'Smart' – the word has supposedly become a part & parcel of today’s life. Smart – phone, Smart – TV, Smart – PC, ofcourse, I’m keeping the regular societal doses of being ‘Smart like him/her’ out of discussion. So, re-routing myself to the topic, I have always wondered at the way this Smart syndrome has taken its course in our daily activities. Right From, cutting down on the morning blues like - the morning alarm, that doesn’t stops till you are dead awake, or the day’s schedules, breakfast 5 mins recipes, world news being right in your palms; To connecting to the whole world within seconds through Skype, Facebook, Twitter and if you are one of those with heavy bucks to spare not to mention the tele-presence fascination. And as we return to our cosy beds in the night, even then many of us don’t let go of our smart devices like still clinging on to the iPods to listen to the melodious tunes that work as lullabies to put us across to sleep. That’s the kind of a world we are in..
So, you must be wondering, what made me think we are no more in a smart era.. Well, it’s because of a day’s experience. Recently, may be a month back, as I was running around different interviews to get the right step ahead, an interview at an MNC amazed me. MNC – the abbreviation always connoted to me a very technology proficient environment, with defined work ethics. So, as the mail of the opening for an editorial position hit my inbox, I smilingly took to it. I reached and was immediately shown to a huge room meant only for daily interviews and was asked to be seated in front of a system. I began to fiddle with the computer trying to switch it on, but all it says – ‘a video cable is disconnected’. Tried all tricks, there was a small box, seeing which I immediately recognized that it’s a shared system, and started seeing if fiddling with that helps me switch it on. But to no avail.. So, I resumed to my original position and started gazing around, and saw everyone busy filling up some papers. It felt weird, as everyone had a system. They were giving tests for some other technical jobs.
After a wait of around 2 hrs, finally my test began. And Whoa.. what do I see, the system in which I sat, was never meant to be used.. In fact, the HR promptly handed me an introduction sheet, to fill up things which I have already mentioned in my Resume, except for the CTC. Till then still it was not quite odd. But then what came, reminded me of my school/college exams. At least, in exams they gave separate answer-sheets to write, here it was not even so. As it was an editorial test, I was supposed to re-arrange certain paras and correct the sentences and include information such as statistics meaningfully in those paras. All that I was supposed to do in a limited white space provided between the paras. And if that space was not enough, they gave me enough liberty to use the backside of the page. Which meant I have to read the para lines on the first page and redo the lines on the 2nd page.. SO SIMPLE.. ‘I’m so thankful to them!!!” There was a quarterly report to be edited, some paragraphs to be redone, some ambiguous phrases needed to be rewritten..3 sets of question papers with around 14 pages each as a whole was to be rewritten, while aptly using my editorial skills within two hours.
I was just wondering, “Does anyone here know Microsoft Office, and a little but a life-saving tool for editorial people within it called ‘MS WORD’? What would have they lost if they simply resorted to WORD?”
Soon after the test, which I had to stretch for 4 hrs, the test materials were taken, stapled along with the resume and introduction sheet, to be delivered to the people who would review it. Was this entire manual process necessary? Had the test been taken in the Word, introduction sheet too would have been filled as a separate Word Sheet, and had the resume been obtained online, all three could have been neatly attached and mailed to whoever was supposed to review it. If this too looked too burdensome, a simple in-house software could have been used, wherein one tap at the ‘Submit’ button would have directed the documents to the mail box of all, especially when the concerned person is somewhere in US. Even all that printing of more than 50 pages for each candidate could have been avoided, considering the ‘Green Revolution’ (Yes, that’s there that Go Green is more of a Fashion statement, that corporates are resorting to, to get into the good books like Forbes or Times) but still this is definitely not a good green statement. And above all, it would have definitely made a normal tech-oriented person’s life like mine much easier.
Even now I wonder
