By Soumini Sridhara Paul,
Vice President, Artist Aloud,
Hungama Digital Media
We have all gone through our school and college life, hoping to choose our career and assuming that we would work in the same line according to our education. Our parents too brought us up to believe that we need to study our subjects properly so that we can get good jobs in the same line. When it comes to professional courses like Engineering, Medicine, Law, etc., it is assumed that the course of one’s career is already set. But in today’s life, is that so? Do we see everyone taking up jobs in the line they did their graduation or post graduation in? And what happens if you do get a job that you have not educated yourself for?
I am a Statistics Graduate but have spent 20 years of my life working in the entertainment industry, where the first 14 years was around Television, content, talent and artist relations. When I started working, I never knew I had the ability to handle the role that was given to me but the person who hired me seemed to see it in me and that was the biggest opportunity I could have ever had.
I started out as a rookie and had to find my way through the jungle. The company was growing and so were its employees. I had to carve a position for myself and the only way I could see that happening was by making myself indispensible. It was on the job that I learnt the art of content creation, working with talent, programming and quality. I brought in new opportunities to the business and worked very hard, which saw me lead the department that I was working for in just a span of two years.
About six years back, I joined the company that I am currently working with. I was hired to start a vertical that I hoped to initially build on my own as an entrepreneur. But the security of a job and the support of a large organization made the offer of building this vertical as an employee seem more lucrative at the time. When I joined, all I had with me was the experience of content and talent, a few contacts and a whole lot of gumption. And here I was, building a digital platform, which I had never worked on, and had no professional experience in. But did that deter me or frighten me? No, not at all. I had decided to build something and I was being given an opportunity. So I was not going to let a small thing like no knowledge come in my way.
Since then, I have learnt about the digital space, social media, technology-driven innovation, brand marketing, product development, distribution, IPs, video platforms and more. There is only one common thing among all of them – LOGIC. If you apply logic to anything and think intelligently, there is nothing one cannot learn. I have come to a point now where I lead two teams, building the business, defining its direction, multi-tasking and last but not the least, learning on the job with application of logic and common sense.
So to sum up, I believe we are all intelligent when we are children but it is the degree of learning that one is willing to imbibe that makes us smarter or dumber than the rest. All it requires is hard work, diligence, inclination and a never-say-die attitude.
Feedback: soumini.paul@hungama.com
