Q. 1. What are, in your view, the basic principles of success in a professional life?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: As Stephen Covey says, private victories precede public victories, so you have to be, first of all, a competent human being in order to thrive professionally. Professional life is in fact an extrapolation or extension of your personal life. What kind of thoughts dominate your mind determines the success or failure in your life, be it professional or personal.
To be precise, following are some of the qualities that determine and define your success in professional life.

  • Take initiative: Do more than what you are being paid for. Going the extra mile alone, can take people to the ‘no looking back’ stage.
  • Improvise: There is a saying of the Holy Prophet that if a person’s tomorrow is not better than present; he/she may not belong to us. That is a great message. It means we need to continuously sharpen our skill-set to enable us to lead better lives. The entire Japanese management system revolves around a concept of Kaizen (incremental improvement). Anthony Robbins calls it CANI (Constant And Never-ending Improvement).
  • Team Work: You thrive in life when you look for synergies. Highly effective people are neither dependent nor independent; they are interdependent. They love to work in colonies rather than on islands.
  • Personal Merchandising: There may be an excellent product, but unless, it is visible, it will not sell. You may be a top performer. You will not get promoted unless your achievements are visible to the decision makers.

Q. 2. Tell us about your educational life?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: My educational spectrum is wildly 180 degree. I started my early education from the roofless and ghost schools of rural Punjab, but I did my MBA from Ivy League institution of Pakistan, i.e. IBA Karachi in 1992. So, I have enjoyed the best of both worlds.

Q. 3. What makes your company an attractive employer for the job seekers?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: Ashraf Chaudhry Associates is a training & consultancy company. In training and consulting fields, your imagination is the only limit to your earning and learning. You constantly grow and expand your horizons in terms of bucks, knowledge and networking.

Q. 4. What do you look for in a candidate during a hiring interview session? Name 4 key things?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: In my more than 15 years of experience as a business executive, I have interviewed and hired hundreds of people. I look for:

  1. Level of competency
  2. Willingness to take initiatives
  3. Hunger for growth
  4. Positive mental attitude

Q. 5. What is the scope of Human Resource Management in Pakistan?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: HRM is in its embryonic stage in Pakistan. Barring a few companies, the HR people are just glorified clerks. But I see HR community in future to fight for its empowerment. HR Head has to be as powerful as the CFO in the company. They are the custodians of the rights of their colleagues. They will get to their true goals only if they start exerting themselves.

Q. 6. How would you rate the success and importance of online recruitment firms such as ROZEE.PK?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: ROZEE.PK is a phenomenon success in Pakistan. It has positively impacted lives of millions of job seekers. The future is online. ROZEE.PK will always enjoy the status of ‘first mover’. Now all others will be ‘me-too’.
ROZEE.PK has also helped organizations cut their talent hunting costs considerably. Now employers can just log in to find tailored talent by browsing the data base of candidates maintained by ROZEE.PK.

Q. 7. How has ROZEE.PK helped your firm regarding recruitment i.e. Have you tried any recruitment tools provided by ROZEE.PK e.g. Job Fairs/Job Postings/CV Search?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: I have attended a couple of job fairs of ROZEE.PK and it has been an awesome experience. But as such, I have yet to try its recruitment tools. I rely on the market buzz that ROZEE.PK is doing a commendable job.

Q. 8. What is your strategy on work-life balance and how do you achieve this balance yourself?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: You need to create a balance only when your work and life are in different compartments. But if your passion is your profession, you don’t have to worry about the balance. I am an entrepreneur, I do business when I am awake; I dream about business when I am sleeping. My life is my work and work is my life.

Q. 9. Do you believe that Pakistani universities are creating an effective talent pool and what is your company’s strategy to attract the best talent in Pakistan?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: Pakistani universities, honestly speaking, are churning out worthless individuals. Private universities are just money minting machines and public universities are disconnected with the corporate world. Except a few institutions like IBA Karachi, LUMS or GIK, the situation in general is highly deplorable. Universities pay least attention to capacity building of their graduates. I have screened thousands of CVs in my career and jobseekers cannot differentiate between Matric & Metric, Career & Carrier, Marital & Martial, because their institutions failed to sensitize them about being ‘detailed-oriented’. We are basically not ‘labor-intensive’ company. We have trainers in our pool who come onboard as and when there are projects.

Q. 10. What is your formula of success in life?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: My formula of success is very simple, i.e.:

  • Set smart goals
  • Work with daily intensity
  • Get associated with people who are smarter than me
  • Stand out from the crowd

Q. 11. What are the biggest turnoffs in an interview of a job applicant?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry:

  • The interviewee reaches late and does not apologize
  • His/her cell rings in the interview
  • He/she asks what the office timings are and is it 5 days or 6 days a week
  • He/she has poor image of himself/herself, of his/her alma mater and the country
  • He/she is constantly ‘negaholic’

Q. 12.  Due to rough economic situation and soaring price rise, how does your company deal with keeping itself cost effective and attractive for job seekers?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: We use social media particularly LinkedIn to search for people matching our and our clients’ requirements.

Q. 13. Any good advice you want to give for the job seekers who want to enter and prosper in the professional field?

Mr. Ashraf Chaudhry: Job-hunting requires the basic selling skills. You are the most valuable product on planet earth. If you cannot sell yourself, you can sell nothing in life. So you need to strategize to market yourself to get the best price. Job-hunting is a full time job and it cannot be delegated. You need to discover your USPs, package them attractively and design your marketing communication tools like CVs/Cover Letters and open channels of distribution. You need to market your personal brand like an organization manages its product portfolio.

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