Action plan for career growth, strengths and weaknesses.

By understanding my past events in my life, and to produce an action plan for my future career growth by analyzing my strengths and weaknesses is my aim of writing this report. This report will have a good balance of my personal and professional lives. By taking few psychometric tests I am able to understand more about my strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.

INTRODUCTION

I was born on 18th May 1980 in Bangalore which is the capital of Karnataka, India. I have been in Bangalore for thirty years now, I belong to Hindu traditional family; I was born to Shiva Prasad and Manjula Prasad. I have two elder sisters, Mrs. Geetha Goud and Mrs. Sharada Satish and one younger sister Mrs. Nandini Sujan. Since I am the only son in the family my parents love me the most which has made me notorious. I was very close to my mother in my childhood; I was very scared of my father since he wanted to me to learn discipline.

My father studied mechanical engineering in BMS College, Bangalore. After his studies he started his own business, in 1960 he started a travel agency, he started the company with one bus. Today he owns more than 50 buses; we have main office in Bangalore. We run few buses to large scale industries, few other to local tourist spot in the city and about ten other buses go the different school in the city. My grandfather was a member of the State legislative assembly for fifteen years.

My mother hails from a very educated family; my mother’s father was an advocate who actively practiced for more than forty years. My mother is a science graduate and a house maker. My first sister is married and she is currently working for the Australian government in Melbourne and her husband is a professor in RMIT University. My second sister is married and she is a Professor in Jain College for management studies and her husband VP Corporate Stategy- Nauvata Engineering. My youngest sister is a housewife and her husband is a chartered accountant working for UB group. All my sisters are having two sons and whenever I get time, I love to spend my time with my nephews.

EDUCATION LIFE

The Home school (name of my first school) was very close to my house; here I studied my primary school (up to 4th standard). Later, I moved to Vijaya high school, Bangalore, India which was under State Syllabus (SSLC). My parents used to encourage me in sports and education; in my primary school days I was very naughty with my teachers having a tough time to control me in the class. My teachers knew that if I put in a little hard work, I would do very well in my academics. During my primary school, my interest was in sports. I used to play lots of tennis and cricket. During my school days, I learned lots of important facts of my life from my grandparents such as, not to cheat anyone, not to lie, not to steal and they used to always tell me if you do good to others, God will do good to you. Since then, I became a God fearing person. My grandparents used to spend a lot of time with me teaching me about Indian culture, prayers and yoga. I was a very short-tempered person and by learning yoga, I was now able to calm down myself, and understand my friends much better by creating good relationship with them. My grandparents helped me grow spiritually, which helped me to understand myself much better and, it also helped me to focus on my studies and sports. During my high school, I started to study well and my teachers were surprised and they used to call my parents to talk about the good things I used to do in school. I was now able to do well in my exams. As I went to my high school, I started being more serious in my education. During my 10th standard, I was totally into studies and, I managed to clear my board exams with a first class. My parent, teacher and my friends all were surprised with my performance. At that time, I learnt that if I put my best efforts in my work, I will be able to perform much better.

After I completed my 10th standard exam, I joined National College for my pre-university. During my college days, I used to design lots of electronic gadgets and won several awards for debate competition. I completed my first year with very good grades. During my second year of pre-university I had represented my college in swimming competition and won many medals. During the same year, I represented my State in the national level water polo team. This was the best achievement in my sports career and I lived every moment of it. I was not able to perform well in my second year of pre-university due to my swimming career, but managed to clear all the subjects.

After I completed my pre-university, I studied BSc (Computer Science) course at Jain College at Bangalore, India. I had lots of friend in my college, since I was an adventurous person; I started mountain climbing, bike rally, and driving to beautiful destinations across India. During my first year, I won the best sportsperson of the year because I had won 6 gold medals in the inter-college competition organized by our college. This award had motivated me, and I wanted to do more for myself and college and so, during the next year, I became the Student coordinator. This gave me a lot of motivation and I was recognized by our college chairman for my effort. This also made me an icon of the college. I was given the entire responsible of handling all the activities for the college annual meet, right from managing volunteers to handling chief guests. After the successful second year, my teachers choose me as the ideal candidate to stand for the college elections for president post, and I won the election with huge margins in my final year. Apart from this, I had done well in my final year of BSc. I received the best outgoing student, a special award from the Chairman of the institute for best performer in event management. All these experiences made me realize that I had good management skills. Therefore, I decided that I should do an MBA from a good institute.

