Bilal Ghaffar Enlightens Us With His Wisdom

Okay, I did my MSC, MBA, Bs, and B.com. I agree I ran after the herd. No one guided me, but NOW WHAT?

Now, these members of the herd are provided with the perfect option for their career. Since, you were not thinking earlier, so here is a chance for you to start thinking and analyzing yourself. What interests you, what is important for you? Where exactly do you want to go? This is the point where you can still develop your interest by acquiring new and innovative skills.

Bilal Ghaffar, Channel Manager Ghost Software House, with five years of working experience explains that students and youngsters should have an aptitude for the career they wish to pursue. Completing his MSC from UCP, University of Central Punjab he realized that we are all the time surrounded by herds all over. What makes one different than the rest is the thinking capacity, the rationalizing power.  A clear vision is required. It is with this clear mindset combined with hard work that makes one move forward in life. Herds are everywhere and will continue to emerge and evolve. You have to realize your individuality. I had applied at various places, but I chose VoIP as it was completely new at that time and offered a lot in return.

Do not restrict yourself to one point, Expand your knowledge. College Books are not the only resource. Meet seniors and professionals and discuss what goes on, in the market, this will not only open new horizons for you but will prepare you for professional life. Even before entering the market, you will already know the demands. This is how you can prepare yourself for times yet to come.

College environment is completely different from real-time environment. Thus, as you enter the field you learn a lot. You learn about the parallel progress which is taking place in hardware and software. In order to move to the next level, knowledge is significant. Thus, learning through communication makes one move forward.

Communication plays a very important role in your professional development. When students go for an interview or when they are dealing with a client they are judged on their level of communication. An individual’s entire career depends in those few minutes which he spends in front of the interviewer. Thus, one is wholly judged on communication skills.

I have been working in Ghost Software for the past five years. Life as a software engineer is very tough. The main reason is the late timings. This is due to the international client. While, working in this industry it has been my top priority to keep myself up-to-date in accordance with the demands of the client. We often attend workshops as well. This Industry has a lot in store for young intellectuals who are currently looking forward to joining it. It offers a very stable career with perfect salary and ratio of progress is very high.

Time management becomes difficult due to the demands of the client and their projects. You have to keep yourself in sync with them. For Example, a few years back we were working for a bank. We were working on their live servers and we had to replace these servers. Such projects have been a great source of learning experience for me and my team. We have to be very careful in such cases. We have often faced very complex business management processes.  There has also been time when we spent three days in office, in order to fulfill the deadlines and meet the clients requirements.

As a Channel Manager, I am responsible for planning the requirement, specification, design, architecture and communication channels. I make the whole plan, developers and QAs are appointed. Alpha release is launched and then tested in the client’s labs. I am involved in almost all the processes till maintenance periods ends. After 90 days of maintenance contract ends.

IT knowhow is very meager in our country. Many people here are to earn good money. Offshore projects provide great revenue and profit as compared to those projects that are for our own country. Volume of business increases at a considerable level. From Ghost Software platform we are working very hard to include projects from Pakistani clients.

We attend training projects, thus we are able to visualize and analyze. Our major projects for UK and USA these include Recording solutions are provided to different hard wares, Cisco, Alka tell, Avaya, UK, Spain and France are provided with various services. On the other hand, Bright sparse is similar to Facebook, where a community is provided to all the schools and colleges of England. Sharepoint services are provided to different companies of UK. Once we were working on a financial application. The client’s business process was complex. We were working for UKs Cargo based company. It was simply a web based application. The technical people at the other end were very cooperative. The person on the other side used to guide us in a very comprehensive manner. It was a great learning experience. We had to continuously contact the client, ask him and take guidance from him at every point, as a result of which we were able to complete the project successfully.

Ghost has been struggling due to the internal instability of the country. Software Industry is moving very fast in Pakistan. The students are very hopeful for jobs. First deliverable is very important. It is from there that companies gain more and more projects, and move forward. Thus, sometimes clients often ignore the instability for good quality work.

Ignoring the herd and doing what you actually desire to do is the most important decision for the career which you want t pursue. Following the herd is just one option. Thousand others wait all around you. All you have to do is grab the right opportunity at the right time. This is what sets the stage for the fortune yet to come.