Hire-archy - What Gets Us Fired!

Here are factors thatcan make us redundantand irrelevant

- Kamal Karanth

Often you read about health ailments but are not so concerned until somebody close to you is afflicted. That is when you rush to get check-ups done and change your lifestyle.

My attitude towards my career was quite similar to these faraway health scares until I recently saw a spate of lay-offs rocking my circle. In the list were my schoolmates, collegemates, neighbor, former colleagues. For the first time, lay-offs almost came home and became too close for comfort.

The biggest frustration was that in spite of being in the recruitment industry for close to two decades, I couldn’t help a single person get a job.

Let’s get to the news of some recent lay-offs. When we read about Oyo, Future Group, Walmart, Quickr, WeWork, Cognizant downsizing, we blamed the companies for lousy business management. However, if you reflect, in all these companies, the majority of employees have kept their jobs, many will still get a good increment and a few may even get promoted.

Can we say the people who got laid off were plain unlucky, and in the wrong place at the wrong time? That’s just a philosophical way of looking at things.

Deep down, there are underlying factors. Let’s ask ourselves what gets us fired. After all, we were courted, interviewed and selected for our jobs with a lot of promise. The same colleagues who appreciated us and took us out for lunch turned cold and said it’s time to part ways.

How can we decipher this beyond describing it as bad luck or karma? Let’s reflect on a few parameters that make us irrelevant and redundant.

Staying relevant

We must have now got bored with the word “upskill”. However, we can’t run away from it any further.