During my childhood and entire educational life, there was a lot of learning that I had. I was able to understand that my family was very caretaking, financially sound and all my family members are task and goal-oriented. I learnt that there is no substitute for hard work. I discovered my risk taking ability, involvement, and creativity. I had learned lots of positive points from my grandparents such as being good to others, one should be god fearing and hardworking. Apart from my studies I also learned how to communicate at different levels, leadership qualities, being responsible, people and task management and importance of time. Most important part of my learning was that I could discover my talents by getting involved into many activities in my college days.

After my BSc (graduation), I wanted to get into business; my father told me I need some experience before I do any business. So I joined Convergys in Bangalore as a technical adviser because I had good knowledge in technical field. After joining the company I started performing to my best abilities and after six months, I was awarded as the best performer. During the same time, I was made as a permanent employee and was also promoted as the supervisor. After 18 months, I had to quit that job due to medical reasons. In the meantime, I started learning work culture in an MNC, time management, organization management, people management and improved on my soft skills. After six months, I got an offer from Aviva Motor Insurance Company which is a multinational company. I started working with Aviva Insurance as an insurance advisor. After an year in this role, I got the best performer award of the quarter and six months later, I was promoted as the team coach.

During my working career, there was a lot of learning for me such as, opportunities multiply when seized but die when neglected. I have also undertaken challenging tasks and improved my skills as a team member and leader. I have also enhanced my abilities relating to effective writing and reading.

I am currently married and I am looking forward to have two babies in next 2 years and, that will keep me in track to achieve my goals and keeps me motivated. I am sure now I able to achieve my goals, my parents will be happy that their son has done justice to his abilities. I will take that as a best compliment in my life. After that I would want to be a role model to my children. I will give them the best of knowledge and make them to grow up like good citizens and I will make at least one of my children as a good politician, so that he or she can serve the country, because my grandfather wanted at least one of his grand children to take his place and serve the country.

Life Changing Decision

After my degree, I always knew that at some point of my life, I should do my MBA in UK. Most of my old class mates had done their MBA in other countries and I was in constant touch with them. They used to always tell me that one should always have an international exposure in life. So, I decided this is the right time for me to do my MBA in the UK. I then decided to do my MBA in Bedfordshire University.

My Role Model

My role model is my grandfather because he always had the forward thinking in life. During his career in politics, he has done a tremendous work for poor people by creating jobs for them and encouraging them to study providing food for the poor and also he used to help the poor children by giving them free education. He always used to tell me if any village or city has to grow, the education system must be very good.

My Present Life

While I was working, I always used to feel that there is so much to learn, in the field of management, so I wanted to join an International MBA program. From the MBA program, I wanted to know how the company works in terms of human resources, organization culture, behavior, and working in teams. Currently, I have joined the MBA course at NITTE, Bangalore which has twinning program with University of Bedfordshire. I am currently doing my first semester here, and after completing my first semester, I will be moving to UK for the second and third semesters. I am working towards enhancing my managerial skills and understanding what I was doing, and how can I improve on it.

Personality Analysis

It is very important to analyze one’s traits in order to achieve their future goals. One of the ways to identify one’s traits is by taking psychometric tests. These tests are measured systematically rated and managed which helps an individual to assist his traits. These tests may not provide perfect results in every context but they would help us to a great extent in understanding our own personality. There are many other tests which can measure and guide an individual but I have chosen the GET test due to its various advantages over other tests.

GET TEST (General Enterprising Tendency Test)

GET Test is used to determine the activity of people involved in providing assistance to business, social and community enterprise. It might also be used to determine the enterprise for those wishing to set-up their business. My result shows I have a high need for achievement, creative tendency and I have a drive and determination.

Attribute

Score

Qualities

Need for achievement

9 /12

Thinking forward

Self-Confident

Energetic

Dedicated to a task

Need for autonomy & independence

3 / 6

Works alone

Determined

Can handle pressure

Creative tendency

8 /12

Very Creative in thoughts

Prefers new challenges

Good ideas

Instinctive

Daydream

Moderate / calculated risk taking

8 /12

Proceeds on uncompleted work

Moderate ambitions

Drive & determination

8 /12

Good use of opportunities

Self-confident

Good vision of the future

Personality test based on Jung-Myers-Briggs typology

By this test, I understood about my strengths and priority. This will help me in taking accurate decision in my future. According to Jung-Briggs typology, my personality type is ENFJ.

