Rashmi Sharma
Class of 2007
Vice President Operations, Radio Mirchi




Present Occupation: Vice President Operations at Radio Mirchi,
Sector: Sales and marketing
Work Experience: 7 yrs

What is the typical day at work like?
My number one job is to get listenership and there is no appointed listenership in radio unlike television where people are more loyal to their soaps or shows, news etc and there is some appointment viewership. For instance, if they have to watch Arnab Goswami at 10 pm they will watch it. They schedule their whole work day around it.
But Radio is a medium for music. Everyone is doing the same thing so there is a scope of denunciation. So what creates the major difference clearly is your Radio Jockey. There are a lot of people who tune in to listen to their favorite radio jockey. Now what the RJ talks, the kind of music he plays is a very important part of my job. I think it is quite interesting as these RJ's are very interesting people with creative minds.
Since my job is listenership and we have like 6 shows a day, each show is treated like a product. So my job is to see that it's the right product for the radio, to see if the right content is going into the product.
Radio is a free to air channel. So it's my job to see all the right advertising is going about on my channel, utilizing the channel to its full capacity at the right price.

While you were here at ISB, what kind of extracurricular activities were you interested in? For example social clubs & professional clubs which helped you along the way.
I had a friend who was a badminton player on a national level, so I used to play the same with zeal to learn something from him. I used to go to the gym once in a while.
I intentionally used to attend the morning classes like around 8 am. When it was time for bidding, I used to bid 8 am class knowing that we would get the best professors and also there would be less competition.
Going to the gym turned from once in a while to a more regular habit and in 2007 I ran a marathon too. I would do a half an hour or 45 minutes work out and that really made me feel fit.
I was always fond of reading so even then I had so many books I would read. I was also one of the fortunate few who had a car so my friends and I would go to the city, go to the mall and watch movies.

You are in a general management role in the field of radio, if you had to go through some resumes what would be the one thing you would be looking for?
To start off with, academics is all good, its required to have constant knowledge of whatever you have studied, however if there is something we look at, it will be the level of angularity towards the industry . For instance, I once interviewed a guy who was so much into Amitabh Bachan movies. I thought very high of this guy because
I could sense the honesty in his thoughts and for the fact that he wasn't faking it. So basically while interviewing we look into what is the spunk level of the interviewee etc. We also look at multi-tasking skills in individuals.

When we ask questions like work life balance, all the alumni say that it's a pressurizing job, never is it a 9 to 5 job etc. So, you are one of the very few who actually talks on the contrary. Does this Feel good?
Your job is one subset of your life. A lot of times when you get in to the job, you keep asking yourself the same question. What am I even doing? Why am I even doing this? This isn't even relevant, I guess I should consider something more closer to my area of interest. For instance, I've been thinking for quite some time now to do something else other than my job, but haven't been able to. I planned on learning the keyboard, and have been trying for the past two months but I'm sure it's going to take me another 5 years to master it. However, I like the fact that I'm going to that school and when I'm there I feel like I'm doing what I actually wanted to do.
The most important thing is to do work which you know you're going to enjoy, or haven fun in what you do. Either of these must be followed or else work is going to be something that is both pressurizing and boring.