He walks in dressed up professionally, or so he thinks, – with a tie that would put modern art to shame and a shirt that refused to speak softly – he is all ready to try out for ‘India’s got talent’. He has a huge bag that houses his laptop and his laptop’s best buddies. He enters the room where his prospective clients are seated to hear him out. He is constantly wiping the sweat off his brow. He belongs to one of the many growing small time consultant companies that provide a neat solution to the every day HR activities. In this case he has come here to convince us that their organization is best suited to take care of our everyday training needs.
They call themselves consultants, because they provide solutions.
He then spends a good 5-10 mins setting up his laptop and plugging in the power supply – He had for some reason decided not to charge up his laptop before a client meeting, surely the reason must have been a sound one. Next he gives us an account of what his company is all about and what they have done and which big companies are already their clients.
Then, as if he was incapable of carrying on a conversation with two other people in the room, he decides it is time to open up that PPT and give us a recap on T&D activities. He elaborates on each slide, he tells us what T&D does, and what are the steps involved etc. Finally he gets to what they have to offer. By now he has put the only 2 people in the room to sleep. I am seriously in doubt of the firm’s caliber, but his firm has almost gotten the account from us.
After he has left, I reflect on what exactly happened. There was this man, in his 30s, part of the struggling stream of HR professionals who are caught up in small time solution providing firms. He goes around the country, traveling 20 days a month, trying to get companies to sign on to their services. He is poorly equipped in terms of convincing skills. He fails to make a first impression. Yet he can boast of one the biggest FMCGs in India using their services, “We have 20 professionals placed full time in their Mumbai corporate office” he claims.
Increasingly the companies are growing comfortable about sourcing out their day to day activities to small time nobody firm, perhaps encouraged by the fact that maintaining documents, data and rigging up schedules does not need high levels of competencies. These semi back offices have created a huge market for themselves. They have begun doing the dirty work of HR, while allowing HR to work on more strategic items. Invariably, the first companies to have taken up their services are the trend setters in terms of HR practices and strategic HR initiatives.
The PPT consultant does not really have to make that coveted first impression. He does not have to dress up to impress. His PPT templates can be remnants of the office 2003 era. He can even afford to ignore grammar. If he has the people and systems that can clear the mountains of day to day debris that lands on the corporate HR’s table, well, then he has gotten himself a client.
Interesting. I always thought professional PPT makers would have had a market for themselves (I thought that was what the post was all about). I mean, I’ve worked at one of the largest steel houses in the world (based out of Jamshedpur… No names taken of course :P) and they have abysmally made PPTs. Plain ugly. How they managed to convince people of a take over, er… A major European steel-making giant (again, no names :P) is beyond me.
Nice post, nice read 🙂
Bijnessworld has another follower!
Now that you mention, maybe that is something that is worth looking into – the professional PPT makers…surely there must be someone offering those services…
And yes, I can imagine what you are talking off…No names, but having seen the state of affairs in an organization almost as old as the one you spoke of – I am not surprised. In fact the HR people here began using office 07 on my insistence …
But I am sure the PPTs for the take over were made by professionals, maybe some consultants ….or maybe…just maybe…an Intern :p
Hammy,
I am actually somewhat taken aback, after reading this.. I always had this fear psychosis that to be a successful consultant,one needs to be brutally professional in one’s approach and dress…maybe companies to save costs are not finicky abt the cosmetical gestures as along as the work gets done..as u ve pted out..
Ram,
These aren’t the consults per se, I would categorize them as back office HR professionals. They take over a part of your HR work. They place 1 or 2 people in your office, set up an application by which they can route and take care of the stuff.
For the T&D cell they’d do things like organizing a training in program, receiving nomination, sending out official communications, coordinating with faculty, booking conference rooms, taking note of attendance metrics, conducting feedback survey, preparing reports, etc.
By doing so, they give the T&D cell at Corp HR enough time to engage in actual decision making based on effectiveness data, interacting with business and making sure training calenders reflect the actual business needs, etc. Earlier, all this used to get put on the back burner due to day to day fire fighting. Today the PPT consultants are here to give us that time.
As you mentioned, Corp people choose not to be finicky as long as the work is getting done.
Hi, interest post. I’ll write you later about few questions!
Sure Katty, would love to hear from you