A Privilege like Yes Bank Scholarship comes one in a lifetime. Its an honour to be a part of such a list containing an esteemed array of winners from around the country. I have already shared Anjal Agrawal’s interview on how he prepared for the process and what the scholarship means to him. This one will share mine.
This year the Yes Bank Future Ready process was conducted in three phases. The first phase was the basic application process where participants were required to submit their education details, work experience, certification and achievements. So basically,
the first phase was concerned with what a participant has achieved in the past. Be elaborate, take your time and answer everything to the best of your capability. The remaining I do not have much control over, but in the achievements section, I tried to add achievements from every phase of my life right from class 8
th. There are a few subjective questions as well such as
“What do you plan to do with the money from the scholarship” or
“What makes you Yes Future Ready”. I tried to answer all the questions in the given word limit, utilizing the maximum limit at the same time. The answers are subjective for a reason and it is not a bad idea to put your best foot forward while answering such questions.
The second phase was a psychometric exam. For most of us, the results and questions seldom make sense. But this phase removed 4 out of every 5 participants from my campus so one should understand the importance of the process. I met a Yes Bank Scholar specialising in HR and the insights she had about the test were enlightening. The test tries to ascertain your personality and if you are ready to be Yes Future Ready Scholar. Each question had two choices and you could either completely agree with one or slightly agree with one. In many instances, you will find yourself wanting to somehow select both but it’s not an option. My suggestion would be to go with the first answer that comes to your mind. I was deciding on the lunch menu for a while when I was taking the test. So, I guess being completely honest and reluctant worked for me.
The third phase was the interview. It was supposed to be a video conference with the interviewer. But, on the day of the interview, the video conference software decided to break up with us and it ended up being a telephonic interview. Remember the psychometric exam! Other scholars I met told us that the results are with your interviewer before you begin the interview.
I was the last among the five candidates to be interviewed and asked everyone about their experience as and when they were done. Every experience scared me more. Many of questions were around the current affairs, and I was clueless about all of them. The interview began with my basic introduction. I was asked to run through my CV and any other point which I wished to mention. Apart from my CV, I mentioned that I plan to learn more about finance and eventually move to paper industry working on alternative sources of paper instead of wood. So, many of the questions were based on the current paper industry and what I think drives it. There was a guesstimate as well where I was asked to calculate the current number of A4 notebooks in the country :-O. The most important portion of a guesstimate which I understand is to take feedback from the interviewer about your approach. Whenever I felt unsure about the percentages I was assuming, I asked for help, and the interviewer was gracious enough to help me with my questions and confusions. The interviewer also asked my views on the success of demonetization and what is the reason for my answer.
Overall, it was a gradual discussion about my plans of the future and my thinking process.
Finally, the results came and both me and Anjal were selected from IIM Shillong. We were invited to Mumbai by Yes Bank for a felicitation ceremony.
I have never seen a better-organised event. I am extremely grateful to Yes bank for the opportunity. Apart from the scholarship amount we have been given access to
Yes Bank Tech course of our choice on Coursera to help us in our career. But the most attractive part of the scholarship is the mentorship program where
each scholar will be given a mentor, running a business unit in Yes Bank. We received a short demo of the same during the felicitation ceremony when we got to meet two mentors for ten minutes each during the speed mentoring session. We could ask them anything from their success to very specific questions around our aims for the future. It has been a wonderful experience so far and each one of us is looking forward to the program ahead.