NRI Career question: Is it tough to get a job in India after returning back from abroad with international work experience?

This was a recent question that came to me from an online forum. My response follows

Yes, I won’t sugarcoat it. It is certainly tough if you are job-hunting after returning from abroad with “international work experience.” I say this from my experience after returning back to India (link to another post).

Here’s why it may be “tough” to get a job after returning back, and what you could do

• Sheer population in urban-India with lot more educated and experienced workers looking for better opportunities, and intense competition for high-end (high paying) positions.
• You might over-value your “International work experience,” but recruiters don’t. A lot of Indians, especially in Info-tech sectors have such international experience and you will find it hard to stand out just on that account.
• If you have spent an extended period abroad, you may not have a network of peers in the local market who can make introductions or give referrals to openings
• Ageism - In the west, many professionals continue to be ‘hands on’ even as they gain experience in a field. This is true for hi-tech workers too. However, in India, hi-tech workers get ‘promoted’ to management positions early in their career and those skills are as valued in experienced professionals. If you happen to be a 40-something IT programmer, you will certainly find it hard to find an IT-programming job in India.
• Lot of ‘returning NRIs’ move back as they are unable to accept changes back in India. Employers may be hesitant to hire such NRIs if they are not likely to stick around.

So, what do you do?

• Focus your job search at organizations where you think your specific skills and experience are going to be in demand 
• Revive your network. Use social-media tools like LinkedIn to re-connect with old friends and peers and seek their help in getting you referrals and opportunities
• Don’t downplay your “international experience” but show how this, along with your current skills can help prospective employers 
• If you plan a long-term tenure in India, you should demonstrate such commitment to prospective employers.

You may also check out an earlier blog of mine - Is LinkedIn a useful platform for Job hunting ?

Parking Wars: Residents in the land of Gandhi taking up Gandhigiri ?

People in major urban cities like Bengaluru are on the edge over parking wars. Residents with bikes and cars – which most do find it an excruciating experience driving around neighborhoods looking for parking. Most gated communities and apartments have limited real-estate and deny parking for visitors.

Walking around a side-street in Malleshwaram, a nice old subdivision in Bangalore, I came across the following warning posted ominously on a house’ garage door.

I was both amused and perplexed by the warning message. Parking, especially illegal parking is certainly a nuisance in many neighborhoods, and at times I have had to ‘request’ offenders not to park in front of the gate of our house. However, I wonder if people really willing to take up law into their own hands and be uncivil and rude to their neighbors? 

Citizens are perhaps taking cues from their elected leaders and representatives who are both goading and leading with poor examples. Just a couple of cases that made headlines recently

First, there was the news of Shiv Sena Member of Parliment, Ravindra Gaikwad beatingan Air India staffer with slippers. The intelligence and middle-class were left wondering about Mr Gaikwad’s audacity in refusing to apologize and “demanding” his right to continue to fly Air India. We were also left to wonder about the impotence of fellow parliamentarians and elected representatives who barely uttered a pip against their esteemed colleague.

Just today there was an interesting news (link) of another Minister from Madhya Pradesh gifting bats to 700 brides “to fix drunk hubbie” 

After reading the article, I was left scratching my head over the message to the impressionable brides: expect your hubby to turn out to be a drunkard. So, what happens to the dreams and aspirations with which youngsters tie the knot; or for that matter the silly notion of love when an esteemed minister passes on this message? Speak of starting a new life on a wrong footing.

With such messages coming from representatives, it is not surprising to see the public including denizens of Bangalore taking up arms. Many are showing willingness to be "violent" to protect the land around their property against neighbors and fellow residents who dare to park their vehicles.  

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My earlier blogs on #return2India

• Life lessons on relocating to India: Six lessons from a six year old
• Return to India Musings: when a home becomes a golden egg

Life lessons on relocating to India: Six lessons from a six year old

About a year ago, I was at the crossroads, wondering about work-life decision I had to take. My dad, who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a while ago was starting to gradually slow down. My aging parents lived alone in Bangalore, and I got the dreaded phone call from my mother on the verge of breakdown herself, asking for help.

