Asian School of Business – which is a part of Asian Education Group and is ranked as one of the best undergraduate B-schools in Delhi NCR – welcomed its new batch of Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Bachelor of Computer Application (BCA) by launching a grand week-long Orientation Programme scheduled from Monday, 19th October 2020 to Saturday, 31st October 2020. In view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and keeping in mind the social distancing norms, this programme was however organized virtually to benefit the students who were about to begin a new phase in their academic life.
At the ASB Orientation 2020, Mr. Ashish Chandra, Chief Executive Officer, Bharti Airtel was an Eminent Guest who delivered an engaging and inspiring LEAD Lecture session on Tuesday, 20th October 2020 as part of the week-long Asian School of Business BBA & BCA Orientation Programme 2020.
Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at Airtel Sri Lanka, spearheading Airtel’s business in the world’s 58th largest economy and richest SAARC country – Mr. Ashish Chandra is an experienced CEO with a demonstrated history of working across spectrum of telecommunication industry. He enjoys an exceptional professional career record of setting up new businesses, financial turnaround, rapid revenue market share growth, running successful large scale operations, and implementing change management during mergers and acquisitions during the past 21 years.
In his LEAD Lecture delivered on Tuesday, 20th October 2020 at Asian School of Business, Mr. Ashish Chandra majorly spoke on the topic “What skills corporates want from professionals in the changed environment due to COVID-19 pandemic?”
He began his talk by stating that the world is going to see two major unprecedented changes in the post-COVID era and we all need to relook at the future. Change number one was that after having worked from home, most of the corporate employees would not want to resume normal office working and continue to work from home as a matter of first choice. Change number two was that everything is going digital in a big way and most people are now used to digital way of living and customers are becoming more and more aware and home-bound. In other words, the two trends were Remote Working & Digitization that would becoming the dominating feature of the post-COVID world. Now the question is, “In this scenario, what is going to happen to budding professionals?”
Answering this question, Mr. Ashish Chandra outlined the things to be kept in mind by these budding professionals. He said, “There are three things to keep in mind. One is the democratization of the entire job market whereby hiring will be now done from anywhere in the world by companies across the globe and therefore there will be more opportunities for everyone. Second is that people will be picked up as per actual requirement and because of skills that they have and all will become a global citizen. Jobs will be of shorter duration and physical offices will die a natural death. Third is the entrepreneurial side where market size has doubled and the entire value-chain of business has become digital.”
According to Mr. Ashish Chandra, the skill set that students will need to make the best of this scenario are (1) Technical Skills (especially, about Digital Tools); (2) Developing High Level Skills like creativity, innovation and critical thinking; (3) Adaptability & Learning Abilities whereby we should learn to become flexible; and (4) Emotional Intelligence whereby we must learn to control our emotions and understand and respect other people’s emotions.
Talking about companies’ recruitment policies and what they look for in candidates while hiring, the distinguished CEO said that it was the candidate’s general attitude that companies look for, apart from their past behavior, diverse interests, internships, their passion to excel, and abilities to lead and work in a team.
Sharing his last thoughts, the much respected achiever told the students, “Find what you love to do. Love the work that you do. Identify what is intrinsic to you; then pursue a career accordingly. And … feel lucky to be born an era when there is no dearth of opportunities!”