March 29, 2015

Work Local, Think Global - Building Context in Dispersed Teams

Now a days many Indians work for foreign companies situated in India.

Much of the context in working with the foreign clients or customers must be built from scratch and without understanding the cultural context or even meeting people from the target culture. Some of the professionals who work in these jobs also have to learn technical skills or processes that do not apply in the same career field in India. Some career fields that this applies to could include accountancy, banking, and legal matters, among others. For instance, an Indian who may work as a tax preparer or a stock analyst for an American client (such as HR Block or Fidelity) would learn the technical skills in this job in India, but for the American way of doing it, not the Indian way, so if they ever want to change jobs, they would have to undergo new training or certification depending on the skillset.

So, how can one build context and then change that context to a local environment? How can one build context and transferrable skills in these cases? Listen to some of the tips on these topics shared by expat trainers in India, Jennifer Kumar and Sarah Roost.

This speech was one of several keynote addresses of the Devcon 2015 tech conference organized by the Kerala Microsoft Users Group (KMUG).