Y U POST 2 POST IN A DAY???!!!

You know what they say, those that give it their all shall be duly rewarded. 

I got an email about 2 hours ago from Maxis!~ It was an invite to their recruitment day in London this 30th!! ZOMG. YESSSS!!! I got through!!!!!!! 

I'm guessing it's gonna be something like an assessment center. Currently trying to get some info on this event to get prepared. Anyways, imma gonna give it my all! Yata!

Until next time ;)

Y U NO NEW POST?

Interesting interesting? Interesting week!

Ok so here's quick sum up of what happened in the past week:

(1) Of course my week started with the case interview at pwc. Zzz.... thanks for the experience

(2) Marketing coursework is due in less than a week. It's just a presentation so no biggie. Well that's not really a problem if you're not the presenter. Well... I AM TEH PRESENTATOORROR. Lolz. For some reason my team has to point fingers to the Msian guy with no proper accent to wow the crowd. Yay!~

(3) Made a start on the SES cw2. Uncertainty and more uncertainty so nothing much that was achieved. Will need to wait for further explanation hopefully during this Friday's lecture.

(4) Weekend was purely contributed towards the Marketing presentation prep. And I just remembered that I was required to complete the MMAP online assessment in 10 days from the previous week. Oh man. I didn't want to leave a bad impression by completing it on the 10th day of course so I was practically practicing the regular SHL numerical and verbal reasoning sample questions which I got off Vai and that was practically my whole Thursday-Sunday. So I decided to get the assessment done on Sunday night thinking my home internet connection would be pretty stable at that time of the day. Well that appeared to be the least of my concerns. The questions were FREAKIN HARD. The difficulty was on par with the assessments I had at Oliver Wyman in the previous year. More of the "complete 24 questions within 20 mins" type and I NEVER MANAGED TO FINISH IT. The questions weren't numbered but I definitely did not finish them. SHITZ..... imba to the max. Imma just praying for the best and that they were looking not for completeness but rather in terms of competence. 

Pray pray pray. Dear g0d. I pray that you put me through to the next stage and I promise I will make up for everything then. I PROMISE! 

So the other concern was with regards to the Marketing presentation. I was never the "salesman" type of guy and I never had much experience in front of large crowds. Not to mention business students this time. Imagine putting an engineer in front of a crowd of business students asking him to sell them something. lolz

It went pretty well actually. I had one of this "when your mind just blanks out" kind of moments during my first 30 seconds of the presentation. Literally after listening back to the lecture recording (lolz yea I was kinda recorded) and there was about 1-2 seconds of silence and that's when my mind decided to make me look like a fool. Haha but it was smooth thereafter. Good stuff. I'm quite glad I was the one to present on the day. Something to build me up towards my next challenge.

So yea. Great korean dinner with Kwang, Wai Yee and Zhi Jian yesterday. Will probably be seeing them more often around uni nowadays ;)

4 more days till end of term. 1 more FYP background report and 1 more SES cw2 and that's it!!!! It's just jobs, exams and FYP in summer. Work work for now. Better get off my lazy @ss.

Until next time ;)

Case Interview eh?

Case interview FTW!!!!!! Well no.... it's Case interview WTF!!!!!!!!!

Feeling all spruced up in the morning I woke up at 6.30am and made my way to Embankment at 8.20am. So I was actually about 15-20 mins earlier than my expected commencement time which was at 9.15am. 

The PWC office was rather discretely located but cool looking nonetheless. Arrived and checked-in at the reception. No they didn't even offered me a seat. It was ----> print name tag ---> off to the conference room. Fak I didn't even manage to take a piss but eventually I did anyways. Haha. I was put into this tiny conference room which was fit for probably only 4 people. Really nice concept and equipped with its own hot beverage dispenser. lolz. 

So the receptionist attending to me handed me a pile of notes. It was the case which I had to work on and it was FREAKIN 25 pages! lol. I jumped right in considering that I only had 40 minutes to go over the content and formulate a solution. 

The case was about a water filtering/distillation system services company which suffered from reduced market share and annual turnover. So obviously from the material it illustrated some customer relation problems which gave rise to their initial downfalls. So the COO came up with a Super Customer Programme which was tailored to address this problem. Well it didn't work out very well and that was essentially what I had to do. To find out what went wrong and how it can be fixed. 

The case was pretty dense and I had some trouble deciphering all the information. Well it was my 2nd even case which I have attempted period so it pretty much equates to a big LACK OF EXPERIENCE. Well I tried my best at the time and I used VC's framework to work through the case. It helped in a way that I had a direction rather than diving in blindly and randomly suggesting solutions which didn't solve any of their problems. Am I right?

