How often do we pause and ponder about career? No doubt everybody wants to score good marks, fetch a corporate job, earn big bucks and live happily ever after. Before one realises that there is more to career than these, he/she is already 25 years into the profession. To set people thinking on the lines of career planning, Training Sideways catches them young. The soft skill training firm has teamed up with author V. Rajesh to launch a programme based on his book Out of Syllabus for college students.
The sessions are not the ones that include SWOT-analysis-ppts and games, but the ones that include dance, music, art and largely theatre. Training Sideways is a venture from Evam holding (which also runs the theatre group Evam Entertainment).
Exploiting the powerful medium in theatre, Training Sideways has conducted as many as 100 workshops in 40 corporate and education institutions. “The experiential methodology helps one to learn by doing,” says K. Sunil Vishnu of Evam. The team has earlier conducted workshops in Chennai Business School, IIM Bangalore, MICA Ahmedabad, and Chitkara College, Chandigarh.
Communication skills, behavioural skills, interview preparation and induction programme are the various areas that they cater to. “Our experience in corporate trainings helped us realise the necessity of such programmes for college students,” Mr. Sunil adds. They are open to conduct workshops in colleges across the country.
The Out of Syllabus project transforms the content of the self-help book into theatre-based workshop. The book which is aimed at students addresses the issue of employability skills, provides a hands-on, practical guide to career planning.
Mr. Rajesh says, “The students come afresh into a job without having charted out a plan for themselves. They look at monetary return and designation, but simply ignore equipping themselves for their dream job. And most of the time, the ‘safe’ job is their dream job.” The writer has been in top positions in the retail field for more than two decades and is now involved in consulting and training. He recommends a three-bucket theory for a successful career — namely Learning the trade, Becoming an expert in the area of interest and Being a brand.
Elaborating on the technique, Mr. Sunil says, “One of the key topics of the book — ‘Personal Success Secret’ - assists the readers in introspecting on their earlier success patterns and the secret behind them. A personality mapping can effectively be done by role play. Theatre makes you more comfortable with yourself, improve communication skills and work better in a team.”
The workshop, just like any self-help book, is not a solution by itself, but helps you broaden your perspective and helps you fit ‘career’ in the broader scheme of things, he adds.
