There is a gap between what young people want from their careers and what they get. We’ve spent months trying to understand this white space, and we've distilled our learnings into a brand new careers podcast from the newsroom of The Ken!

The first two years of our careers are hard. They are exciting and full of possibilities, but also frustrating and anxiety-inducing. 

Every interaction, every assignment, and every initiative seems to hold promise and uncertainty in equal measure. 

Do you have to love your job? Must your colleagues also be your friends? Is it okay to feel restless after just six months? Did your boss offer you feedback or criticism, and does the difference matter? Is it okay to be seen as ambitious? Can finding a great mentor help you grow faster? And just what is the right level of cool to wear to work?

Perhaps you were lucky enough to land your “dream job” during placements, but the reality of any job can be daunting even in the best of times. 

No wonder a large majority of graduates end up quitting their first jobs in the very first year or two. 

You’d think companies would pay the same level of attention to welcoming, nurturing, and mentoring their young first-time employees as they did to hiring them on campus. (They’re busy with other things).

The First Two Years is a new early careers podcast from The Ken, hosted by Akshaya Chandrasekaran. Think of it as a friend that will ask—and answer—the most important and interesting questions about learning to succeed at work. 

Sure, you will hear accounts of crisis, failure, turnaround, and triumph from young professionals in their early 20s. But we also promise you that right mix of humour, awkwardness, wit, and cool that is equally important.

You can call us TFTY. Follow us on Spotify and Apple to get notified when our first episode drops – trust us, you don’t want to miss us.

Thank you for tuning in every week. With this episode, Cost to Company is coming to an end. Do tell us what you liked about the show, what we can do differently, or if you have any fresh ideas in the careers space for us. Write to [email protected].

If you liked Cost to Company, we are sure you'd like our other podcasts First Principles and Daybreak.

We have newer, bigger shows coming real soon! Stay tuned to the feeds for updates on the upcoming shows.

The show was hosted by Sneha Vakharia, Shreevar Chhotaria, and Akshaya Chandrasekaran. It was sound engineered by Rajiv CN. And made possible by so many of you tuning in every Tuesday. 

Cost to Company was produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories. Until next time!

Each individual episode of Cost to Company is like a part of the elephant in the hands of a blind person. Only but a piece of a much larger story.

In this special 50th episode of Cost to Company, the hosts discuss the sum of trends they have observed in workplaces. And what that tells us about the changing nature of the economy, and of work.

This episode was produced by Sneha Vakharia, and engineered by Rajiv CN.

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

Company culture (as we know it) is broken. Seventy-seven percent of the global workforce is disengaged and burnt out, says the latest Gallup report. In fact, there's a new term floating around – loud quitting. These are employees who stay in their jobs and take actions that directly harm the organisation and sabotage its goals. This is a new low, and a huge signal that there is a dire need to change. Companies are looking for innovative ways to boost the morale of the workplace and weld teams together. One of the most unique ways that they are doing that is by identifying 'influencer' networks and tapping into them. Many marquee companies are adopting this process to better understand their employees and serve their needs. On today's episode, we will talk about what happens when an employee becomes an 'influencer' and what that does to an organisation.

Further reading: Gallup's State of the Global Workplace (2023 Report)

This episode was written and hosted by Akshaya Chandrasekaran. It was produced by Anushka Mukherjee and engineered by Rajiv CN.

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

We released a survey for working mothers.

The objective was to build a collective of the wisdom of working mothers. Ask them for their needs. And their hacks. How can families and businesses best enable working mothers? And how can working mothers enable themselves?

As of writing this, It’s been a week since we put out the survey. 630 mothers replied. This is what they had to say.

This episode was written and hosted by Sneha Vakharia, and engineered by Rajiv CN.

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

But that's not the case with PIPs.

Which, more often than not, is planned to fail anyway.

In this episode of Cost to Company, I speak to Sharthok Chakraborty (Co-founder, Klaar; Ex-Cipla) Nimesh Mathur (Investor, Advisor, HR Leader; Ex-Haptik), and Sumit Singla (HR Consultant, ex-Accenture) on one of the most contentious tools of the workplace, the Performance Improvement Plan.

And why embarking on one is almost always a fool's errand.

For both the employer and the employee. 

This episode was written, hosted, and produced by Shreevar Chhotaria and engineered by Rajiv CN.

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

Reverse reference checks. Combative questions during interviews. And employees on why it isn’t the employer’s market yet. With layoffs and recession fears, you would imagine employees are settling for less. You would imagine they are taking up a job, any job, to evade unemployment. Instead, they are making decisions about their next move in the most deliberate and calibrated manner. On today's episode, we will talk about employees striving to take back the position that matters most in their careers: the driver’s seat.

Recommended listen: The rise and rise of discreet reference checks

This episode was written, hosted, and produced by Akshaya Chandrasekaran and engineered by Rajiv CN.

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

There’s hustle. And then there’s excellence. Startups give their employees abundance of the former, but not as much of the latter. In the long run, this can seriously hurt career prospects.

This week, we set out to understand the skills startups give their youngest employees.. The skills they don’t. Where this can land them in their careers. Who is responsible for this.  And if you are such a startup employee, what you can do about it. 

This episode was written and hosted by Sneha Vakharia, and engineered by Rajiv CN.

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

If you ask any tech employee about their dream company to work at, it’s usually a Microsoft or a Google or a cool startup. Nobody aspires to work at a healthcare company or a bank, really. It’s where you end up. Not choose. At least that’s the perception all around.

But what if I tell you, you’ve been looking at the talent market all wrong? That the cold sectors of yesterday — manufacturing, BFSI, FMCG companies, and so on — are the hot sectors of today. Companies, across sectors, want to be tech companies. Or at least, tech-presenting companies, to stay ahead of the curve. 

Traditional firms with sound fundamentals are now paying better salaries for tech talent and doing interesting and meaningful work. And most importantly — they are offering stability in a very volatile jobs market. 

This episode was written and hosted by Akshaya Chandrasekaran, produced by Anushka Mukherjee, and engineered by Rajiv CN. 

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribers-only business news platform.

Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

How do you evaluate the risks you take in your choice of jobs? The size, stage of the company you’re going to work for. The type of roles you choose. How long you wait in a particular role before you make your next move, look for the next jump.

How do the risks we take, and don’t take, shape our careers.

This week, we turn to three of the most risk seeking category of professionals, founders. We ask them how to take risks well. 

This episode was written, hosted and produced by Sneha Vakharia, with audio engineering by Melroy Fernandes. 

Cost to Company is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.