Subash Sangam - Why I chose a career in Hospitality

Why I chose a career in Hospitality

Subash Sangam 

The cliche goes ‘the career chose me’. Well, that sure wasn't true in my case.

I chose the IHM and a career in hospitality. Often, I wonder what flow of tide drove me through an entrance, an interview with an industry doyen to joining ‘Catering College’ as it was referred to in the local parlance then. Bus conductors and auto-wallahs knew us by that tag. I wonder if it’s still the case in the Chennai of today?

For one, I wanted to skirt past the beaten track of Engineering and Medicine. Second, I needed a diversion from some serious family challenges that were bearing down on me.  

A chance meeting with a friend at IHM Bangalore helped me garner the basics. My limited knowledge of the industry when I attended the interview at Taramani: Hotels have 4 key departments and I had to choose one of the four and by the time I pass out.  Well as things panned out, I chose a 5th - Sales and Marketing.

Quite early, I had spotted the ‘signs' that ‘science’ was not my cup of tea. The other ‘worth-striving for' career, was the Armed Forces and i had to strike that down. Make no mistake, I had a surplus of the patriotic fervour, but a deficit in the verve to go through the physical duress. The lazy bone in me won the debate conclusively in favour of Hospitality.

Poetic justice? Well, 4 decades later, I go through a much, much higher degree of physical duress to maintain my weekly spar with the weighing machine. The industry was not exactly the best arena to nurture a lazy bone and if anything, it called for super-human efforts in endurance, both physical and mental. Naive, the me of 1990, but I am not complaining - eventually these very industry attributes worked in shaping me.   

However, what the industry did do right by me, was to nurture a quality that I did not know was ‘me’, in the first place. A people-pleaser to the core, I realise the term is used more as a put-down these days. Working in the industry helped me hone further on empathy and often, predicting what someone is looking for, or is uncomfortable with and deliver it even before they vocalise it.

The years in the hostel and college prepared me for the good, the bad and ugly of life on a mini scale.   And what I terribly lacked - discipline and acceptance of ‘it takes all kinds to make the world', was drilled into me. I am thankful to the industry at large for all this, because in retrospect, these traits certainly helped me in the hospitality career for sure, but also beyond when I digressed into IT, BPO and eventually into entrepreneurship.

Ironically, my first break out of the industry came through exactly because I had an IHM background. An ex-PUSA NRI held a high premium on hospitality professionals and asked me to take over the Indian operations of his BPO, which co-incidentally sold hospitality products on the web, a sort of forerunner of Travelocity or Makemytrip.

The skills that the industry teaches - people skills, focus and a systematic process for every task was unfortunately missing in the first generation of IT and BPO professionals. I have worked with brilliant, highly technically qualified professionals. Yet, I often privately rued what does it take to have mandatory hospitality enlisting of 1 year much like conscription in Armed Forces in some countries.  Is this the solution to what I often hear about ‘skills that don’t fetch jobs’. The industry has so much more to offer in terms of abstract skills than just running a smile or a hotel. 

There comes ‘days' in the working career of a hospitality professional, when nothing would go right, a series of mishaps, bizarre coincidences, bloomers from colleagues and of course one’s own. At those times, creative trouble-shooting is what brings a semblance of calm. The ‘jugaad’ that goes into fixing things, without the ‘analysis-paralysis’ syndrome setting in and the resilience to wait out situations beyond your control, played a pivotal role in my own harrowing experience of running a start-up since 2015. 

Today, when my company Xponential Outsourcery designs creative marketing campaigns for small and medium businesses in North America or while offering our unique C-Level Executive on ad-hoc hire basis, I dip deep into the reservoir of skills honed which I honed while working in hotels. When I am clueless for a solution and the ‘creative block’ sets in, I often go to ‘what would the hotelier in me do’. 

The best compliment I cherish is when a client who chose us over a full-bred Madison Avenue marketing agency, asked me if I have ever worked hotels. I asked him why and the reply was ‘Your company hops many loops ahead in terms of determining what my business needs are in the future. Often, at times you articulate ideas and address concerns that my thoughts are still veering towards.’ Are you a mind-reader?

Well, that’s a compliment I humbly place at the altar of my Alma Mater. It is truly the epitome of what an IHMCTAN degree, hostel life, inputs from the down-to earth lecturers, hospitality experience and the managers worked with can bring about in us. I am sure all of you would be able to relate to a success in your life, which had its genesis in the time spent in the industry.   

Subash Sangam, batch of 1993