“Soft” skills

My first term ended a few days back and I am back to my hometown for about a week. In the final class for each subject, the instructors generally deal with a topic which is close to their heart and which they have not touched for the entire term. These give fundas away from academics, fundas of life. The theme running across all of them is to respect your personal life and not just get swayed away in your career or in your quest for money. The message was also to look beyond what was taught as part of the curriculum and think about the people you would be dealing with, both in work and personal life.

In my posts, I try to be ordered and present a structured flow of thought. But as a friend commented on one of my recent posts, “life does not have flowcharts in store for us”. And so I many a times digress a lot (This is also the reason why I am not able to find a suitable heading for my posts). I just write things which I have in my mind, and so, please bear with me.

I always remember a few quotes from the movie Good Will Hunting

1. Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself.

2. She is not perfect. You are not perfect. The question is whether or not you are perfect for each other.

For some, the latter one can also be interpreted as

She is perfect. But you are not perfect for each other.

These points actually say a lot, and are applicable in varied domains. One applicability is the context in which it was mentioned in the movie. It is said that love is blind and nobody knows when it happens. But one needs to be careful as the idea of being perfect for each other (some might like to include their families etc. in their definition of each other) need to be given a thought.

The other applicability can be in organizations. An interviewer might like a candidate a lot on a standalone basis. But whether he is good enough to be offered a job does not just depend on this. It involves looking at the candidate from the company’s perspective. Hence, if a company cannot afford to lose its employees in the first few years of their term, a potential employee who has ambitions of studying sometime in the near future may not make them an ideal pair (though on individual basis, the candidate may have been the best of the picks). So, the same interviewer should select or reject a candidate depending on the company the recruitment is being done for.

I feel that the above issue is very important in both the contexts mentioned above. You might have some short term benefits by ignoring this issue but in the long term, I suppose you would be better off thinking it through.