Did Amy Ingram just set up that meeting for you?

Amy Ingram is a secretary. She sets appointments and meetings. She works for top-level executives, including CEOs, in the IT, start-up and finance sectors. If you work in these industries, you’ve probably received an email from her.

But Amy is not a real person.

“She” is the creation of x.ai, a US-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) start-up, and was built for one purpose: scheduling meetings. For people like Karthik Palaniappan, 38, CEO and founder of August Academy, a career counselling start-up in Chennai, who has to work with 40 clients a year and set up an average of 25-35 calls a week, the AI assistant is a bargain at $29 (around ₹ 2000) a month. “I run a consulting business and have online meetings with clients from across the globe in different time zones. That’s two or three iterations before a meeting is set, which is quite cumbersome. With Amy, I’ve offloaded this mundane task,” he says.

Now all Palaniappan has to do is copy Amy on an email conversation with a client—the AI assistant takes over the scheduling part of a meeting seamlessly. Other than the ease, what he likes is that his contacts follow up with Amy thinking she’s a real person.

“Ninety per cent of the time, if I don’t tell the other person that Amy’s a bot, they don’t recognize from her emails that she’s a digital assistant,” he says.

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Employee engagement is a lot of work today

Employee engagement for millennials takes constant motivation, feedback and training.

Sudakshina Ghosh, team manager at SAP India in Gurugram, is happy with her 12-year-old job. The 39-year-old has been with the company since 2006. She has worked on assignments that range from sales and customer account management to building customer relationships, sales strategies and go-to-market strategies. “To deliver my best, I have to be engaged and encouraged,” says Ghosh. She credits SAP’s numerous programmes for professional development with ensuring she grows personally and professionally.

Shraddhanjali Rao, who works in HR at SAP India in Bengaluru, says her job is to cater to the personal and professional needs of employees like Gurugram-based Sudakshina Ghosh by helping them to access courses and other development tools at work. Photo: Jithendra M/Mint
Shraddhanjali Rao, who works in HR at SAP India in Bengaluru, says her job is to cater to the personal and professional needs of employees like Gurugram-based Sudakshina Ghosh by helping them to access courses and other development tools at work. Photo: Jithendra M/Mint
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Bonding turns colleagues into friends

Bonding is essential for workplace dynamics. When Debadutta Upadhyaya joined Yahoo! India in 2004, she hit it off with her hiring manager, Neville Taraporewalla, immediately. “He had a knack for detecting issues, was caring and took me under his wing, helping me learn things that helped me grow professionally as well as personally,” says 45-year-old Upadhyaya, who credits the guidance from Taraporewalla for her rise from an account manager to sales head in the company within three years.

In 2012, Upadhyaya started her own company, Timesaverz, a home services start-up. She approached her friend and mentor for advice and guidance. “He not only encouraged my entrepreneurial dream but also helped us secure initial capital and an angel investor for Timesaverz,” says Upadhyaya. This was the reason he was the first person she thought of when forming the board for Timesaverz.

Kwan Entertainment’s Nandita Sachdev (in blue) and Anirban Das Blah (second, from right) say that having a good work environment helps increase productivity. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint
Kwan Entertainment’s Nandita Sachdev (in blue) and Anirban Das Blah (second, from right) say that having a good work environment helps increase productivity. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint
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Working abroad can boost your career

Working abroad broadens your mind. A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions, the saying goes. It’s no wonder, then, that working abroad, in a foreign country can be an incredible career experience.

According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review in May, living abroad increases self-concept clarity (your mental picture of who you are as a person), and thereby promotes clearer career decision making.

Working abroad makes you question

“When people live in their home country, they are often surrounded by others who mostly behave in similar ways so they are not compelled to question whether their own behaviours reflect their core values or the values of the culture which they are embedded in,” says Jackson G. Lu, professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, and one of the authors of the study. This changes when you live abroad, since exposure to newer values and beliefs forces you to re-examine yours.

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How Shivajinagar found itself in Anantya Tantrist

There’s something about some roads that change you as you walk through them, almost like they are portals to other worlds. A friend and I had been planning to create a heritage walk app and decided to explore Shivajinagar, Bengaluru, one Sunday afternoon for research.

After a satisfying ghee-filled masala dosa and coffee, we reached Shivajinagar and tumbled out on the Mariamman Temple circle. Afternoon was brisk business at the circle. Vendors called out, their carts loaded with flowers, bangles, footwear, cosmetics, and rusk. Bikes, cows and people wove around each other.

Vendors called out, their carts loaded with flowers, bangles, footwear, cosmetics, and rusk.

Did Plague Amma strike down Bangalore in wrath?

Legend has it that it was Plague Amma, as the goddess of this temple is colloquially known, who controlled the Great Plague, which hit Shivajinagar in the 19th Century.