Well 40 minutes passed as if it was only 20 minutes. I was sent to the waiting lounge and I quickly collected my thoughts and prepared my material to be properly presented. The interview was conducted over a video conference with Malaysia by these 2 consultants in Malaysia. So they mentioned it would be a role play and that they were about to enter a board meeting in 20 minutes. My task is to brief them about the problems and suggest them my solutions. Well... I went down the typical route in explaining EVERYTHING based on my framework. Well.... they stopped me and told me to cut to the chase. lolz. Probably my fault then. But so I went on telling them the problems and why these problems arose. Then I gave some suggestions but they didn't seem to pleased with my responses well.... namely from one simple phrase which they questioned me: "Is there anything else?". LOlz fak. That's like code for "dude...... tell us something we don't know". 

Dammit. No matter. I guess that case didn't go too well. Oh well at least it's good experience for my next case and I'll just pray for the best la. Haha.

Just got put through to the next round of assessments for Accenture and Maxis. Time to get the gears moving.

Oh and my blardy marketing group.... had to point at the Msian guy to present on behalf of the group in the coming group presentation. Zzzz..... I guess its good experience nonetheless. Just hope I do a decent job.

Until next time ;)

Y U no better suit my schedule??

My current situation is rather ironic. In a sense, I've been complaining that I've never been getting any job interviews/assessments in the past few months. All I've gotten were just the generic 'we have screened through many applications though we think you are highly capable for the role, regretfully we do not have the capacity blablablabla'. Yea well this time...... it's quite the opposite. 

Remember the missed call I mentioned in the previous post? Well I wrote in to pwc and they got back to me almost immediately informing me that they would be contacting me once more. Thing is..... THEY DIDN'T SPECIFY A TIME!!! I was in the labs the next day discussing about our marketing coursework. I was just about to leave the lvl  5 labs for another meeting on lvl 3 and then ...... it happened. It was the same Msian number. I wasn't even out of the labs yet! 'Greeting' said the other end of the line. She introduced herself and said if I could take a few minutes to talk to them. It started with Ms. Teh informing me about their visit to the UK via the UKEC careers fair. Cool cool its general news at this time of the year. So the conversation continued unlike my other phone interviews, she asked questions like:

- have u applied for jobs in the UK?

-Why not stay back and work in the UK?  (answer is pretty obvious........ )

And there came the final blow: 'Are you free to attend a case study interview tomorrow morning at our London office?' ZOMG big NO. Why? Well I have a phone interview scheduled for that morning with Accenture. The other reason being it's a freakin case interview! Imma not prepared at all! A pretty good analogy of this would be akin to asking a primary school student to answer an A-Levels exam paper. 

So I was scheduled for the next slot which takes place on the following Monday 12th March. That gives me a couple of days to get my act together. Not hoping for a miracle but it's definitely better than marching in unprepared. 

Well I had my phone interview with Accenture this morning. They actually called me up at 7am UK time to schedule the interview. 7am! Seriously? Don't you know students are nocturnal creatures? Even 8am sounds much more reasonable a time to compared to 7am. The interview went pretty well. I applied for an analyst position under management consultancy but I was interviewed for a role in technology consulting. Wtf? The interviewer, Ms. Lee kept emphasizing that they do not have vacancies for management at the moment and that my skills would complement tech consultancy much better. Like duh....... I'm an engineer. 

Ultimate question of the phone interview: "What's your expected salary"

Bear in mind that this is like the first phase of the interview process and she talks about salary? WOW. I played a little safe noting a realistic figure (approx RM3500) but mentioned that I was looking for experience and that salary is highly negotiable in my opinion. 

So that's that. Oh and one annoying thing I've noticed:

It's near end of term, there is a coursework submission on Monday next week, multiple scenarios of :

'That awkward moment when someone who doesn't speak to you a lot suddenly calls u up to ask for your copy of the coursework so that he could LEARN how to do it himself'

Nice try.

Oh and did I mention I am being reconsidered for the Celcom-Axiata eXperiental Programme (previously called the young talent programme). I lolled. Interview here I come!

Until next time ;)

Hope and prayer

On the 2nd of March I sent Maxis an email to request for an update on my MMAP application. I was greeted the next morning with a message inviting me a 1st phase Part A online assessment. WOW!!! Well I am most grateful for the opportunity but I remained a little skeptical regarding how I would fare completing the assessments myself considering I've usually had help from my housemates last year. But things have changed and I wan't to work things out with my own effort. There ain't no more free riding and it's only one way forwards. So I've told myself to practice the SHL online assessments daily. Well today's an exception since I've got a coursework submission the next morning.

