Ranked as one of the best undergraduate B-schools in Delhi NCR and an integral part of Asian Education Group – Asian School of Business 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. However, in view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and keeping in mind the social distancing norms, this programme was conducted virtually to benefit the students who were about to begin a new phase in their academic life.
Mr. Ashish Chandra, Chief Executive Officer, Bharti Airtel was an Eminent Guest at this ASB Orientation 2020 who delivered an illuminating LEAD Lecture session on Tuesday, 20th October 2020 as part of the week-long Asian School of Business BBA & BCA Orientation Programme 2020.
Currently the 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 a 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.
Delivering the LEAD Lecture on Tuesday, 20th October 2020 at Asian School of Business, Mr. Ashish Chandra spoke majorly on the topic “What skills corporates want from professionals in the changing environment due to COVID-19 pandemic?”
Mr. Ashish Chandra 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. The first change is 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 the first choice. The second change is 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. Simply put, 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?”
Taking up this question, Mr. Ashish Chandra outlined the important 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. The third is the entrepreneurial side where market size has doubled and the entire value-chain of business has become digital.”
Suggesting the skill set that students will need to make the best of this scenario, Mr. Ashish Chandra said that these would be (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.
Expounding upon the companies’ recruitment policies and what they look for in candidates while hiring, the esteemed 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.
In his parting message, 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!”