According to the ENTJ, some of my personality traits are provided by this test. –

I am externally focused and positive thinking. I have very good people management skills such as helping people grow, i have natural desire to encourage and support people. I have a good communication skill which helps me perform better as a leader. My interests lie in giving love and support other people. I am very focused in understanding, supporting, and encouraging others. I get satisfaction by making thing work for people and get their personal satisfaction.

What do you do well?

I am very creative and my managers are often impressed by my new perspective on the process. I have good negotiation skill with my team members, I often ask my managers the key questions to find out the correct information about the product. I’m completely committed to the success of our process. All my team members like me, since I am very friendly.

What unique resources can you draw?

I have been working for more than six years now in the field of BPO industry as a team coach in an insurance company, which has given me a lot of experience in handling a team and getting the best of performance from all my team members. I have gained a lot of process knowledge being a team coach in motor insurance department. I have good knowledge in collection of data and storing the data in excel sheet for sale, quality and average handling time for the entire advisor in my team. I have also predicted the sale for the future by the call volume for each and every month. I have learned how to innovate new ideas to improve the performance of my team by managing by team. Since I have a good knowledge in excel which helps me to collect all the required data for my team and I can save a lot of time.

What do others see in your strength?

My managers appreciate me for being very regular to work, my attitude towards the team members and my behavior towards my work ethics. My team members have found a kind of atmosphere and working culture that they need to excel. I am very much approachable to all my team members and my team members feel I am very informative and helpful, they trust me and they get moral support by me.

What good opportunities are open to you?

Currently I am doing my MBA at university of Bedfordshire; I have been working as a team coach for more than three years now. After I complete my MBA in Bedfordshire University successfully I would have a lot of opportunities in the field of finance. Since the growth in the finance sector is huge and expanding every day, I am sure that I will be a successful manager in the field of finance.

What trend could you take advantage of?

Since I am a calm person, I do not get stressed by a large number of unimportant jobs, I will be able to remember to carry out all necessary tasks which are required to be done by me. I will be able to tackle most important jobs first and then tackle the other tasks.

How can you turn strengths into opportunities?

I could turn my strengths into opportunities by choosing the ideal activities intelligently which can make my team get involved in group projects and building team cohesiveness. If my team grows, I will be growing as well which is important to me. I will be able to train my new team members to develop into professional individuals and give them full support so that they will be able to be more productive in their work.

What could you improve?

I need to improve on my learning abilities. I need to become a MBA graduate to improve on my managerial skills, get more information about marketing, human resources and finance. Business communication is a subject where I am very keen to do well since I am interested in learning about how to communicate across cultures, improve on writing skills and, work towards enhancing relationships.

Where do you fewer resources than other?

Effective reading and writing is one of the fewer resources that I have, when it comes to reading and understanding at a higher level is another concern for me.

What do others see as your weakness?

While I am presenting some important ideas to my senior manager I get nervous, due to this fear of public speaking I am not able to present myself more passionately, this is the weakness that my senior managers have spoken to me in the past and I am keen to work hard on it.

What trends harm you?

Whenever the attrition rate is high in our company I am often overworked by my managers, this has affected my creativity negatively. Kumar one of my colleague is a much stronger trainer than me and his competing with me for the manager’s position is the trends that harms me.

What is your competitor doing?

My competitors are changing technology to sell their product at much lower rates and at the same time they are able to sustain their profitability.

What treat do your weaknesses expose you to?

Sometimes there might be some change in focus due to external or internal conflicts in the company by which I may lose the focus, which might wipe out any market position I have achieved.

SWOT Analysis.

Strengths

Responding promptly to progressively changing environment and continuous learn ability is my strength. Though at personal level there are many more attributes my family and friends have observed at professional level a few outstanding attributes are what I would like to share .

Being closely associated with the Insurance industry, I have identified some quantifiable factors involved with work such as quality of services, giving correct information to clients, selling adept insurance products , average handing time and conversion rate in sales.

As a team coach I have persistently ensured that all the team members have achieved ninety percent of all their benchmarked parameters.

The following are some of my experiences that have enriched my professional skills.

I responded quickly : As the team did well in average handling time as well.

In the third week of March 2010, all team members had achieved their sales target. However, the average handling time with the client was very high. We had one week to work on that, After a brainstorming session with my team members we came to a consensus to spent less time on unproductive phone calls which earned us the best team award.

