Late Bloom !!!

Although I am posting this article 6 months after I joined GEMS Hyd(GE Money Servicing), I remember the journey like yesterday. Let me begin by telling you how it all started. I received a call from Planman Consultancy regarding interviews. I went and met Maushmi and she arranged for the interviews with a couple of companies. I wanted to join CFC International for their higher pay-package. But I wasn't given the job as the work experience that I had does not qualify as valid full-time work experience.

I was interviewed by Mr. Sudhakar from GEMS Hyd (GE Money Servicing). After the usual questionnaire about my academics and other stuff came the JAM and telephonic interview round. I managed to clear all of those but unfortunately I was only one from that batch.

I went to ILABS, Hyd, which would be my office for the coming months. Gave the required documents to Mr. Sudhakar and joined the MST(Mind Space Training).

Let me tell you something about MST. GEMS is a very clever organisation. They do everything according to the procedure and also manage to bring up novel ideas to retain new hires. MST is a tool used for this. We are to attend these sessions everyday and we will be paid for it. Meanwhile the HR sends our profile for verification. As the verification takes place, we have a good time with MST trainers who are not GE Employees but are from an outsourced HR organisation. By doing this they get to keep the new hires as long as the verification might take(given the stringent verification parameters) and also not officially call them GE Employees. If there is something wrong with the profile, we will be politely asked to leave the organisation.

In other companies, after clearing the rounds, the company asks for some time for profile verification. Meanwhile, we attend interviews of other companies for jobs and if we are able to get a better offer, we conveniently forget about the previous company who already working on your verification. If the employee rejects the offer after completing verification, the company will lose the money spent on the verification and also a potential candidate. GEMS gets the score in this issue here.

My MST trainers were Christy and Anjali. We had a good time during the training. I met a couple of my would be team-mates during that time. There was Sujith(Mallu), Loren, Irfan, Lawrence(Larry), Sikha Das, Russell, John John Malla, Mario, Arokia Mary and Dheeraj. Also I met a few others who ended up other processes like risk and SF.

A few others were selected for PMG process. The lot includes, Prahith and Mazhar who was initially in our team but left due to unforeseen reasons.

We were employed by GEMS on 7th May, 2008. It was a day of signatures and data entries. The good thing about it was that I ended up with a good bunch of friends and sad thing is that I hardly spent time in MST with the others. It was truly a honeymoon period.

Our process was PMG(Partnership Marketing Group). This is a consolidated process where we arrange roadside assistance like towing, lock-out, jump start, tire change services etc. It also includes the credit card sentinel process. It has many clubs like SNAC(Signature Nationwide Auto Club), BP Motor club, AARP motoring plan, NSD, SAM's Club etc etc....

Our process trainer was Sainath(Scott), voice trainer was Shimul and cultural trainer was Shelley Kasunich. Initially, we were only trained in BP motor club, SNAC and CCS.

Sainath was the extremely neutral, calm, professional and wasn't easily excitable kinda guy. But his English is really good. At first I thought he was faking his accent, but I didn't notice any change in the accent ever since then. His process knowledge is great. He was ok with occasional indiscipline given that we are all new employees and mostly all of us are freshers. We used to extend our breaks and he tried his best to get us disciplined but we hardly improved. Not his fault though ;)

I was very competitive at everything. When Sainath said there would be occasional quizzes and stuff, I was excited. He made teams from us and the teams were names after makes of car manufacturers like Chevy, Ford etc etc...

I would get over-excited and would try my best to score and get points, I would literally get involved in the quiz and wont accept the spirit of such quizzes. Maybe that is why, Sainath would change rules in the middle of the game so that in the final winning moments of the quiz, we would lose with just one final question. I would get really frustrated and angry at Sainath. Later would realise that this is life and it can be really unfair at times. I got along well with the training and finished it.

Shimul was very friendly and spirited. Although we enjoyed her session more than Sainath's we deliberately told her that we find her very boring and silent. She put in extra effort to make our classes exciting. Actually that was what we wanted and we got it. Her classes became even more exciting and we truly had fun time during training.

Shelley was our cultural trainer. She was a Canadian by nationality but would make us understand the thinking and life style of Americans. The training includes idioms and proverbs etc. Shelley was so full of energy that it exudes from her and into others around her. She along with Shimul took our mock call for the final assessment.

The training took around 45 days to complete. It was time for team allotment. Me, Larry, Sujith, Sikha, Irfan, Dheeraj, Mazhar and Prahith were in Allwin's Team. Arokya Mary, Loren, Mario, Russell and John John Malla were in Ashwin's Team.

Arokya, Mazhar and Prahith left the company soon after team allotment.