After a rushed trip to Bangalore to assess and assist – I arranged for a caregiver to help them at night – I began to reflect on the course of action to take. I was living the American dream thousands of miles away - a well-paying job with a multinational, a cozy house in the suburbs of Anytown, USA and our pesky six-year old enjoying the early years at his elementary school.

 If this were a business decision, a simple SWOT would indicate a rather uncomplicated way forward – delegate and outsource. There exists a mushrooming, albeit unorganized cottage sector in urban Indian cities catering to such demands of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) with aging parents. With some research, I could easily find a senior-care center or nursing home that would take-in my parents and provide oncology and other day-to-day care in return for an assured sum that I could remit in dollars.

Of course, this wasn’t a simple business-outsourcing decision to abdicate my responsibility, content to monitor Service Level Agreements (SLA) of an impersonal business entity. Also, I had to come to grips with the Indian values I had grown up with: wasn’t I thinking about my parents who nurtured me and made me the man who I am now? Interviews with management gurus and business leaders generally end with a stock question : if there was a chance to relive one decision, I would …. << spend more time with my family or xyz in my personal life etc >> Very rarely it was about a business dilemma. So, here was such a decision waiting to be taken.

One evening while walking around our subdivision with my little Vijay riding along in his bike – he had just graduated from training wheels – I wondered if I was overcomplicating things here. Shouldn’t we just be thinking of this like six-year-old Vijay would? Later that night I began firming up my thoughts with my wife, Suja:

• Keep it simple – the decision weighing on Suja and me was seemingly complex. Do I outsource and delegate the responsibility of elderly-care while remotely monitoring and managing SLAs, or insource myself by relocating to Bangalore and take on the responsibility? Management Guru, Peter Drucker was quoted saying “For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat—and wrong …. and every solution has an alternative.” In this case, alternatives in front of us include sponsoring a green card for my parents and having them relocate and live with us in the US. Over-thinking problem, solution and alternatives are a recipe for analysis-paralysis too. 
• Think of a simple way forward is something we can learn from a six-year-old. Suja and I had moved and lived across three continents, and we were willing and able to change. 


• Single minded determination – if you have seen a cranky child at a fairground, chances are she wants to go on “that” ride or wants that cotton-candy. Once our mind was made up, Suja and I decided to adopt that simple and single-minded focus. Working off a simple checklist, we began palling and acting on unwinding. 
• There were times of self-doubt and questioning but this is where a child’s dogged persistence comes to play: no time or need for self-doubt. 


• Tell it like you would to a six-year-old  - this is a cliché one often hears in the corporate world while trying to explain a seemingly complex idea or decision. This is easier said than done. However, after our mind was made up, Suja and I had a simple message for our friends and colleagues. Interestingly enough, I began testing this message with our six-year old, who instantly got it. He had already appraised his first-grade teacher of our impending move before Suja and I met her during the PTA.  
• At work too, the message to my manager and HR was simple: I needed to relocate to care for elderly parents, and I was going to make it happen. Negotiations for time off with manager, HR, FMLA applications etc followed, but the message was simple, and to the point. 


• Minimalize and focus – ever seen a six-year-old with a roomful of toys focus quickly on the one toy that is going to engage him? This thinking came really handy while planning and executing our relocation and move. 
• Questions on the impact of relocation on my job and finances and other logistics that could be emotional began to simplify with a lens of minimalism. 


• Don’t carry excess baggage – if you have ever traveled with little ones, they are sure to let you know what is important – it may be that Teddy, Doggie, blanket or favorite pyjamas or the mobile app on the tablet – All else is replaceable and redundant. 
• Keeping this in mind, it was easy enough to decide which of the basic essentials and a few mementoes would be packed and shipped. Much of the furniture and odds-and ends accumulated over the years were posted on Facebook groups for friends and neighbors to pick, while the rest went to Goodwill. 


• Focus on opportunities ahead – a six-year-old with a box-full of Lego blocks doesn’t dread the eclectic colors and shapes, but rather sees a house, car, plane or robot that he can build. Some call it making lemonade when life gives you a lemon, which we forget in our daily grind.
• Moving to Bangalore has helped me reflect on work-life beyond meetings, projects and corporate transformations aspiring to save or make a few million for yet another corporate business unit. 

