The shortest stint

Millennium City Building in Sector 5, Kolkata

After spending one year and two months in Shoppers' Stop, I joined IBM Daksh as a 'Specialist Customer Support'. I had just completed by PG in Mass Communication then.

IBM Daksh was a BPO. In other words, it was a call-center job that I had got myself into. IBM Daksh had just opened their new office in Kolkata and we were the first batch to be recruited and trained. It was a domestic process. Our client was one of the top telecom providers of India. My office was located in Electronic City.


Being a call center, we had to work in shifts. Our shift changed every week, which definitely was not good as my bilogical clock went for a complete toss. The worst shift were the ones that began at 4 pm and ended at 2 pm and overnight shift. What I hated also when I had to go to work on Sundays and Saturdays. When all my friends were relaxing, sleeping and having fun, I was sitting at office and blasting at customers and being blasted by them for a good 9 hours.

Nonetheless, the experience of working in a call center was totally different from my past job. Let me tell you that this was also my first full-time employment. At Daksh, my job entailed receiving cutomer calls and offering instant solution to their problems/querries. Sometimes the call pressure was so high, I hardly got the time to soothe my vocal chords that had been blabbering for long hours non-stop. Though a very strenous and tiring job, it helped me to improve my communication skills and customer handling skills.

I managed to stick to this job for a good 10 months, before I finally got a break which changed the entire course of my career.

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The beginning

Shoppers' Stop, Forum Mall, Kolkata

They say that life is full of miracles. Today, as I sift through the pages of the last 30 years of my eventful life, I can gladly say that my life is nothing short of a miracle. At least, as far as my career goes, it definitely is.

Well, my career started way back in the year 2004. I took up a part-time job with Shoppers' Stop limited (one of the top retail outlets). The company had given a very small advertisement in the paper in the classified column. The name of the company was not mentioned there. It simply read "wanted full-time/part-time customer care associate with a reputed retail outlet". I applied for the job and was called for a written test and an interview. The entire seletion process was conducted by a placement agency through which the company was hiring.

Within two days, I was intimated that I had been offered the job. My salary at the time was Rs. 2000 per month. It was my first job. My heart was abound with excitement, happinness and sense of security...I had managed a job for myself. As a customer care associate, I was supposed to sell garments to customers and look after the clothes section that was assigned to me. I forgot to mention that I was assigned to the Kid's section.

It was a job that taught me the first lessons of being a professional, being a team player and being responsible for whatever I do. I loved my job, especially because of the glamour and the focus on targets that came along with it.

Thus, began a journey that was going to take strange turns in future which I was totally unaware of.