What does it take to build a successful career when you don't come from privilege, don't speak fluent English, and don't have a clear roadmap for success?

In this episode of My First Job, we speak with Karaiadiselvan S., Managing Director of CAD Centre, whose journey offers powerful lessons for students, graduates, engineers, entrepreneurs, and young professionals navigating today's uncertain job market.

Rather than focusing solely on his rise from trainee engineer to business leader, this conversation explores the principles that created long-term success: continuous learning, adaptability, resilience, communication skills, entrepreneurship, and the courage to pursue opportunities others overlook.

Karaiadiselvan shares how a simple conversation with an HR manager changed the direction of his career, why he chose learning over salary, how he overcame the challenge of studying in Tamil medium, and the mindset that helped transform a small training organization into a global network that has trained over 1.5 million professionals.

Whether you're exploring engineering careers in India, looking for career guidance after college, wondering how to develop employability skills, or considering entrepreneurship as a career path, this episode offers practical advice that remains relevant regardless of industry or technology trends.

You'll learn:

• How to make better career decisions in your 20s
• Why learning compounds faster than salary increases
• The value of staying long enough to master a craft
• How communication skills can accelerate career growth
• What employers look for beyond qualifications
• Why successful people create opportunities instead of waiting for them
• How to build a meaningful and future-proof career

If you're a student, graduate, engineer, or young professional searching for real-world career advice, this episode provides insights that can help shape your next decade of growth.

Subscribe to My First Job for conversations that help you make smarter career choices and learn from people who have built extraordinary careers from ordinary beginnings.

What is it really like to become a teacher in India?

In this episode of My First Job, experienced educators from Montessori, CBSE senior secondary, and rural government schools share the realities of teaching as a career in India.

If you are a student, graduate, career switcher, or someone exploring meaningful careers after college, this conversation gives you a practical and honest look at the teaching profession.

From handling young children in Montessori classrooms to preparing Class 11 and 12 students for board exams and competitive exams, this episode explores the skills, patience, communication abilities, and emotional intelligence required to become a successful teacher.

The discussion also covers teacher salary expectations in India, work-life balance, classroom management, student psychology, parent pressure, government vs private schools, and how technology and smartphones are changing education. The guests explain why teaching is more than a job — it is about mentorship, facilitation, curiosity, empathy, and lifelong learning.

Whether you are preparing for B.Ed, Montessori training, CBSE teaching jobs, government teacher exams, or simply wondering if teaching is the right career path for you, this episode offers deep insights into the rewards and challenges of education careers in India.

Topics covered include:

• How to become a teacher in India
• Teaching careers after graduation
• Life of school teachers in India
• Montessori teaching careers
• CBSE and government school teaching
• Skills needed to become a teacher
• Challenges faced by teachers
• Career growth and job satisfaction in teaching

If you are passionate about education, children, communication, mentoring, and making a difference, this episode will help you understand whether teaching is your calling.

What does a career in Psychology, UX/UI Design, or Digital Marketing actually look like in India today?

In this episode of My First Job, we reverse the format and speak to three young professionals who are building modern careers in fast-growing industries:

• A Clinical Psychologist & Counsellor working in trauma therapy, couples counselling and trading psychology
• A UX/UI Designer & Product Designer working on user experience, service design and digital products
• A Digital Marketing Entrepreneur building brands, freelancer networks and marketing campaigns

If you're a student wondering about:

• careers after psychology in India
• how to become a UX designer
• UI UX designer salary in India
• digital marketing careers for freshers
• counselling psychology as a career
• product design jobs
• freelancing in digital marketing
• startup careers for Gen Z
• creative careers after 12th
• careers outside engineering and medicine

…this conversation gives you a realistic look at the work, challenges, growth opportunities and future of these professions.

