A TIGHTROPE WALK

arthik Raghavan, 30, was hired by a leading consulting company in 2016 in the final year of his MBA programme. He also had an offer from a large FMCG company but the consulting company was offering more money. Raghavan joined the consumer vertical and was soon among his team’s top performers. Two years later, the economy was in the grip of a slowdown, with many companies asking their not-so-good performers to quit. In such a scenario, a meeting request from head of human resources (HR) gave him jitters. However, it turned out to be the most valuable meeting of his career. “The HR head said I was important for the organisation and since I had mentioned in my interview that I wanted to get a degree from a top American university, they were happy to fund me for it,” he says. Now, he is back after completing a one-year master’s programme at Yale, and the company has put his career on a fast track. “Due to the economic slowdown, increments haven’t been attractive. However,