Student's Corner

Having done really well in the first round of interview, aptitude test, group discussions, technical round - you are finally hired. No doubt you are on cloud nine after winning a job and feel accomplished. But hold on there, it is only a beginning. You are now stepping out from your protective shell into a world where you will find no one other than yourself fighting against different circumstances. What do I mean by ‘fighting against different circumstances'? With all the array of subject a student learns as part of the academics, not all will know which career path to choose. A commerce student or a history student may end up as a software engineer and a computer engineering student may end up as a lab technician. The challenge here is to have a clear vision. No one else can have a clear vision for your career other than you yourself. If you take for example software engineering jobs, there are scores of jobs you can pick from within this field - QA analyst/programm...

Let us assume that you have worked really hard to prepare a fantastic CV that has enabled you to get shortlisted for the first round of interview. Congratulations! You are now one step closer to being hired. How confident are you that you will be able to the clear the first round? The first round of interview is usually with the HR of the company. The standard first question a HR asks is ‘Tell me about yourself’ . Even before you have finished with the first two lines of your answer, recruiter has already decided whether or not to consider you for further interview rounds. In essence, you have only about 30-60 seconds to prove that you are a worthy enough candidate for the position you have applied for. First, let us understand the recruiter’s purpose behind asking this question. The purpose here is simple. It is to test the confidence, enthusiasm and passion with which you answer the question. It is to test how well you build rapport and how articulat...

If you have been reading my blog posts from the beginning you will have noticed that I am writing a series of blog to help students identify the challenges based on the purposes/goals they may have in life. The posts also include my personal experiences. Today I am here to focus on challenges of another goal. Goal 2 - Get hired by a multi-national company. Most of the students prefer to work soon after graduating. In my very first blog I mentioned that there are nearly 1.9 million engineers graduating every year across India. Along with these students are arts and science/business management students who graduate every year. I am sure you can imagine the competition you are/will be facing. One of the many reasons why I moved abroad was because I did not find myself competent enough to face the huge competition in India. Where ever I went, I would find my friends, cousins, father’s colleagues’ sons/daughters being placed in multi-national companies. They would look dow...

As students, when you have succeeded in finding a part time job abroad you should continue to remain focused on the primary purpose of your life. When you are living abroad, you are independent and you are the ones who are in complete control of your life. Though independence teaches you many good things, along with it comes temptations. The number of temptations is far too long for me to list, however I’d like to focus on one which I have witnessed in many students lives here in the UK. This temptation has ruined many students’ lives and has shattered many parents’ dreams. As students start to earn from part-time jobs, the greed to earn more money kicks in. As a result of this, many students start to work above 20 hours a week knowing that it is against the immigration laws. In many cases, I have witnessed students work round the clock with no sleep. These students then missed the university classes, withdrew themselves from the university courses and eventually got depo...

Unless your parents can provide for your monthly expenses till you have graduated and have found a professional job, you require a part time job to survive abroad. Finding a part time job is a challenge in itself. Finding a job that you can adjust to is another. In UK, no job is considered menial. Whether you are a bus driver, whether you are a waiter/waitress, whether you are on the streets distributing leaflets - you are treated equal. Unfortunately, most of the students do not have the above mentality. Your life will become easy and less disappointing if you are ready to adapt yourself and can commit to such part time jobs. After all it is only going to be a temporary job. Being on a student visa, I was allowed to work 20 hours a week. I found my first part time job through a friend of mine. It was at a dog race stadium where my job was to issue race tickets. I worked 3 days a week for 10-12 hours. The income was just enough for me to manage my expenses. Wh...

I was extremely nervous, I was extremely anxious. I was not sure if everything I had planned would ever work out in my favour. I knew no one when I landed in UK. I was going to make a brand new beginning all by myself in a foreign land. I had nothing, except for a student visa, a few hundred sterling pounds to cover my one or two month’s living expenses, a university course and a shared accommodation. I had one other thing - determination. No matter how tough it was going to be, I was not going to give up. From buying my own grocery items to cooking my own meals, from cleaning my own kitchen pots to cleaning my own toilet room, from spending my father’s money generously in India to learning to spend my money sparingly in UK - everything was a new experience. I learnt it all the hard way. I struggled on my first day at the university. I struggled not because I did not understand what was being taught, but I struggled because I did not know how to socialise with foreign stu...

Even before you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question that I had asked ‘ Are you ready to face life’s tough challenges?’ , do you even realize the kind of challenges you are going to face? You will never feel accomplished if you do not face challenges in life and triumph over them. Your attitude towards challenges matters the most that either makes you or breaks you. Soon after your graduation, depending upon your purpose/goals in life you are likely to face many challenges. Let me start by helping you identify few of those challenges based on some of the common goals a student has. Goal 1 - Move abroad for higher education My purpose in engineering days was to move abroad for higher studies and settle abroad. I dreamed to make it really big in a foreign land. Although my purpose was very clear, I did not know how to achieve it and what to expect. There was no one to guide me. I had to blindly trust what one of the study abroad consultants had to offer. ...

Following from my yesterday’s blog post, I believe many of you have been able to analyse your lives as students and also have reminded yourselves of the very purpose of enrolling in the chosen course. Trust me - student life is the most pivotal phase of your life. This is the phase where you need to start laying foundations to your career ahead and at the same time ensure you have thoroughly enjoyed your student life to be able to create many long lasting memories. Finding the right balance between the two is the trick to achieve your purpose. You have 4 years to graduate. 4 years is a very long time. The moment you have been through your admission process in an engineering college, you are either determined to do exceedingly well to achieve your goals right from day one or have a take-it-easy attitude and worry about your future only in the 4 th year. Is your purpose to graduate to earn a high paying job, move abroad for higher studies, become an entrepreneur, or beco...

In my previous blog dated 02-Jan-2016, I asked a question ‘Are you one among this 18% ?’ I am not sure how many of you have given it a serious thought. If you haven't yet, please start by asking yourselves the following questions:   Have you enrolled yourself in an engineering course by choice or under parental pressure? What is your purpose for enrolling in the engineering course? Have you thought about how to best utilize the 4 years   of the course to achieve your purpose? During my school days I had no ambition of pursuing an engineering degree. It was under parental pressure that I had to prepare for the engineering entrance exam. I failed to qualify in the entrance exam. Therefore, my parents had to enroll me under the management quota in an engineering college in Hyderabad. I signed up for the computer science engineering course. My only purpose then was to complete the engineering degree and move abroad for higher studies, which I eventu...

It is every parent's aspiration that their children pass their engineering degrees with flying colors and be placed in a multi-national company through the college placements. This is the same desire that most of the engineering students have too. The dreams do not stop here, it goes onto the next level where by working in a multi-national company you want to grab every opportunity to travel abroad for an on-site project. The wait for which is painfully too long. Leaving the dreams and aspirations aside, how many of you as parents and students are even confident that this can be achieved? Some think that by exiting the door of the engineering college with a degree you can simply walk in through the doors of a multi-national company straight to your office desk. If only the reality was as simple as the dream. Most students feel relieved and get way too excited when they receive admission into engineering college that they forget the very purpose of their admission ...