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| Kris Gopalakrishnan, InfoSys |
The Guest Speaker is an integral part of any MBA experience, and the Melbourne Business School MBA is no exception. This past Term was outstanding on the guest speaker front overall, with corporate higher ups from News Limited, GE, and Bank of Melbourne, stopping by. Typically these experiences offer the students a chance to gain some insight from very successful people as to what they do, how they got to where they are, and what it takes to make the big bucks. The most memorable for me was the morning a small group of students had breakfast with Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the founders of InfoSys. He spoke in detail about the early days of InfoSys, the challenges they faced, and how stiff competition made them constantly strive to be innovative. He further stressed the importance of differentiating InfoSys from the masses, especially when it was a small, unknown company.
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| MBS Movember winners! |
Fast forward to the end of November, where I found myself in a room surrounded by nearly 30 mustachioed men (to say that one is exposed to a variety of different experiences at MBS is probably a bit of an understatement). Fortunately there was nothing dodgy about this gathering, as we were there to be judged and awarded an array of prizes for the moustaches that the MBS men grew to raise money for Movember. As I looked around at the moustaches in the room, which ranged from proper to sketchy to those that made you question the manhood of the grower, my heart sank. There were definitely some excellent moustaches out there, and I could barely get into a position to be seen by the judges, so my chances of winning anything were slim. Then I remembered Kris from InfoSys, and not necessarily the excellent moustache that he wears, but what he said about differentiation. It was at that point that I pulled out an accessory I had brought along, but had forgotten about: a moustache comb. From that point on, I made sure that any time the judges looked even remotely in my direction – and even when they weren’t, because I was finding it to be kind of enjoyable – I was giving my stash’ a proper grooming. Despite the fact that my moustache was probably not the best in the room, in the eyes of the judges, who were saddled with the extremely difficult job of handing out three awards to 30 very similar looking men with facial hair, they remembered mine because the combing differentiated me from the pack. Thank you InfoSys, for helping me win Best Moustache at Melbourne Business School.
Although its probably true that Mr. Gopalakrishnan was not referring to moustaches during his talk, it’s clear that the points he made can be translated far beyond the mundane world of being the leader in global IT services: It can work for the biggest consumer products, the smallest products, and it can even work for your facial hair.
You may be wondering how this applies to you: You’re trying to get rid of the moustache that you have, or don’t even have one in the first place, or don’t care about facial hair. Well, it is recruiting time again at MBS, and when there are heaps of talented students coupled with a global job marketplace that continues to be volatile, more than ever you need to find your own version of the moustache comb in order to land that super job. To that point, last term a couple of guys from Google stopped by to chat with the MBS students, and I remember one of them telling us ‘Don’t put on your resume that you like to travel,’ i.e. same won’t get your resume pulled off the stack. It may be common sense, and I am sure it is something you’ve heard before, but now is the time when you need to pay attention, be creative, go out on a limb, and make yourself stand out. And if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to Steve Jobs and his now famous quote ‘Stay hungry; Stay foolish’ - hungry enough to write the 49th cover letter like it was it was your first, and foolish enough to get yourself noticed.
