Formal wear? Check, definitely.
Confidence? Check, probably.
A-game? Check, hopefully!
So last weekend’s trip to KL wasn’t completely fun and games – although I’ll admit it was pretty fun! – it was my first time being shortlisted for a scholarship assessment camp. I’ve been applying for a couple of scholarships to fund my undergraduate studies and I’ve made some trips to and from KL over the past months for them, some of which have returned with less successful results.
But this one from Great Eastern got back to me not once, not twice, but thrice! (*≧▽≦)
My application went through in the second half of March (and experienced a formatting issue; boo, Adobe Reader), when I was about two weeks shy of finishing my internship. Juggling a couple of events and my final report and making arrangements to move back home took up the entirety of that period, and it slipped my mind that I even applied for it.
Until, that is, I got a phone call from an unknown number one evening after I’d woken up from a power nap. I realise that probably sounds like the beginning of some corny horror story and it kind of was, actually, in my head?! I was totally unprepared, hazy from sleep, and the person on the line asked if I had time for a phone interview for the GE scholarship… oooh, boy. I said yes, of course, and went through 15 minutes of coming to my senses and trying valiantly to sound like an adult.
As far as interviews go, this one was short and generic – questions about yourself and why you decided to choose your major/university. I’d like to think I did okay, I guess, given my state of mind 😛
Thankfully, I did! The second stage was a panel interview which I woke up at 5:00am for, because of the commute. I almost never go to city centre by car because A) the parking fee makes me cry, B) finding a parking makes me cry, C) traffic makes me cry. The hours of sleep sacrificed were worth it though, because the trip to Menara Great Eastern was smooth sailing all the way. (Here’s a tip, friends: always leave the house early. And I mean always.)
At the panel interview, we discovered that there were about 5 to 6 different sessions over the course of a couple of days, and each session had about 10 candidates. I say “we” because this is one of the best parts of these experiences, I think: meeting like-minded people who’re working towards the same goal as you are.
So, yes, I did think being in a room full of kids vying for the same scholarship was going to feel like The Hunger Games, but it didn’t! Everyone I met was genuinely pleasant, and although I was the only comms student in the house, we got along really well.
Anyway, us candidates were shown a video, on which we had to write a page-long essay in exactly 20 minutes (with a blinking timer and all blown up on the projector screen, /nervous screaming). Time-induced deadlines can do wonders for your creative juices, I swear.
Over breakfast, we found out the rough elimination ratio (all approximate numbers, of course) – there were about 800 applicants this year, after which 200 were shortlisted for the phone interview, then 60 for the panel interview, 30 for the final assessment, and 10 to 15 final recipients. Which is wild, really.
The panel interviews were done in groups of 3 or 4 candidates: this is a first for me, because all the interviews I’ve ever done have been solo ones. I was nervous about how it was going to work – do we all talk at the same time? – but my fears were unfounded. The whole thing was done in a semi-casual environment where we sat down over a coffee table with the 3 directors of human resources, talent development and growth, and recruitment.
I won’t spoil the questions for you, but some were definitely ‘out of the box’ levels of interesting! I mean, I even managed to talk about Miss Japan 2015, Ariana Miyamoto, so yep. But underneath all of them, you can really tell that they’ve been crafted specifically to see how you carry yourself in certain situations. They also encourage you to open up a lot and elaborate on your answers, which is something I really liked, because most of the time, interviews run on a time limit and you’re not given much time to speak.
At the start of the next working week, a pleasant surprise popped up in my email inbox – a notif that I’ve been shortlisted for the final assessment! ( ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
… Yes, there is a sparkly emoji and all, but cue me being two parts excited and two billion parts nervous because I had no idea what to expect, I’ve never been to anything like this?!
I was so relieved to see familiar faces when I stepped into that room. There were candidates from the other sessions too, of course, but to see someone I did the interview with was a real relaxer in a room full of new things.
The first day was a short one, just a briefing for the next day’s activities and also two personality tests. They never mentioned what it was for, but my conspiracy theory is that they’re using it to look at suitability. There are things you can’t at all fabricate in these tests, and are bound to say something about you that you can’t necessarily share in an interview.
A game of human bingo kickstarted the next day with a real bang, because imagine the chaos of 30 boys and girls running around in formal wear trying to get other people to sign their bingo sheets! (I’m sorry, Mr. Security Guard, I hope we didn’t scare you off ;__;) Thanks to this, people now know I play the violin and failed my driving test once and own a blog.
Also imagine the chaos when we’re introduced to our judging panel – a line-up of department heads and recruitment specialists – and told that we have two individual presentations and one group presentation lined up for the rest of the day.
The first individual task required us, in the span of precisely 2 minutes each, to introduce ourselves and what makes us special. The second, which is personally what I call “where the real fun begins”, is having each of us go up to the front and randomly draw a number from a pool of available ones. Each number corresponds to an everyday object, which we’d have to start “selling” to everyone in the room – why should you buy this seemingly ordinary and mundane object for which the use is pretty obvious?
Believe me when I say I have horrible luck with drawing lots. My collegemates will know, and this is why someone else usually draws the lots for my assignments but there was no escape this time… and of course, knowing my luck, I get #15: the golf ball. (• ◡•)
I won’t recount my 1.5 minutes of what I said here, but feel free to ask if you’re curious 😛
The group assignment, meanwhile, was to do the concept outline, storyboarding, scriptwriting, casting and rehearsals for a 30 to 60-second television advertisement. For comparison purposes: my final assignment for my advertising module took 2 weeks to think up and another 4 to execute, so… But you gotta do what you gotta do, right! Like I said, time-induced deadlines really help, and all of us managed to pull through with some pretty interesting ideas. There was also a brief competition for which group would get the most number of likes on Facebook for their respective videos in half an hour, and I’d like to apologise to everyone I spammed on Whatsapp for help, haha!
We were misled in thinking that was all – the judging panel then pulled a surprise Q&A session with us where each group had to stand up front and answer any and all questions. They may have cracked jokes through the day, but make no mistake, this panel does mean business and can smell things from a mile away! Their questions and feedback were really insightful, though, and I do think I learnt a lot just by watching the exchanges.
It was a challenging assessment in all senses of the word, but I enjoyed it a ton! It sounds mostly intimidating but it was a real bonding experience, going through that with the other candidates and being able to observe where your strengths and weaknesses lie compared to your peers.
Of course, the day didn’t go without its fair share of fun! GE seems like an exuberant place, always bursting with some activity or the other – we celebrated the birthdays of all the kids born in May, and uh, one of the activities led to a male panel judge doing the waltz with a male candidate?! I leave that up to your imagination.
And the best thing? GE keeps you super well-fed. We had 5 meals on Saturday alone, and that doesn’t even include the 2 rounds of cake we had (｡◕‿◕｡)
What a day, what a day. I’ve learnt so much just by being there, and if nothing else comes of it, I’m glad to have gained this experience and these new friends. I went into the assessment feeling like I was at a disadvantage of sorts because I was a comms student applying for a scholarship from a financial-based institution, surrounded by kids doing economics and accounting and finance, but I see now that it was really more of a helpful quirk! Never have I been so grateful for all the presentations and public speaking I did at KDU; thanks, lecturers ;__;
The results will be out sometime in late June, if not before, and I’ve done my best, so all that’s left is to keep my fingers crossed and hope for good news!
And may the odds be ever in my favour.
_____
Featured image credit: deskspace.io