April 14, 2012 – Retrospective Introspection (Part 2 – Whether to re-apply)

Moving ahead, a very important question that has been troubling me is whether I re-apply immediately this year or wait for a year and then re-apply.

There a few things in this aspect as below --:

i. The Positives --:

The positives of re-applying after 1 more year are plenty, more significantly increased international exposure, reduced financial burden to pay the steep fees and increased clarity on future goals, etc. 

ii. The Negatives --:  

There are a few personal things that would make it difficult to push it ahead by another year. This is the prime most reason of my not wanting to push it ahead by a year.

iii. Changes since the last application --:

If I am to re-apply immediately this year then I will need to show the improvements from my last re-application. On this point I have a few positives. The biggest change is international exposure of almost 5-6 months at 2 client locations. One was a new customer for the company and I was designated to handle the first big revenue impacting event (i.e. the Christmas and New Year period) after the purchase of our product. I handled it pretty well and there were no issues/outages. This is a big achievement since I had just completed 6 months in the organization and had moved out from my comfort zone of my previous job in a different sub-vertical to a new sub-vertical in my existing job profile.

Second up, I was immediately sent for my present assignment for duration of almost 6 months. This customer is our biggest customer in terms of size of market, contribution to our revenue and in general the deciding account for the entire customer group clients. This customer had just upgraded to a new architecture and release and was not satisfied with the project results. My presence in this project was to support and to stabilize the upgrade and resolve any issues. So far it has been fantastic in terms of stability achieved and issues have almost become zero and the customer has also released the payments and has expressed satisfaction in the new product features.

Third, I have been given a promotion as well as a change of designation. This is relatively appreciable since as I have mentioned above I am only 6 months old in the organization.

These are the most important improvements in my profile since the last application. 

It is the negatives that I am considering and at this point I am pretty much convinced to re-apply immediately this year.