How Ratan Tata created a resume to get a job at Tata Group, left company that’s worth over Rs 10 lakh crore now

Ratan Tata is one of the most celebrated billionaires in India. The chairman emeritus of Tata Sons has fans in every age group because of philanthropy, wisdom, business skills and inspiring story. Most people know Ratan Tata as the chairman of Tata Group who took the company to new heights but only a few know that Tata wanted to pursue a job at an IT firm and was asked to join Tata Group by JRD Tata himself. In an old video which has now surfaced on the internet again, Ratan Tata has revealed how he created his CV to get a job at Tata Group. For those who are unaware, Ratan Tata is a graduate in architecture and structural engineering from Cornell University and he was so influenced by the US lifestyle that he was ready to settle down in Los Angeles. However, Tata was forced to come back to India after his grandmother’s health deteriorated.

After coming back to India, Ratan Tata landed a job at IBM but his mentor JRD Tata was not happy with that decision. “He called me one day and he said you can’t be here in India working for IBM,” Ratan Tata recalled. To get a job at Tata Group, Ratan Tata had to share his resume with JRD Tata and he did it in a very fascinating way.

Ratan Tata created his resume to get a job at Tata Group on one of the electric typewriters in the IBM office at that time. “I was in the IBM office and I remember he (JRD Tata) asked me for a resume, which I didn’t have. The office had electric typewriters so I sat one evening and typed out a resume on their typewriter and gave it to him,” Ratan Tata revealed in the old interview. 

After sharing his resume, Ratan Tata got a job at Tata Industries in 1962 and almost three decades later after landing that job, Ratan Tata took over as the chairman of Tata Group after the demise of JRD Tata in 1991.