Interview who?

I remember when I had to make what I thought was the first decision of my career way back in 1994! The big question for me then was - Science, Commerce or Arts? These used to be the three stream choices in front of a 16 year old! My dad, who I consider to be my mentor and guide, asked me then to look up people and their listed professions in his Rotary directory. He made me call 5 of them who i thought were in interesting professions to interview! I asked them questions like why did they select that occupation and so on and so forth. This was a great technique and I really got some great insights into various streams. Commerce sounded too boring and Arts was really not my thing! And hence, Science was the stream of choice.

Moving on, a couple of years later, during MBA, one of my favorite professor, Dr Siegel, asked us to do the same- interview people who we looked up to as leaders in their respective professions and companies and talk to them about how they achieved their goals and maintained work-life balance and other pointers they may have for students like me who are just starting out in their careers. I had a great time interviewing a CEO of a private organization, a young executive at yet another mid-size company, a woman manager at a multi-national. A wonderful mix of professionals and tremendous wealth of knowledge on various aspects of career development, was a result.

I truly enjoyed the time spent interviewing people who I look up to and people who I aspire to be. But in the past this has only been for a professional reason. I then had a thought- If I could do interviews for making a career choice or for professional reasons, why can I not do the same on my personal front?

I said in my previous post that we are a lucky generation of migrants! There is a reason why I feel so and it is that we have a lot of first generation migrants who left India way back in the 80's. They raised their kids in a foreign country and possibly have old parents back in India. If I had a chance to interview selected families, who have not only raised their kids in a foreign country right, but at the same time also fulfilled their duties toward old parents who are thousands of miles apart, I would have a great set of guidelines to follow. A kind of "Dos and Don't for First Generation Migrants". I plan to do this by interviewing families I look up to on a personal level! I think myself and my friends who are away from India, will have a lot to learn from the interview summaries. I wish my self good luck for this endeavour!