Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Our First Mentoring Session

First meeting

Our Mentor is the Country Manager of Sri Lanka Mr. Sriyan De Silva who was a past pupil of St. Peter’s College; Colombo 4, in my point of view is a very simple person but an anonymous one.

We had our appointment at 8.30 a.m., but we were there at DHPL building, Colombo 2, at about 8 a.m. Microsoft Sri Lanka is located in 11th floor. We were asked to wait at reception until Mr.Sriyan comes. It was a pleasant environment though not that awesome. His Secretary arranged some tea for us and invited us to take seats in a Board Room. He was there at the room on time. We haven’t seen him before; he entered room by telling “Good Morning Guys...”. He had two files which I think given by our department, with him. He greeted five of us by telling his name. He first asked us “How many sessions am I supposed to do with you?”, we answered 12 sessions. Then he told “What 12 no way!!!, I’ll do probably 8 sessions, 2 hours per each session. Otherwise it doesn’t worth you to come such distance and have a session of 1hour. It’s wasting of my time too, because my time is very expensive”. This shows that how well he manage time. Next he told each one of us to give a self introduction. While we were introducing our selves he wrote down some things on a paper. After listened to us he asked a question which we never expect. “Why people so worrying when they asked to introduce themselves?” I think that each one of you must think about.

After a discussion about above topic he gave us 10 minutes to think about ourselves and to deliver another self introduction. After listened to our speeches he introduced himself to us. It was a nice story. He was the Head Prefect in school time and was captained the College Basket ball team & Badminton team. He was appointed as the President of Commerce Society too. He was a very bright student. He did his A/L’s in Commerce stream and obtained Island First. Then he was selected to the University of Sri Jayewardenepura as an undergraduate. He did CIMA while he was in University. He participated in many youth societies actively. He earned money for his expenses by playing as a keyboardist of a band performed by some friends of him. He passed out from University with the Gold Medal for the best undergraduate, after 6 years, due to the bad condition in country at that time. Though he had the chance to join a managerial level job, he joined Nestle as a Sales rep as he stated simply because he wanted to get some experience in the field of Sales. He was really UNBELIEVABLE!!!! ISN’T HE???

Next he asked us about our expectations from this mentoring programme.

Finally he told that he’ll arrange next session on interviews. We finished our first meeting at about 10.30 a.m.

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