The episode explores: ✔️ What psychologists actually do in therapy sessions ✔️ How UX and UI designers think about apps, websites and user journeys ✔️ How digital marketers work with brands and clients ✔️ The role of creativity, psychology and technology in modern careers ✔️ AI and the future of design, counselling and marketing jobs ✔️ How young professionals discover unconventional careers ✔️ Entrepreneurship, freelancing and startup culture in India ✔️ Attention spans, social media and digital behaviour ✔️ Career confusion, passion and finding meaningful work

Featured guests include:

• Vandana Subramanyam – Clinical Psychologist & Founder of PsychoFlix
• Archishman Durbha – UX/UI & Product Designer
• Subhiksha Srinivasan – Digital Marketing Entrepreneur & Founder of A Friday Project

Whether you're exploring:

• psychology courses after graduation
• UX design career path
• UI UX jobs for beginners
• digital marketing business ideas
• counselling careers in India
• creative jobs with high salary
• startup and freelance careers
• careers for creative students

…this episode offers practical insight into what these industries really look like behind the scenes.

📌 Subscribe to My First Job for conversations on careers, entrepreneurship, creativity, technology and the future of work in India.

#PsychologyCareers #UXDesign #UIDesign #DigitalMarketing #CareerGuidance #ProductDesign #CounsellingPsychology #DigitalMarketingIndia #Freelancing #CareerPodcast

If you are in your 20s trying to figure out what a career is supposed to look like, this conversation will reset how you think.

Commodore G. Prakash shares career advice for 20s India that goes far beyond any job portal or campus placement tip.

→ How the discipline of naval service becomes a competitive edge in the corporate world

→ What his very first posting taught him about leadership — before he knew he was being tested

→ Why making decisions under pressure in the Navy is the best training for a business career → The one piece of advice he gives every young professional starting out today

Commodore G. Prakash (Retd) served at the highest levels of the Indian Navy before transitioning to business leadership. Few guests on this show bring that combination of institutional credibility and hard-won private sector experience.

The conversation covers how to grow in career India when your starting point looks nothing like the destination — and why career advice for 20s India sounds very different from someone who spent that decade under orders at sea.

Subscribe and turn on notifications — new episodes every week.

My First Job Podcast explores real career journeys across every industry — the first job, the pivots, the lessons.

Hosted by Venu Gopal Nair. #MyFirstJobPodcast #CareerAdviceIndia #DefenceCareers

# Inside the Cockpit: A Fighter Pilot's Unfiltered Story

Rarely does someone pull back the curtain on military aviation with such raw honesty. In this episode, a fighter pilot with over 3,000 hours of flight experience walks us through what it truly takes to wear the wings, from basic landings all the way to executing precision strikes under nine times your body weight in G-force.

Can you imagine landing a damaged aircraft near Chennai on pure instinct and split-second judgment? That harrowing story alone makes this episode worth your time. The pilot covers everything from navigating without GPS using maps and radio within 200 kilometers of airfields, to why transitioning from Western to Russian aircraft demands complete retraining from scratch. He also reveals that training a single pilot costs nations approximately 45 to 50 crores, making every dropout genuinely expensive.

Beyond the cockpit, he reflects on directing operations during the Kargil War (including how Pakistan's bulk purchase of 50,000 snow boots from Europe betrayed their plans) and critiques India's Agnipath scheme with the kind of directness you rarely hear publicly.

Honestly, this conversation covers the ground thoroughly and keeps covering it in ways that feel fresh and surprising throughout.

Tune in now for one of the most candid military career conversations you will hear.

Aircraft transitions between Western and Russian models require complete retraining — the fundamental systems differences are so significant that pilots cannot simply adapt from one to the other, despite having thousands of flight hours.

• Logistics, intelligence, and weather matter as much as advanced weaponry — the Kargil War demonstrated that military victories depend equally on supply chains and environmental conditions, not just superior aircraft and firepower.

• Current drone technology has significant operational limitations — despite their revolutionary impact, drones remain constrained by communication range and battery life, making them less versatile than manned aircraft in many scenarios.

Rarely does a career span from commanding troops in active conflict zones to advising a global tech giant on cybersecurity strategy, but that is exactly what Colonel KPM Das has done.

