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By:

Divyaa Advaani 

2 November 2024 at 8:58:38 am

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not....

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not. It begins at the first point of contact, and in any business of real size, that point is almost never the founder. It is the assistant who manages your calendar. The sales executive who sends the first proposal. The person who handles your WhatsApp, the receptionist, the coordinator who confirms the meeting. These people speak for you every day, in your name, using your reputation, and most of them have never been told what that reputation is supposed to feel like. Many are loyal, hardworking and capable. That is not the issue. The issue is that nobody ever showed them what a first impression of this founder should feel like. Here is what a prospective client experiences. They do not separate you from your team. They cannot. To them, the speed of a reply is how seriously you take them. The tone of the first email is the tone of your leadership. A proposal with a spelling error, a late response, a careless "will check and let you know" becomes evidence about the person at the top. If this is how the organisation presents itself while trying to win my business, they reason, this is how it will treat me once I have signed. And they never tell you. They simply go quiet. The deal that stalls after a promising first call. The partner who becomes "busy". The client who chooses a competitor and offers a reason that has nothing to do with the real one. Across a year, that is every enquiry that stalled, every proposal left unanswered, every introduction that never became a meeting. This is a personal brand problem, not a staffing one. A founder can spend years refining how they present in a room and still lose the room before they enter it, because the impression was formed by someone else, in a conversation the founder was never part of and never heard about. The founders who avoid this are not the ones with the most polished staff. They are the ones who have made their brand legible to the people around them. Their team knows how the founder speaks, what the business stands for, what warmth looks like in a reply, how a delay should be explained and how a client should feel in the first thirty seconds. The team is not following a script. They are carrying a standard, because someone took the time to define it. When did you last experience your own business the way a stranger does? Not a test call arranged with your team's knowledge. A real one. Send a first enquiry from a number nobody recognises. Notice how long it takes to be answered, what the tone is, and whether you would want to do business with whoever replied. Then ask yourself honestly whether that person sounds like you, and whether you would be proud to be represented that way. If the answer is uncomfortable, it is worth acting on now. Every week of that experience is a week someone forms a verdict about you without your knowledge. Your personal brand is not only what you say. It is everything said on your behalf. If you have a suspicion about how your business is being experienced before you ever walk in, that suspicion deserves a direct, focused brand consultation, not a casual chat. Book yours here: https://www.calendly.com/divyaaadvaani/founder-brand-audit — Divyaa Advaani, Personal Branding Strategist (The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries. Views personal.)

Maharashtra Is Losing PG Seats and Medical Standards

Writer: Rajendra Joshi
Rajendra Joshi
Mar 25
3 min read

As the Centre expands PG medical seats, Maharashtra is losing both seats and standards—amid faculty shortages and allegations of corruption in contractual appointments.

Even as the Union government expands PG medical seats nationwide, Maharashtra is losing ground due to a chronic faculty shortage in government medical colleges.


At Rajarshi Shahu Government Medical College, vacancies across seven departments have already cost 23 PG seats, with the total likely to rise to 40 as more seats remain unsanctioned.


Kolhapur is no exception: a review of nearly 30 government medical colleges suggests Maharashtra may have lost over 600 PG seats to faculty shortages.


A recent Maharashtra University of Health Sciences report underscores the crisis: of 25 colleges assessed, 10 had over 50 per cent teaching vacancies. The starkest case is Ratnagiri’s government medical college, where only 12 per cent of sanctioned faculty posts are filled and no department has a full professor.


Newly established colleges in Parbhani and Satara fare little better, with faculty strength at 34 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively. PG courses have yet to start, raising concerns over expansion and the quality of undergraduate training.


Even among 17 colleges already offering PG education, faculty shortages remain acute. Infrastructure and students are in place, but PG approvals hinge on faculty strength. Under NMC norms, a professor can guide three PG students and an associate professor two, making the faculty a hard cap on capacity.


Short System

For decades, the State’s Directorate of Medical Education has relied on temporary faculty deputations to meet inspection norms—first under the Medical Council of India and now the National Medical Commission. Faculty were shifted across colleges before inspections and sent back later, a stopgap that masked structural gaps.


The report flags the practice, but there is little sign of corrective action. Critics say the state continues to announce new medical colleges—often for political reasons—without adequate staffing. The result is a double blow: lost PG seats and a gradual decline in undergraduate medical education in a state once seen as a leader in the field.


Built Before Staffed

Would any school open before hiring teachers? The question is basic in primary education; in medical colleges, it is critical. Yet in Maharashtra, the sequence appears reversed.


The National Medical Commission sets stringent norms for approving medical colleges, including faculty and infrastructure. Institutions must meet at least 95 per cent of these norms for approval. Yet Maharashtra seems to follow a different model—where political announcements come before preparedness.


Medical colleges are declared, infrastructure is built, and approvals are secured—often by stretching compliance on paper. Only after admissions begin does the hunt for faculty start. The flaw is obvious: training a medical teacher takes nearly 27 years, making quick fixes impossible and leaving students to pay the price.


The same report underscores the scale of the problem: not a single government medical college in the state meets prescribed faculty strength. Even Grant Medical College—one of the country’s oldest institutions—has a 10 per cent faculty shortfall, suggesting far deeper gaps elsewhere.


In several colleges, contractual appointments are being used to patch vacancies. But the economics are untenable: the cost of medical education and the pay offered to contractual teachers do not align. Faculty hired on 11-month contracts often do not return, undermining continuity and quality.


Unless permanent recruitment is prioritised and pay is aligned with market realities, the faculty deficit is unlikely to ease.


One immediate remedy is ad hoc promotions, allowing departmental selection committees to move existing faculty up the hierarchy and open entry-level posts for young postgraduates as lecturers. The system was used earlier but has since fallen out of practice, while recruitment through the State Public Service Commission has also slowed.


The fallout is already visible. AIIMS Nagpur has drawn faculty away from government colleges, offering nearly 1.5 times higher pay and greater job stability. State-run institutions, by contrast, continue to struggle with transfers, lower pay, and weak incentives—especially in rural areas.


Teachers posted in cities are reluctant to move to rural Maharashtra, where lower housing allowances can cut salaries by up to Rs 40,000 and schooling options are limited. Without targeted incentives, attracting faculty to these regions will remain difficult.


Cost of Opacity

Even as the shortage deepens, allegations of malpractice persist. Transfers and temporary appointments are reportedly being used for rent-seeking, with some candidates allegedly paying a month’s salary for an 11-month contract.


Such claims have surfaced in Kolhapur, where medical circles say payments are being sought for reappointments despite acute shortages. In one case, a teacher reportedly refused to pay and lost the post, only to later be selected through the Public Service Commission—raising troubling questions about merit being sidelined.


Whether the state's medical education authorities investigate these allegations may show how deeply entrenched the practice is.


(The writer is a senior journalist based in Kolhapur. Views personal.)

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