum standard.

How? there are many ways. You can dumbly memorize the stuff and reproduce in the exam, you can cheat, you can read the topic but still hate it and try to forget it after exam. In other words you get the certification without passion or love for the subject; so, eventually you don't relate it to your real/work life. You forget your learning soon and cannot utilize it in your life.

Learning from real life is always long lasting, although the process is slower than learning from knowledge acquired by other people. So, a mix of both of them is a good idea. Certification process in most cases emphasize on learning from documented knowledge, and undervalues learning from real life.

I blatantly dare to say that you can actually get an A in your graduation without learning almost nothing that you can contribute to your life. Well, if you wanted you could both take the learning and get an A, too.

In almost no subject, certificate is the ultimate thing. There are smart certificate holders, and there are dumb certificate holders. And usually the  exceptionally smartest ppl don't hold a certificate. That's because they don't need one, they think that's wastage of time and soon they reach to a level from where they can certify other ppl -- officially or unofficially :). That's why probably they invented the idea of honorary degree. Bill Gates got one from Harvard.

So, why ppl still run for and ask for certification?

Well, this is the next best thing to surely know someone as good or bad.

Not every dropout become Bill Gates.

Right, but not every phd founds Google either.

So, it must be something else, not certification. The X- factor of success is beyond the scope of certification.

Water for a Dead Hero, None for Lives

Every morning one truck full of water is wasted to wash the road and pavement in front of Bangabandhu Museum (Dhanmondi 32 - old).

 

I am sure, had Sheikh Mujibur Rahman been alive, he wouldn't like this squandering while hundreds of thousands of people in many areas in Dhaka are not getting  a drop of running water for months.

My Dream

I dream to build a school like this here in Bangladesh.

Anyone to join hands?

I am frustrated

I am frustrated to know so much I am endowed with and so little I give back.

 

I am probably among the top 5% gifted people in Bangladesh. Probably among the top 10% among the world. Well, that’s what is my guesstimate. But, that’s a scarily huge responsibility!

 

I don’t deserve this if I can’t give back enough. Many of us don’t deserve this.

 

We are the creme de la creme of Bangladesh at the point of building a prosperous country. And still we are, or at least I am yet to fix the goal, determine the duties.

 

Even frustration is not an excuse.

Which Private University is Good for Business Schooling in Bangladesh?

One of friends wanted to admit his ‘near and dear’ one to a private university and asked my suggestion. And I replied as below:

Apart from IBA, DU, JU, KU, NSU, Brac University, IUB, AIUB and East West studying in any other universities is sheer wastage of time, energy and money.

I would grade Presidency, Asian, World, SouthEast, Stamford etc. as 'C' category business schools. There are people who already have a good job and want to buy a certificate to add an MBA degree in their CVs to justify their promotion. The 'C' category degree only makes sense to them.

In the 'C' category universities, it is actually possible to get a degree with good standing without learning anything (figuratively). You get 'suggestions' before exams and you can cheat in your exams.

This does not imply all 'C' category university graduates are incompetent. There are some, who are competent business professionals, but that is not because they studied in those universities. They are good by their own experience and interest to learn.

Those universities don't guarantee any standard at all.

This is my opinion based on my perception. I didn't check all the graduates from all the private universities, but in my career I came across a few. And I am afraid most of the employers share similar perception as I do.

So, ask your near and dear one to aim for East West or better ones.

And if s/he thinks s/he can't do that. Ask her to try something else. Not everyone needs to be business graduate. There is BA in advertising offered in AIUB for example. There are graphics designing, fashion designing, web designing, bank management, personnel management, development studies... offered by many institutions. So many new things are coming and we need more of them. We don't need another dumb 'business graduate' from a C category university. Ask her to be a big fish in a small pond instead.

How Important are References for Getting a Job in Bangladesh?

There is a myth, in Bangladesh you won’t get a job without references.

I strongly disagree with this. Professional qualification and achievement come first, reference is checked at the very end. Everyone has that kind of reference if she is not lying on her CV.

Only reference isn't going to give you a good job.

There are exceptions. For unskilled labor i.e. for very unimportant roles, where anyone can do the job and not much is expected from the position - reference play an important role. Entry level govt. job, clerical job in banks, entry level programmer maybe who is expected to do coding without any tentative succession plan in place - are this kind of jobs.

It's very simple. If I have a company of my own, I won't hire my brother in the position of Business Development Manager or  CTO if he doesn't have any experience or track record of success. Business needs success, and I will only hire someone who has the most probability to bring me that.

Well, If my aunt request me a lot, I will probably consider hiring my cousin as an Assistant Administrative

Officer. Low risk, low expectation and low pay, too. 

So, if you want to break the vicious circle of references, be a high achiever, be visible. You can do that right from your own position. Internet, for example, is a wonderful tool to make yourself visible in the corporate radar. Make your own reference.

Recently one of my colleagues got a high paying job recently. The employer found him in the internet; read his blog. There are numerous examples of this kind.

I have a hypothesis. After five years, say from 2015 the employers will not ask for your CV, they will ask for relevant URLs. URLs of your LinkedIn address, blog address, published CV, published projects, contribution to the communities, personal websites etc. Employers will search on google to check your background. If you are not visible in www, you are nobody.

Sill a hypothesis, though :)

P.S.: Last 12 years, I worked for four companies of varying sizes ranged from 17 persons to 5000. References didn't work for me.