Last week, Mindler caught up with Mr. Yogesh Pai, an Indian Air Force Group Captain and career coach, for a wide-ranging talk about his experiences. Read on to discover how he transitioned from training pilots to coaching students in this candid conversation, and why he vouches for the Mindler Partner Platform as being central to his coaching endeavors.
Packed full of insights for career coaches, anecdotes straight from the heart, and earnest opinions, this is one interview you don’t want to miss!
Q – How did you get to know about Mindler? How has the association and experience been so far? What was your background before this?
A – “Thank you Aishwarya for calling me for this interview. It is my pleasure to join you all. My name is Group Captain Yogesh Pai. I was a pilot in the Indian Air Force. I served for 30-plus years and took voluntary retirement in November 2018.
I was involved in the training of the Indian Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and the Coast Guard for almost 20 years before my retirement. And as far as career guidance is concerned, I had 2 tenures during my service in the National Cadet Core where I got an opportunity to interact with students. My primary role was to train and motivate them to join the armed forces.
After retirement, I said I must do something new in life. Since I have already done the flying part, I took a conscious decision that I would do something different with the aim of giving back to society rather than as a source of income. As I was about to retire, I was contacted by a company, which was into career guidance.
I joined them and got trained with them, and associated with them very passionately for 2 years. Having spent almost all my life, nearly 35 years, in uniform I have absolutely no knowledge about the civilized world and the corporate world. You can imagine how challenging it was for me to talk to students and inform them about various careers about which I have no domain knowledge.”
Q – Yes, it’s a different background altogether, being in the Air Force and serving the nation. How has the transition been from being Group Captain Yogesh Pai to a career coach now? What were the challenges?
A – “In my case, I had to uphold my reputation of having served at the highest level at one of the greatest organizations in the country – the Indian Air Force. For me, it was a great challenge to join any company because my credibility was also at stake.
Mindler is a company with a great reputation. What motivates me is the hand-holding that I get from my mentors and the staff for whatever queries I have. This is the technical backup that has helped me grow.
My reputation is my marketing strategy because of having served in the Indian Air Force. People get attracted to me because of my credibility. When I deliver and endorse their faith in me, my business grows just by word of mouth. I take pride in the kind of work that I do. I’m a go-getter: till there is a smile on the face of that child, I don’t give up. ”
Q – Indeed, building credibility is very important as a career coach or entrepreneur. How did you get to know about Mindler?
A – “I had a mentor in my previous company and we are still very good friends. He is the person who recommended Mindler to me. See, life is all about comparison.
I have already had a platform I’ve used. And now I have Mindler as my platform, and when I compare I find that it’s a wonderful transformation. It’s fantastic. The workload on me as a career coach is reduced drastically compared to the previous company. The business model is amazing, really user-friendly, and the technical backup is top class.”
Q – Thank you. Let’s discuss the Mindler Partner Platform. What has your experience been with the Dashboard? How would you rate it?
A – “Some time ago you were talking about handling Gen Z and you said you were from a different generation. I am from an even older, and more different generation. I did my 12th standard almost 38 years ago.
Bridging the generation gap is really, really challenging and I am the “old generation guy” who is not very tech-savvy. So for me, unless these things are user-friendly, I am very hesitant. However if I can use them, I can assure you that for the young generation it is a piece of cake.
After joining Mindler I have handled about 40 students and to date, there was never any problem as far as the user interface is concerned between the student and the Mindler Dashboard.”
Q – What is your favorite feature out of all features that the portal provides? What do you think is one of the most premium features?
A- “The basics of career guidance remain the same across the board. There are multiple companies using the psychometric tool, there is a report generated, etc.
The greatest feature I found, the game changer as far as Mindler is concerned, is the Mindler Career Library. In my previous company as a career coach, I had to burn the midnight oil trying to get data on various careers. The education path, the colleges, all this data I had to spend hours gathering. And it was really painful at this age and stage. It was not very user-friendly I’ll be very frank.
This is how I introduce myself to the students when I do the pre-assessment conversation with them. I ask them, “Do you think it is important that you should have information about these careers?”
They say yes.
I tell them that their confusion is because they have limited information or no information about most of the careers. So now I throw the option to them, “Suppose I give you a dashboard with which at the click of a mouse you can have whatever information you want about more than a thousand careers. Do you think that sounds interesting?”
Invariably the answer is Yes. And that is my first step towards enrolling them as my clients on the Mindler Partner Platform.”
Q – When you were exploring the Mindler Partner Platform, you must have noted the quality of our Assessment. Would you like to highlight what you like about it?
A – “The Assessment is quite similar to the previous company I used to work for. Except that here it is instant. The child finishes the assessment, touches send, and within minutes, I have the entire report.
What is different and better is that it also gives you 5 recommendations for careers which were not there in the previous one. Also, as I said, the Mindler Career Library in itself is amazing as far as the student and I are concerned. It is a more efficient platform in terms of input-to-output ratio.
Here my input has gone down tremendously and output has increased, so I’m a much more efficient career coach after having joined Mindler. That itself was a huge incentive for me to say Yes outright and join Mindler.”
Conclusion
Part 1 of the interview ends here.
You can now access part 2 of the interview with Mr. Yogesh Pai. Read on to find out about his ICCC journey and his advice for aspiring career coaches!
Try out the Mindler Partner Portal yourself to make your career coaching practice more efficient