A Year that was !

Fast forward a year. I have come to appreciate how those diagnosed with terminal illnesses and their caregivers quickly learn to appreciate the glass half-full. Thanks to the “extended family” being around, my parents seem much more relaxed. Little Vijay, now Seven, gets to spend quality time with his grandparents and is learning a couple of Indian languages with his new school pals. As for Suja and me, we are learning to enjoy and re-live a bit of the contemporary Indian-dream; till the winds of change blow our way again.

Return to India Musings: when a home becomes a golden egg

The first thing that hits one after landing back from a stint abroad is the abundance of people. This mass of humanity is visible right outside the exit gates of the swanky Bangalore international airport and carries through on the ride out on the highway where the airport traffic merges with commuters and is magnified as one approaches Hebbal flyover into the city.

After making annual trips back to my hometown from my adopted homeland in America, I recently took a conscious decision to spend an extended period of time in Bangalore. My family story is not atypical of that of scores of other NRIs – aging parents unable to manage on their own due to flailing health, yearning for their offspring’s to be around. Rather than contributing to the emerging market of “old age” homes in India by coaxing my parents to spend their sunset years in one such institution, I thought spending quality time with them was more valuable. Thus my wife, son and I find ourselves back in the bedroom in a home where I spent college years.

Welcome back to the concrete jungle that Bangalore has become, I thought to myself after landing back recently. This feeling begun to grow on me during the past few weeks in which I have enjoyed all modes of transportation starting with local autos, using my iPhone to hail Ola cabs, the extremely efficient, but overcrowded namma-metro from MG road to Majestic and even took a ride on BMTC bus before managing to maneuver my dad’s old Maruti 800 on the congested four-kilometer drive to Malleshwaram and back. 

My parents live in a house my dad build on a rather nice corner plot nearly three decades ago. Located close to the popular Ramiah Hospital and college complex, my parents continued to live here as “empty nesters” after my brother and I migrated abroad. And over the years the house continued to be a sanctuary during my relocations across the globe; a place I would come back for periodic R&R.

During my annual trips, I began encountering gradual changes around the neighborhood – a new multistory flat next door, the multi-story girl’s hostel opposite and a series restaurants café and pubs on the main road behind our house. At some point in the recent past, motorists driving from the congested New BEL road a block away to the 80-feet road behind our house realized that the side-road was a nice “bypass” from the signal light, which could speed up their commute by a few minutes. And thus the quiet road in front of the house became a noisy thoroughfare.

What about zoning regulations? I naively mused with my dad the other day and he began laughing. “Welcome back to India, the land of zone-less urban development” my dad joked. He explained that years ago when the first-multistory hostel was being built across the road, a few neighbors petitioned the local city councilor to intervene. For obvious reasons, the petition went nowhere. And soon, the neighbors got wise to the power of money: the land they were living on was appreciating, thanks to the rapid commercialization around and they began selling out to cash-in.

As far as my parents go, they have managed to cope with all the changes and developments around the best they can. At one level it feels like being the proverbial frog in a warming kettle that may soon come to a boil. With rapid commercialization and increasing buildup of traffic and haphazard parking around

the corner house, it is hard to even back out the family car from the driveway without a dozen cars, bikes and autos honking around. Behind our house on the main road there is now a “high end” liquor store that brings a steady assortment of drunks and wannabe drunks, some of whom recklessly pee on our boundary wall with gay abandon. Note to self: do an ROI of hiring a security guard to ward off drunks pissing on the walls nearby, vs just tolerating it.

Having lived in western cities for scores of years where zoning and dictates of city planners are respected, I am conflicted about our future in a zone-less neighborhood rapidly losing a livable feel. Having spent the good part of the past three decades in this neighborhood, my parents may not adapt to change that comes with moving into a soulless apartment in a gated community.

On one hand, I feel that I should let them enjoy the sunset years in the “home” with the background noise and din. On the other hand, I also feel that I need to work hard to ward off the prying eyes of commercial vultures circling around the “golden egg”. Just the other day, a cab driver who dropped me back home gave a bit of unsolicited advice: “why not tear down this old house and build a multi-story complex and earn some neat income, sir?”

(Repost from my Quora blog post)