Lessons from a year of doing epic shit @ nearbuy.com

Whilst still in my final year of college, I had a torrid time landing myself a general management internship. Without having to utter the 'n' word, it'd be safe to say that I learnt a big life lesson - internships at that level depended a lot more on my contact list than on my CV.

In places where I did manage to get audience with recruiters, I was told that I was "creative" and that I should do only content roles. It's quite possible that a poorly crafted or skewed profile resulted in that impression being formed quite easily, but it was hard to fathom when the same recruiters happily settled for relatively emptier CVs for similar roles that I had applied for.

All of this left me wondering whether I was at all cut out for the corporate world, leave alone jobs mildly related to my undergraduate field of study. The experience left me a bit confused and unsure of myself - prodding me to feel incapable mostly.

But then I had to try something out to believe that I sucked at it, where was the opportunity going to come from?

It was then that nearbuy.com happened to me -- what originally was a Business Development profile right out of campus, got converted to a role in the Strategy/Project Management team.

And all of a sudden, I was dabbling in the world of spreadsheets, presentations, and Big Data.

I am lucky to say I adapted pretty quickly largely due to the presence of an extraordinarily patient & diligent manager cum mentor.

Remember spending my first few months literally being handheld into the new world - being taught how to look at numbers from various perspectives, formulating structures to solve business problems using hypotheses, communicating through presentations, and a host of other things.

Most organisations would have either run out of patience in giving me the foundation to learn from scratch or would have confined me to a corner full of meaningless tasks. Matter of privilege that it didn't happen with me at nearbuy.com

Soon, I started to love Excel as much as I loved Word.

Saying so, it's been exactly a year since I first step foot into nearbuy's Gurgaon office and safe to state that the 365-days have immensely transformed me as a professional and as a person.

I feel gratitude about the fact that I got time to share with some amazingly talented colleagues and seniors. Looking back, here are my 11 biggest lessons (in no specific order) from working at this wonderful place:

1. Culture matters, and is possibly the most underrated driver of productivity
2. The manager always knows more - as a newbie, hate him/her at your own risk
3. Training sessions won't teach you as much about your job & the company as interacting with colleagues will
4. Drown yourself in work in the initial phases to steepen the learning curve & never underestimate the power of "boring" tasks
5. "If there's hunger - there's absolutely no new skill you cannot learn and no problem that you cannot solve", so said the elders, but one shouldn't ignore the role of the surroundings in achieving that
6. Organisational transparency builds trust, trust binds people together during difficult times
7. The empathy & EQ of the leadership determines whether it is just another company you are working for or an institution that believes in something big
8. Don't burn yourself out before the marathon begins
9. Add that extra bit each time to take advantage of the compounding effect
10. Communication is the single most effective way to tackle all of life's challenges

Lastly, and my favourite...

You don't know what you are truly capable of till you've made yourself uncomfortable

Does your first job suck? Here's a way out...