Quality achievement by monitoring Quantity:

Quality was the major concern for the entire process and I was selected by my manager to work on quality and make some action plan for the advisors who have not been performing for last three months. It was a very difficult situation for me since I had to look into about two hundred advisors record and listen to their phone call.

I was able to respond to the situation quickly and check the records of all the advisors in the floor and spoke to the non-performers motivationally. I had an informal meeting where I carefully choose and played some excellent recording of customer interactions with the advisors over a period of time. I consciously worked towards achieving the centers quality scores . By the end the quarter the results presented an increase in sixteen percent for the quality factors ,it was indeed a phenomenal achievement for me, after this I was given the best team coach award for the quarter.

I knew that I am able to respond quickly to any situation and produce good results not only for my team but to the process as well.

As a team coach I have good negotiation skill.

Motor insurance is a very challenging process to work for and the pressure is tremendous, lots of work load and many parameters to work on. In 2009 September our process was facing a upward looking high attrition rate, and the work load had gone high as well.

The process needs someone to stand up and do something out of box so the attrition rate could come done and the productivity could improve.

I spoke to the management group and informed them that the good advisors in the floor are getting affected by the attrition rate and the high work pressure. I suggested them that I could talk to all the advisors on the floor and make them feel much better and will be able to get the best out of the advisor.

Before the start of the next day’s work I had organized an group activity for the advisors on the floor, in the meeting I ensured the advisors that there is nothing to panic about the attrition and work load, I made the advisors realize that the process needs the best work from all the them, the informal meetings were held daily basis so that all the advisor could start their day with good frame of mind and positive energy. I knew I could strike a good deal with the advisors on the floor since I had a good negotiation skill.

I used to request some advisor not to take unnecessary leave and also requested the bottom line performers to work extra so that they could reach their target and ensure that they doing well in quality as well. After all the effort from my end the monthly result so very good, the attrition rate went down and process starting growing. So the advisors who had done well from a long time were given an opportunity to grow in the company, so all the new advisors started performing well after seeing the process growing, they knew performance is reality.

Weakness

Judging an individual

Judging an individual is my weakness. I usually judge my team members by their character of personality or by performance levels and work commitment that they have under various situations.

I gave some responsibilities to my team members such as collecting data for the team’s performance, quality analysis and on time log-in and on time log-out so that the team members get the responsibilities and they could grow in the company. Few of the team members took this as an opportunity to grow in the company and worked hard to achieve their targets and do the additional responsibility given by me and rest of them took it very lightly by ignoring the work given.

I realized that I am giving the additional responsibilities to few of the team member who are not interested in taking up additional responsibilities for the team. individual must be judge by so many parameters and not only by his characteristic or by comparison.

So I was contemplating on many action plan for myself so to how I can judge my team member better, and how could I improve my team’s productivity.

After a careful analysis of the team members approach towards work. I separated my team members into two groups team A which consist of team members who have good skill and are willing to work productively, team B consists of team members who are not having good skill and they have willingness to work. I gave full responsibilities to team A individual only. Team B individuals were able to learn the skills required to upgrade their performance levels in the process. This was the first success for me, since I was able to aptly segregate the members into various teams and enable them to perform better in the area of strength and improve the overall performance of the my team as well.

Judging an individual for the right job is so crucial responsibility for any team coach or a manager to do, since it will affect the productivity of the team and the company. I took some time for me to judge my team member, and it became a habit for me.

In future I would want to get into recruiting new employee because judging an individual in a short period of time is a challenge for me, in coming days I wish to become a successful recruiting manager.

Communicating a training session

Communicating a training session in front of large audience is my weakness. I am a team coach. It’s easy for me to teach or train my team, since there are only 15 members in my team. But when it comes to training a large number of team my though flow stops and my hand starts to sweating, it is a very difficult situation for me and I have to come out of it since I am in the field of training and coaching, my manager also want me to train more than two to three teams at a time since it save a lot of time and money to the process.

Mr Singh is a manager in training and developing team. I spoke to him about the problem that I had while communicating in front of large audience. He told me that it is very common that would happen when you start to talk to large audience, he sat next me and told me that I have to be training a lot of large team members in the future and I have to get over my weakness as soon as possible. He came along with me to the training class room where I had to train about sixty team members and he told me he would also talk about the process training along with me so that could give me confidence in the future training classes, I started training session and in the mean while my manager also started training along with me, after a week a was able to train and coach a large number of team members. The training classes usually goes on for four to five hours and its quit difficult to make sure the all the team members are concentrating in the class room, so I planned so pointers in mind before going in for the training sessions they are as follows:

Started by some thought provoking questions about the training process itself.