His journey from joining India's National Defence Academy at just 16 years old to becoming National Cybersecurity Advisor at Cisco is genuinely remarkable.

In this episode, Das reflects on how the Academy's demanding structure (40 percent dedicated to physical training alone) forged a resilience that carried him through decades of service. He describes being posted to Nagaland and Manipur in 1979 during a period of active conflict, learning firsthand that military training doesn't eliminate fear but teaches you to manage it through teamwork. That lesson, that strength lives in teams rather than individuals, stayed with him throughout his entire life and career.

Could a 16-year-old who expected to escape academics have predicted leading cybersecurity strategy for one of the world's largest technology companies?

Transitioning to civilian life after 40 years of service, Das argues veterans carry transferable skills including integrity and action orientation that organisations desperately need. He also makes a compelling case that cybersecurity is accessible to anyone, noting that most breaches stem from human error rather than sophisticated attacks.

• Military training's unexpected value in tech leadership — Das's defense academy experience and combat zone postings directly shaped his ability to lead cybersecurity strategy, proving that military discipline and crisis management translate powerfully to corporate settings.

• The paradox of command isolation — Despite leading teams, leaders face unique loneliness when making critical decisions with incomplete information, a counterintuitive reality that separates leadership from teamwork.

• India's demographic advantage as a cybersecurity risk — The country's young, digitally-savvy population, while presenting economic opportunities, simultaneously creates distinctive cybersecurity vulnerabilities requiring continuous strategic adaptation.

Tune in for a conversation that genuinely earns its length.

From Marketing to Public Speaking: Understanding Consumer Behavior Beyond the Numbers

# From Beer Sales to Berlin (Sort Of): One Speaker's Winding Path

Rarely does mishearing a job destination lead to one of the most formative experiences of a career. Vinay Pushpakaran thought he was heading to Berlin, Germany, only to land in Benin, West Africa, where he discovered that markets, like people, require genuine understanding before they reveal their secrets.

What does it actually take to build a career around speaking the customer's language?

Vinay's story begins long before any stage. During engineering school, he found himself drawn to organizing events and sponsorships rather than technical coursework, which quietly pointed him toward marketing. A breakthrough moment came during a placement interview with Herbertsons, where a question about Kingfisher beer sales prompted a refreshingly simple answer: growth comes either from existing customers consuming more or from converting new ones. That honest clarity (the kind most people overthink away) landed him the job.

Deeply, this episode is about the same idea repeated in different forms: knowing your audience matters more than almost anything else. From a ten-month training program at UB Group to launching milk products across fourteen countries, Vinay kept returning to direct conversation with real customers as the foundation of everything.

He attended India's first Professional Speakers Summit in January 2019, and within four years became president of PSAI.

• Simplification is a skill – The ability to break down complex business problems into fundamental insights (like reducing beer sales strategy to core consumer behavior) can be more impressive than technical complexity.

• Direct consumer immersion beats data – Understanding markets requires observing and engaging with real consumers in their actual environments, not relying on surveys or theoretical frameworks.

• Emotion drives purchases, not logic – Across different markets and products, perceived value and emotional connection consistently outweigh rational factors in consumer decision-making.

Three Creatives, Three Unexpected Paths

Rarely does a single conversation capture such genuinely diverse creative journeys, but episode 31 of "My First Job" delivers exactly that, and then some.

Yashwin Senanayake, who pivoted from music to marketing, recently completed a three-year documentary about an 86-year-old pioneering fashion figure from Sri Lanka, collaborating with the Australian High Commission and Curtin University. The film is currently screening at the National Museum. Meanwhile, Aishwarya Subramanian discovered her love for pastry-making after years in industrial design, building her craft through consistent practice during COVID lockdown before planning a cloud kitchen launch. Naivedya, a self-described creative chameleon, works across identity, products, and spatial design, once creating a retail branding project that transformed the workplace experience for both customers and staff.