So last night I headed into uni to do Part A of the assessment. Part A assesses my personality and profiles my work character. Well the assessment was familiar in fashion but unlike any I've done before. I tried to answer as instinctively as possible whilst persisting towards a leadership profile. But there are questions which I just felt as if there was neither a total positive to an answer nor a wholly negative character depiction. An example was a question which asks which described me best. It was between choice A or B:

A: You are more of an enterprising individual who works better alone as well as a risk taker and you would run your own business one day

B: You work well with well described aims and corporate structure, stick within rules/boundaries, friendly, loyal and work well within a group

I picked B instinctively. There were 2 ways to go about this. Choice A would probably depict a leader much better but I probably paid more attention to the part about working alone and running your own business. Would this be perceived as: "Why bother working with us then? I think there are two ways to it when looking between the 2 choices. 

Anyhow, its one question contributing toward a cumulative profiling tool. I can only pray that things will work out and hope that the committee would thoroughly consider my overall application justly. 

On and I've just completed EES CW1 and CW2! Well CW2 was done mainly by my group mate Laurence. Really awesome dude. Hope I could've contributed more but we all owe you one. So that's one presentation, one SES CW2 and FYP background to go! and that's 3 weeks including this coming week!!!! 

Until next time ;)

That little bit of FEAR

Fear. During the Stamford Commencement Speech in 2009, Steve Jobs mentioned about fear being a driving factor for people to live life to the fullest. On the contrary, living in fear of death day by day as cynical as it may sound, might just turn out to be true somewhere down the road.

During my repeat year, I lived my last half a year before the end year exam with the fear that I might repeat the past once more... i.e. screwing up my academic year. I could not afford for that to happen anymore. I could not bear the guilt as to the amount of time and $ I had put to waste. And more importantly, how could I let it happen in the first place? I just couldn't live with that face. 

Fear, at the time, drove me to persevere. I can't recall the origin of this story but dad mentioned about a war general bringing his troops onto the enemy's shores. They were out-numbered and his men were far from confident in facing what lies just beyond the hills in their sight. The general ordered his men to burn all their ships. So the ships were decimated to ash and the men were furiously thinking of a way for them to get home! The general told his men that there is only one option left and that was to more forward and succeed in their coming triumphant battle. This sparked an intense determination among his men and they were as united as ever. Because, they had NO ALTERNATIVE. 

This fear back then reminded me that I had no alternative but to get through the year. I've used it in 3rd year but with the hustle and bustle of internship applications and massive amounts of project work, this fear was not as intense. But this fear of mine was a double edged sword. Yea it reminded me of my lowest moments and it also haunts me as I am reminded of the misery I went through back then. This feeling just creeps around the bottom of my heart as I am busy with work in the foreground. I could feel it and it is distracting.

It is 2 years since then and I can still feel it holding me back and really affects my self esteem. Part of me just wants to get past this hurdle as fast as I can and part of me wants more time to work (hah yea weird but that's the feeling). Part of me just wants to get a job and part of myself just wants to do my best in my Exams!! Yea the smarter fellows would tell me to toughen up and do what matters in the short term first and cross the bridge as we come to it. 

But I must not forget why I am still standing here in London. The reason I am going through this miserable life style and the reason why I had to in the first place. And that is to excel in my exams. I cannot screw up. I can not and I MUST NOT. 

I'm just hoping that this coursework month would tide away this coming weekend so I could get a proper start on my revision. Exams are just about 2 months away and there is still the whole job search coming within the next few weeks. I pray for wisdom, a whole lot of luck and I pray for your blessing.

Until next time ;)

Hip Hip......!!!!..... Hooray?

Well I've just got home from my usual weekly meeting with my FYP supervisor. For once he mentioned that I've sort of fulfilled the main criteria of the project which is to essentially implement a bio-inspired bolus algorithm coupled with a meal library. I'm sort of in the improvement phase so that's pretty good to know :)

So last weekend was a bit of a disaster. I had to head in to uni on a Sunday to work on my FFM project with Edwin. Well thanks to William's copy of last years work (THANK YOU WILLIAM!!!), it ain't the same thing but we managed to use some of his info and sort of completed our chunk of the work. Really good stuff.

Later that night I had my usual internet browse and I decided to pay the Accenture Malaysia Careers website a  visit. Oh looK! The Return Home Program is open!!!! That was around 10pm and I started working on it ASAP. The tough part was structuring the cover letter. I decided to make this cover letter different from my usual generic versions.The cover letter practically took up my entire night. I think I finished the application at approximately 1am. Fingers crossed. 

Well that's not the only issue. According to Jonathan, the interview process would involve a couple of phone interviews prior to the careers fair. He mentions that the phone interviews were very much like HR type of interviews. I was afraid that it would've been case interviews over the phone I guess HR interviews would make things a little more interesting.

Nope that's not all. I did a search on Google and it appears that some candidates which applied via the fair (management consultancy) had case interviews over the phone! In fact, 2/3 case interviews!!! Oh man. Is it time to panic? Well I don't think I am prepared for the cases and with the amount of work to be done before end of term, it's gonna be a pretty rough ride.

You know what they say, no pain no gain right? And it's now or never.

Until next time ;)