Post B.E. in Electrical Engineering, Radhika was not willing to join the rat race for joining MNCs as a programmer. She felt that sitting and coding for endless hours was not what she wanted in her career. Quite vivacious and a people’s person, she wanted to do something that allowed her to interact with people while working on the technical front. She found this ideal opportunity with Microland. She joined the company as a management trainee in the Support Engineering team and stayed in it for five years. Here she got an opportunity to work on various technologies including Microsoft, Cisco, Netware and Lotus notes. Later she had a brief stint at Aditi Technologies before switching to Satyam. She fondly remembers her time at Satyam, as it was here that she got her first opportunity to work outside India at customer sites. Radhika worked on numerous Data Warehousing projects that involved hands-on experience in various technologies like Microsoft, Informatica and Hyperion.

Being quite happy with her career, the turning point came when she got the opportunity to work for Microsoft GTSC. “I was in Singapore at that time working on a project when an instant messenger from my friend opened up a completely different opportunity for me. I came back to India and within a week’s time I was holding the appointment letter from Microsoft. I still remember being in a state of euphoria for the next few weeks. It had always been my dream to work at Microsoft, and out of the blue the dream had come true,” Radhika narrates fondly.

She joined Microsoft GTSC in 2003 as a team manager and headed various support teams for Microsoft products. This was a great opportunity as till then she had been working on various Microsoft technologies and was now providing technical support to others for the same. Also it allowed her to work with international teams, giving her exposure to cross boundary cultures.

Some time back, Radhika decide to shift the course of her career. Having grown quite comfortable in her job, she decided to do something new and take challenging roles and responsibilities. She decided to try her hand in learning and development and eventually took the final plunge. Currently as the field readiness manager, Radhika is in-charge of training and development of the 1,500 people across Microsoft GTSC and Services India- for the trainees to understand.

“As a field readiness manager, the constant challenge is to ensure that the trainee team is ramped up on the latest technologies as quickly as possible. The constant struggle is to move away from traditional training methods and find innovative ways of training and teach things that are relevant, can be learnt quickly, would help the trainees to use them in their everyday jobs, and help them grow in their career,” explains Radhika.