What drives someone to abandon a familiar discipline and start completely over? Each of these guests answers that question through lived experience rather than theory.

Interestingly (and this matters), all three speakers agree that modern creative careers reward versatility over narrow specialization. They also share honest reflections on how social media scrutiny has made their generation more cautious about sharing work publicly.

Aishwarya shares her career transitions from industrial design to exploring UX/UI through online courses while maintaining her pastry interests via a cloud kitchen plan. She acknowledges her tendency to seek new challenges rather than repetitive work, though the speakers emphasize that mastering any skill requires consistent daily practice and depth over time, as evidenced by their experiences in writing and creative fields. In this podcast discussion, the speakers explore the creative process and the challenge of producing under tight deadlines.

Nivedya emphasizes the importance of respecting a non-linear creative process and understanding your target audience to work efficiently. However, a more experienced speaker with decades in the industry counters that creative ideas cannot be forced on schedule—they emerge through research, inspiration, and time.

Aishwarya adds that while drawing inspiration is valuable, putting your own unique twist on concepts is essential, particularly in photography and creative fields. The consensus reflects that while preparation and client knowledge matter, genuine creativity remains unpredictable and pressured environments sometimes yield both brilliant and mediocre results.

Living with uncertainty. And mastering it. That's what these careers are about.

Most regular veterinarians spend their time around dogs and cats, but unusual things can happen. And this was Dr. Barani's experience.

Lions in the local zoo had caught Covid and volunteers were required to care for them. It's not as if Covid was not already causing havoc.

Here, the problems were multifold. As Dr. Barani says: We had some 12 lions who tested positive for COVID. The lions come under a family called cats. C -A -T -S. Big cats. Right. Okay. Actually, felines. So, like how a cat gets COVID virus. the lion can also get a COVID virus. One of the zookeepers had COVID and he passed on to the lion. So, we had 12 lions that were positive for COVID and we needed to treat them.

It took us one and a half days to actually organize a treatment for them because you cannot restrain them. They are horribly aggressive. Plus they are sick. We had different gadgets and In fact, one of some of the major things we did here, which nobody does throughout the world, is we actually pulled the lion's tail through the cages.

And we connected something called the large bore cannulas that we use for humans. Let us say for a dialysis or any other procedure. So those cannulas were collected in the coccygeal vein of the tail, bandaged wood. And we had given medications every day through the large bore cannulas.

3 lions died. But the others recovered

Listen to this and other incredible experiences that Dr. Barani has had. And then, you'll know if being a vet is truly what you want to be.

There was a time when Google and Facebook were startups. There were people who believed in them. And understood their potential early on.

Being a venture capitalist is for those who like taking big risks for big payoffs. Or understanding markets so well, that you see the possibilities that no one else has seen - yet.

Divya Sampath has a career path that converged with the internet boom in the mid-90s. And she saw things change faster than the gigabyte speeds that would soon be taken for granted.

Rarely does someone sign a check for 500 crores on their third day at work and walk away with a lesson about humility rather than pride. That early moment at Citibank in mid-1990s Bombay captures everything about how Divya Sampath has approached her career: with perspective, curiosity, and a relentless search for meaning.

Divya's story moves through timeshare marketing at Sterling Holidays, a bold leap into India's nascent internet industry, and eventually building a practice from zero to $110 million in five years at Cognizant. What ties it all together is her belief that finding purpose in your work matters more than achieving traditional work-life balance, and that meaningful work is genuinely essential to mental wellbeing.

What happens when a mentor sees your passion more clearly than you see it yourself? That question sits at the heart of this conversation. A pivotal 1998 appraisal with mentor VN Bhattacharya redirected her entire trajectory toward technology.

After leaving ServiceNow in January 2020, Divya pursued causes around climate, women's development, and the digital skills divide. (The pandemic, it turned out, was actually fortuitous timing for launching virtually.)

She calls it the "University of Other People's Experiences." Tune in and start enrolling.