The Dark Side of Adding Value to Ourselves

India is no doubt growing at an amazing pace and so are its people. It is one of the youngest nations in the world in terms of average age group of the population (India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35).

You must be wondering, “Why is he quoting so many statistics and stating what we all know very well?” The point is that with this kind of population there is also a great competition in all fields, may it be jobs, admission into schools and colleges and so forth; Students building out CV’s, trying to work in dozens of places, doing internships way before they even pass out.

We all know there are now a multitude of internship sites enticing students. Same goes for companles and startups who make the most out of this by employing the youth in return for “experience certificates”.

I’m not against this culture per se; it’s actually a good environment for startups and also benefits everyone in the process. But what really ticks me off is that these internships are becoming a joke. Students sign up for a dozen of these internships to build out their cv’s without gaining any real experience or doing much work.

I’ve been taking in many applications for internships from 100’s of students in the past 1-2 months. I’ve received dozens of CV’s, LinkedIn profiles and much more. What I see in most of these profiles as experience is “Internship at XYZ” and many times working at 3-5 places simultaneously.

Now you might be a master at multi tasking but I don’t see how any one can balance a full time college along with a dozen internships. The only way I see it is that you are not adding any value to the company you are working for. It’s all a show to build out a CV. And again there is rarely a description of what they have done or achieved at the company, all that counts is that you are doing an internship? I don’t think so.

I’d rather hire someone who demonstrates some real work or achievement at a previous company or in their college/school. Heck I’d rather hire someone willing to learn on the job and work hard instead of the dozens with a ginormous CV.

So I think it’s time to rethink your strategy. Building out a CV of this kind is useless in my opinion. To stand out of the crowd, you’d better do something that stands out too, rather than follow the herd mentality and blindly build a bland CV like the rest.

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