We took the Shivaji Road off the circle, desirous to see Elgin Talkies, the hippest hangout in 1896 when it was turned from a theatre venue to a movie hall. Now, it’s a marriage hall, though the façade remains the same. We sneaked inside and found a caretaker who told us it used to be a ballroom before it became a cinema hall.

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Midlife career change can work, with a few challenges

A midlife career switch can be a good idea—but be prepared for challenges along the way. In 2014, over a beer, childhood friends Kamal Karanth and Anil Kumar Ethanur decided to quit their high-paying jobs as managing directors of competing international staffing firms and start a business together.

“We never imagined we would start our own company,” says 45-year-old Ethanur, “but I saw entrepreneurship as the ultimate challenge and wanted to give it a shot.” Karanth felt his career was stagnating and wanted to tap into the fast-growing staffing industry, pegged to grow to a $20 billion (around ₹1.3 trillion) market in India. “We weren’t making any difference to our clients beyond filling their recruitment needs,” says 46-year-old Karanth.

Childhood friends Kamal Karanth (left) and Anil Kumar Ethanur quit high paying jobs as managing directors of international staffing firms in their 40s to start their own venture. Photo: Ramegowda Bopaiah/Mint
Childhood friends Kamal Karanth (left) and Anil Kumar Ethanur quit high paying jobs as managing directors of international staffing firms in their 40s to start their own venture. Photo: Ramegowda Bopaiah/Mint
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A millennial’s guide to negotiating a better salary

Never accept the first salary you’re offered, in desperation.  HR managers, and even hiring firms, are incentivised to keep hiring salaries low and negotiate hard with individuals. Which is why, the first and foremost rule for good negotiation is that you should be able to walk away if required, says Kanchan Mukherjee, professor, organizational behaviour and human resources management, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

“Desperation or your need for the job shows in your body language, how you speak, and that’s used by companies to hammer down salaries,” he explains. In India, with high competition for jobs, this desperation level is higher, giving an edge to companies.

“Our research shows that you will end up losing up to ₹2-4 lakh per annum on a base salary of ₹10 lakh if you don’t negotiate,” says Soujanya Vishwanath, co-founder, Pink Ladder, a career support company for women based in Bengaluru.

Start early

The negotiation starts with the first interview. “The interview is all about building your bargaining power,” says Mukherjee. “You need to make the company and the interviewer want you and realize the value you’ll bring. The more the company wants you, the better you will be at the salary negotiation stage.”

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For success, learn to listen well

Listen well and you will know the truth. Over a cup of coffee in February, Akash Manohar, the director of engineering at Synup, a Bengaluru-based marketing start-up, made a suggestion to its millennial founder Ashwin Ramesh—change the work timings, because late hours don’t allow the team to pursue hobbies.

“The norm for most tech start-ups is to start late and end late,” says 26-year-old Ramesh. “However, I thought there’s no harm in implementing it and seeing how it goes.” Two days later, Ramesh changed the reporting timing for the tech teams, asking employees to come at 8am and leave by 5pm sharp. He was surprised to see a 20% increase in productivity within a few weeks.

Listening is a skill you must acquire

Ramesh is glad that he picked up the skill of listening to colleagues, and making collective decisions, early in his entrepreneurial journey. In 2016, he also implemented advice on using networks and contacts for hiring rather than advertising on job portals; the suggestion came from Raison D’Souza, also director of engineering.

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How to make a career with drones

Working with drones is still not a career for most. Take Bhavesh Sangani for example. While studying at an engineering college in Tumkur, Karnataka, in 2009, Bhavesh Sangani bought a small toy: a remote-controlled helicopter. Before he started flying it, he tied it with a thread, just like a kite, scared it might land somewhere else. Something worse happened—the flight crashed and the toy was wrecked.

Bhavesh Sangani with his drones. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
Bhavesh Sangani with his drones. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

Drones is cutting-edge tech

What remained with Sangani, however, was the desire to fly something with a remote control. The same year, he started a club in college that made DIY remote-controlled flights or drones. “By the time I graduated in 2011, we had built 36 remote-controlled electrical planes, all self-taught through the internet,” says the 28-year-old. The hobby helped Sangani land a job as an engineer with Quest Global, an engineering services company based in Bengaluru, straight out of college.

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Setting up a start-up, straight out of college

In 2012, when Sachin Gupta graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee with a job offer from Google India, he faced a conundrum. He and his college mate, Vivek Prakash, had been building a software system, HackerEarth, for engineer recruitment. They had an offer from GSF Accelerator, a Bengaluru seed-funder for technology start-ups.

It came with a caveat: GSF wanted the two in Bengaluru, working full-time on the start-up, if they were to get the initial money. “That was our first challenge,” recalls Gupta. “If we wanted to do this start-up, and we so did, Vivek had to miss a semester in his degree while I had to leave my job.” Prakash wanted to get his degree.

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