I gave the team some time to ask question about the topic and I used to ask them some question in return as well.

A flavor of a bit of humour.

Some interesting activity based communicative sessions involving the entire group interest’s.

These technique made sure that all the team members were listing throughout the session, Though it was quit a task to communicate in front of a large audience for a long time.

After a few months I was more confident in training large teams. My manager came to me with a proposal of training about one hundred new employee’s, it was a challenge for me at the same time I was happy as well that my manager had the faith and confidence in my efforts which was more prominently recognized now.

I was able to talk to the new employees and training them for a week and the training was a big success since eight five percent of the new employees were able to clear their assessments at the first time.

It was a huge moral victory for me as an individual. Now I would want to became a public speaker in the future if given an opportunity, since it’s a new challenge for me to share some important information is such a good feeling. This is not going to be easy for me however it is the next big challenge for me.

Action plan

I was very nervous to communicate in front of large audience, now I am able to get over being nervous taking to large audience. In next six months I would want to be the best trainer in my company

I want to then try to listen to the best public speakers and learn the skills to become a public speaker in next one year.

Identifying an individual was a very difficult job, now I am able to judge all my team members in a much healthier manner now, in the next six months Iwill make sure that I will not judge any team member incorrectly.

Recruiting new employees to our process is a very difficult work, I should be able to recruit new talented employees to our process, for me to do so I should attend few recruitment session with my manager and learn some good recruitment technique.

Part three

Aviva motor insurance (comprehensive insurance) is the process that I was working for as a team coach for the last three years now, this process was the budding beautifully, the company was recruiting more than two hundred employee’s, lucking the management team identified me to be a park to recruitment team for next two month, they selected me since I was able to identify the ideal candidate for the process. I have never been into recruiting in my life it was an opportunity for new learning for me, there was a lot of work that I had to do before I could start recruiting. I spoke to my manager who has being in the field of recruitment for more than five years now, he gave me a lot of information on how to recruit an employee, judging any new employee is a huge task for me, I also ensured I would not make any mistakes in judging the new employee’s, there was few question that I prepared for the new employee’s which would determine their skill sets and the selling abilities. I also used to sit along with my manager during the recruitment so that I could develop the skill from my manager as to how he judges an individual.

It was Monday mornings 10:30am, the employee’s are waiting for the interview. I called upon the first individual for the interview; his resume was good enough to qualify for the job. His name was Mr. Ram who was a science graduate from Bangalore University, I asked few question about his himself and his future goals in life, and he answered to all my questions carefully. The interview went on for half an hour, I told Mr. Ram to wait outside for the results. Mr. Ram was a good seller and he also had the willingness to work in any shift, which tells me that he was flexible as well; he was the first employee that I had selected for our process.

Since it was the first time I have been into recruiting I had to face a lot of new learning’s and challenges, such as verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, Personality Tests Presentation and presentation skills, preparing for the same myself was like polishing the existing set of skills was very interesting. After my working hours I used to spend at least three hours extra just to prepare the job description and employee specification and later worked on sources of required number of employees for the process and very important work was to short-listing and identifying the ideal employees with required attribute’s.

Although I faced certain challenges during this phase I could manage the same with the help of my senior colleagues in office who were also will to help me.

The next step was to arrange the selected candidate’s documents and to call them for the final interview. Sometime the candidates would not pick up the call or not respond the any message and there was deadline for me to meet and it was a very difficult situation for me, sometimes I used to get tensed didn’t know what to do, my manager used to come to me every other day and ask me what is the update, I used to tell him about the day to day improvement and he was not happy with my performance, since I was new to the job he was giving me some time to improve. Due the time constraint there were few candidates who were selected who had meet only few criteria’s of the parameters were selected by me, and I only had hopes that they would be able to do well in the process.

Employee referrals were introduced in the company so that employee knew what was expected out of them and they could refer the ideal candidate for the process and thereby the employee could also be reward by some incentive if the candidate was selected for the company. After employee referrals I also looked at the data of the old employee who had quit the company I took about hundred employee name and numbers and spoke to check with them if they are interested in coming back to the company, about thirty percent were interested to come back and I was able to select about ten of them. After couple of months of intense work done by me I was able to learn so many things in r