The reason we regard life as a roller-coaster is because it has its twists and turns, ups and downs and the best part is that we have no clue as to what’s in store for us next. Story of Mishra is of that genre. In the 90s a typical office hour was drizzling away all day in Kolkata. Yet there was no respite due to high humidity in the air. Our audit and consultancy Firm was then housed in an ancient and ghostly looking building in the central part of the City at Ganesh Chandra Avenue. Oh! Here entered Mishra, a baldy smart gentleman in his thirties who had almost become a regular visitor and who were desperately looking for his association with us for professional reasons. His interest in an association with us was remarkable! He was persuasive like an orchestra of a song, yet modest and sugary in his disposition and utterance of words with which he used to communicate his way through. Even without entertaining “You may not quite avoid me” was the silent USP of his personality. “Sorry to bother you,! I am Mishra here Sir!” was always to be his smiley and apologetic opening line of introduction. As I could see now over the shoulder from my little cubicle, the place at the front desk of the entrance where he approached as a visitor and consequently made to sit in that notorious Sofa for his turn to meet me. Mishra however, always preferred to stand instead. 

Yes, there’s a definite reason for his standing over there indeed! That sofa was not to be mistaken as an ordinary one and it had a “pain- full” story reserved for all its long-sitting occupiers to remember for a long, long time for sure. The soft black sofa was a cool habitat of many happy and big bug families! We all knew that before any visitor got up on his own by natural choice of being mercilessly bitten by those unfailing tiny creatures, we had to attend to him. Or alternatively, but not intentionally of course, if he by chance remains seated for a fairly long time, it is sure that he would prefer to leave us at the earliest possible tenure after finishing his conversation, maybe with a compelling urge to rush home to nurse the bruised place, not to talk about. Needless to say, the repeat visitors became wiser with the time and would always prefer to stand rather than sitting on the proverbial sofa, politely refusing the Front Office Lady’s offering to them to sit! Over the period Mishra too became wiser and he would patiently wait standing in the lobby till his turn came.

We were then recruiting specific professionals for a particular vertical of the firm and for that we advertised in The Economic Times of a Job column that we want eight to ten years of post-qualification experienced professionals who have passed out from the premier institutes of the country like IIMs/ IITs, ISBs etc. The applications were pouring in to keep my Lotus Notes email inbox red in every minute. Though Mishra approached us with the reference of that job opening advertisement, he never applied through the email id provided for; instead he approached me directly after the last date was over to apply for the position. Being impressed by his way of conversation I had decided to accept his application through hard copies of his resume, but I was surprised when he informed me that he had not even updated his resume as according to him, if I see his resume he would be instantly rejected!  For Mishra the basic criteria to qualify for those positions were a grand mismatch. He was a plain B.Com graduate in a pass course with good experience in EXIM (Export & Import). He had no professional qualification like an MBA degree or sort and his logic for not going for a higher education was that he thoroughly enjoyed his present occupation which was his only passion and an extra qualification, according to him, would be redundant and decorative. Naturally, I considered him as a mere time waster or a crazy person and I apologized for my inability to proceed further on his impossible request or a dream to be associated with our Organisation. He left for that day but kept in touch with me over phone calls or a brief visit frequently. He was quite courteous but I always maintained a mostly monosyllabic response from my side to make it clear to him that he should find his carefully nurtured dream somewhere else. At times, I was quite avoiding his calls or even refused to attend to him when he came to meet me in the office saying I wasn’t free to meet him.

After a few months he sent me an email explaining clearly what he could bring to the table by way of significant reduction of cost for some of our eminent clients which shook me a bit and I found some substance in it. Mastering courage of an instant risk of being ridiculed, first I talked to the Partner, the head of the practice whose vertical team members were involved with that job for his clients. He saw his qualification and looked at me with a frowning suspicion and sarcastically suggested that I should go for an immediate Holiday as I must be hard pressed with work and that’s why I was recommending such a candidate to him whilst knowing the requirement! Few weeks later I again approached my Partner and this time with a personal request to interact with him once just for the sake of courtesy. He was quite reluctant to accept my request however; he finally agreed to meet Mishra only for ten minutes just for my sake. Mishra was briefed by me accordingly and the meeting began between our Partner and Mishra. I was a silent yet avid listener to apprehend how fast this gentleman might be thrown out of the room. With the body language and gesture our Partner made it quite clear to Mishra that this was only a courtesy meeting with my request and he had to leave for another meeting. Mishra expressed his gratitude and began politely and as the conversation progressed, the gesture of our Partner changed from negative to social and slowly from social to very positive to cordial and yes, the meeting which was initially scheduled for ten minutes went on for over an hour and a half. Mishra thanked us for the meeting and left quietly, leaving us both intrigued and confused as well. To cut the story short, we could not take him on roll as there was a qualification mismatch with the requirement of the position advertised for but we had finally decided to accommodate him as a subject expert who would externally represent our Organisation to our clients on contractual basis. Our Organisation had agreed to pay Mishra 30 K per day way back in 1999 for the days he would be deputed to our clients and needless to say Mishra contributed enormous cost saving for the happy clients agreeing to pay handsome fees to us. It was a win-win proposition.

The incident shook me literally and the valuable lesson I learnt from that Mishra episode is that an HR professional may stick to the criteria for shortlisting a candidate which is administratively convenient for him, however, who knows, there could be several Mishras remaining invisible in the dump of rejected list of candidates and for which he must keep somewhere a window open in his mind and outlook to dare to walk on the unknown path instead of being an outright stereotype which is unfortunately a common scenario in every Organization.