In today’s dynamic business environment which is highly demanding and competitive, in order for organizations to survive and grow, it is essential for them to realize the need to continuously invest in the growth and development of its employees. This can be achieved by investing time and energy in effective training and development programs. From this perspective the role of a Training manager and his contribution towards the achievement of the overall organizational objective is of paramount importance.
As a part of this assignment I had the opportunity of interviewing one such training Manager, who had been extremely successful in her career and was currently responsible for catering to the training needs of a multinational organization having employee strength of approximately hundred thousand employees across the globe. She is a part of the middle management group and is handling a team of approximately ten executives who are responsible for helping her out in her training initiatives. She has been with this organization for a period of five years and due to her high achievements was able to get out of turn promotion. She is considered to be one of the most valuable assets by the Managing director as well as the Human Resource head of the company.
I began my interview by first trying to understand what motivated her to take up a career in the field of training and how did she go about trying to achieve this dream of hers. I learned that right from the college days, my interviewee was a people’s person and possessed excellent communication and presentation skills. Being aware of her strengths and abilities, she decided to make a career in the field of Human Resources. At that time she aspired to become a generalist and had to definite inclination towards making a career in the field of training and development. Keeping this motive in mind, she completed her graduation and got herself enrolled in a management college. After a two year formal program, she was successful in acquiring a post graduate degree in the Human Resources. She was also successful in topping her management college by acquiring the highest score in the examination. As a result of this, during her placements, she was picked up by a renowned multinational organization in the capacity of a Human Resource executive.
On further probing she revealed that initially, she was responsible for looking after the recruitment and selection process as well as providing operational support. The only form of training that she was delivering at that time was Induction and orientation programs for the new job incumbents. When I asked her how she managed to become a full fledged training manager, she told me that it was quite by accident. Her organization had launched a new initiative by the name of First Choice. This initiative was a derivative of six sigma, a quality tool, and it was implemented with the objective of improving the organizations processes as well as their efficiency. The participants of this initiative were employees in critical positions across departments. Her immediate superior was also nominated for this program. As luck could have it, he was occupied with another very important project and hence he recommended her name for this initiative.
One of her core responsibility as a part of this project was to spread awareness regarding this initiative across the organization. This involved conducting workshops and training with employees from different departments. This was the time, that my interviewee realized her love for this career option. On asking her what aspect of this line did she enjoy the most, the interviewee replied ,making the people aware of new concepts as well as interacting with them was something she really liked doing. She found this field to be dynamic and extremely rewarding. It also provided her an opportunity to communicate and interact with people from different departments. Thereafter I asked her what would be the critical skills required to succeed in this profile. She told me in order to be successful in the field of training and development one has to be extremely strong in communications and presentation skills. The person should be a good orator and have the ability to capture the attention of the audience. In addition to this comprehensive knowledge about the organization and its processes is also critical. The person also has to possess an innovative and creative way of thinking so as to make the sessions interesting.
Lastly I asked her what were her day to day responsibilities and what did she do when not conducting trainings. To this my interviewee replied, that training does not only involve presentations and interaction. There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done before conducting any training program. In addition to this one more very important aspect of this function is training administration. This basically involves activities like recording the trainings conducted, doing a training need analysis on a regular basis to identify the potential training needs, tracking down the effectiveness of the trainings conducted, making the training budget and other administrative activities. Therefore when she was not conducting trainings she was involved in these administrative activities.
When I asked her what were her future career goals. She told me that her long term plans for to open a company of her own that would provide training support to organizations across the globe. She had already started working on this dream of hers. In addition to this in order to stay in line with the market demands, she had got herself enrolled in a number of training and development courses in order to enhance her knowledge and stay competent.
This Interview was extremely informative and educative for me. My interviewee was extremely cooperative and her success story was very inspiring. She was extremely dedicated to her work and I feel the reason for her success was her constant need to upgrade herself in terms of skills and knowledge as well as continuously attempt to do something new and innovative in the career option of her choice.
