Designed for MBA students, the GrindStone^TM workshops mean 10 hours of uninterrupted workout and a 360 degree view on how to best prepare for getting a dream job, retaining one, and staying on course for a satisfying career (Especially, if you’re not from an ivy league business school!). Coming from the renowned SkillRoots’ stable, the GrindStone^TM Workshop deploys “BRASSTACKS”- a state-of-the-art audit, action and impact-assessment methodology developed by the company and tested specifically for India.

Based on threadbare analysis of what skills, competencies and knowledgebase organizations and companies require in young managers, the BRASSTACKS is an approach which is in absolute contrast to the “babel tower” one often adopted in Business Schools.

Split into eight modular segments, GrindStone^TM addresses key aspects impacting job-landing, on-the-job performance and career building in the first three years post MBA. The workshop is conducted in an extremely informal manner and the trainers expertly and silently create strong one-on-one relationships with participants.

It’s 10 hours of rigorous, action-packed sessions make you test your employability as a management trainee; identify chinks in your skills-, concept- and knowledge-base; help you design an optimal career plan and evolve a smart strategy-set for acquiring prestigious post-MBA assignments.

GrindStone^TM Agenda

GrindStone^TM - The Workshop

The inaugural segment is a preview to the 10 hours of workout the workshop will give to participants. It features a small lecture on what to expect from GrindStone^TM, how best to get the most out of it, and how to complement and supplement the learnings post-workshop for maximum effect. This segment also has “know each other”; and Aspirations audit sessions.

The Employers' Wishlist

In the second GrindStone^TM segment, the trainers take the participants through a virtual tour of what do companies expect from fresh MBAs; and their apprehensions, reservations, prejudices and complaints about MBAs as a “species”. After this segment, a careful and attentive participant will be forced to introspect and revise his/ her career choices and will become more realistic on ambitions. More importantly, this segment will serve to dramatically guide participants toward “skill-gap analysis” for improved employability.

You Test Waters

This segment is devoted to helping every student/ participant evaluate various aspects of his/her current levels and nature of employability in an extremely structured fashion. Beginning from a Function & Task Suitability self-test, FTS, the evaluation moves through Domain & Sector Suitability (DSS ) and Capabilities & Aptitude Gap (CAG) tests. The three tests offer a participant a near 360 degree view of his/her current levels of overall employability and the validity of his/her career aspirations as they are now.

What's a Career…

This is an invaluable GrindStone^TM segment on career engineering for fresh MBAs. The trainers use a mix of action games, labs and lectures to illustrate participants the methods, strategies and techniques of designing a career plan and attendant pathways. The objective is to clearly explain how a right career design may lead to a better and more paying first job after MBA and establish strongly in participants’ minds the correlation between domain-specific high overall employability and accelerated career growth.

What Does It take…

This is the stage at which GrindStone^TM transports participants to a new level of awareness about what to add, improve, polish and garnish in ones personality and skill-set so that employers’/ industry expectations are more than met. In this segment, the participants are explained about what companies expect from high quality management trainees in terms of attitude, aptitude, functional competencies, leadership abilities and interpersonal temperament & skills.

Go for It…

This is the final technical segment of the GrindStone^TM Workshop. Aspects ranging from broad generics of how to get and retain high quality jobs and make a career to detailed explanation of typical recruitement processes in organizations are covered in this segment. The trainers expose opportunities, job-designs, and Skill Requirements in hottest industry domains and present application templates for participants. They also give structured advise on how to prepare for and take job-interviews for maximum “hit-rate” and also on how best to negotiate positions and salaries from prospective employers.

Open House…

The workshop closes with a no-holds-barred interaction between the trainers and participants on practically anything concerning skills development, management learning, careers, interviews, negotiation, industry practices etc.

To know more about GrindStone^TM and the process of embedding it, please write at GrindStone@skillroots.com