An interview with Tarun Das, Director General, Confederation Of Indian Industries.

How is CII different from FICCI or PHD chambers and similar bodies?

Traditionally CII like other bodies that you mentioned started out as trade unions of the employers and tried to get concessions from the government for their benefit. In 1974, CII decided to add other areas of work apart from our work with the government. We went in to areas of international trade promotions and opened offices in the Middle East, UK, USA, Canada, Singapore and other countries. We are also involved in trade promotions, investment promotions, and transfer of technology.

Then we went into organising events starting with trade fairs, major conferences, and exhibitions. We have always felt that we should do something that is `internal' to the industry which will help improve itself. So we started Total Quality Management where in we trained experts to provide this service to the various companies. Now we have many Quality counsellors spread around the country to interact with our members.

Then we went into providing the ways and means to manage the environmental issues, like pollution control. We trained specialists to provide these services to the industry.

Environment, energy, Quality, HRD, technology are the areas in which we provide services to the companies. The last thing we have started is programs in the field of social development, in areas of education, health, community development and rural development.

Can you tell the readers about the composition of CII's membership?

The membership of CII today is 4000 companies. Before when we had a membership of around 2000 members nearly all of them were from the manufacturing sector but today that composition has changed. Now, 25% of our membership is from IT companies, financial services, and other services like consultancy.

Can you give five reasons why a person should join CII and not a company in the industry?

The canvas on which you work is very vast. You will be dealing with wide ranging issues concerning a whole industry and not just a single corporate.

You will be interacting with top management from day one. You maybe a trainee in CII, and you will be dealing with the various CEOs and the top management of various companies, as they are your board members.

You will be constantly interfacing with international counterparts. You will get an exposure to the international scenario, which you may or may not get in a company.

The satisfaction you get from working in CII is something unique, because at a young age you are able to influence the things happening in a whole industry. Not only that you will be working in close relation with the government, and the NGOs, which is far beyond what you can do in an individual company.

Working in CII can give a real boost to your career graph because you make fantastic contacts and that too with the top-level management of companies. You will be sitting with not the HRD manager but with the CEO of the company and if they are impressed by your work, then they might give you an offer. I have seen guys who have go on to join multinational corporations earning excellent salary packages.

People should work with CII not for the money but for the experience because our monetary packages are below industry standards. We are not a profit oriented organisation so we tell our candidates clearly that they should work here for the knowledge and experience and if they want the money then CII is not the place for them.

What are the kind of people your look for to join CII and how to do you train them?

We have a strong force of 300 people working with us with 35 offices all round the world, so our portfolio of functions has expanded considerably.

To develop and execute programs in all these various fields we need both generalists and specialists.

For the generalists positions, the candidate must be a graduate and that is the most basic qualification that we look for, it is good if they have completed their post-graduation too.

For the specialists positions in the areas of environment, energy, economic policy related work, technical positions, and social work we look for candidates who have been appropriately educated and trained in that particular field.

Beyond education, we look for qualities like enthusiasm to work hard, integrity, which is very important because you will be dealing with sensitive issues for many companies and commonsense to understand issues, and how to address them.

We first educate the candidate about CII and what it does, because it has various projects and programs. We strongly believe in on the job training, so we put the candidate with his supervisor to work right from the first day. We also have regular training programs for our people wherein experts from various fields come and conduct sessions.

How is your employee appraisal system structured?

We have a formal appraisal system. Where at the first level, the supervisor of the person evaluates him, then he has to go through a second level of evaluation and finally there is the appraisal committee.

Can you tell us something about your office culture?

We have a structure that is necessary for every organisation but we are a very flat organisation. Young people don't have to wait for five to six years to interact directly with the CEO of the company but start from day one. The communication systems in CII is very flexible and across structures.

Being a non-profit organisation what are your sources of revenue?We are an organisation with a turnover of 70 crore making us the largest Association in the world. Only 15% of our revenue comes from subscription and 85% from the services that we provide, it means that the service we provide should be of the right quality and address the needs of the hour, so that the industry will want to pay and avail of those services.

Malini Suryanarayanan

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