First things first, let me tell you about my second-stage interview for Shell pre-university scholarship at Shell House in Damansara Heights, in between my Taaruf Week in UIA. I previously wrote about my first-stage interview which was a phone interview here.
A few of us were selected for the second-stage interview few weeks later and for my session, there were 8 of us aged between 18 and 21. For some reason they mixed pre-university with undergraduate applicants for the interview so the competition became slightly stiffer.
There was an Asean scholar, an SPM leaver who just received an offer from JPA, a national champion of public speaking and yes, all of them were highly impressive. We were competing with the best among the best here *gulps*
As for the interview itself, it was tough but I walked out of the interview, knowing more of Shell, of business strategies and plans and even of myself than when I first walked in. The first part was an individual assessment where each of us was given 40 minutes to go through a case study of Shell's business in this particular country and during the assessment, we will be questioned by 2 of Shell's people on the issues highlighted as well as solutions to the problems given.
My assessors were both Shell engineers, a local and a British-Pakistani chemical engineer who got posted to KL. They kept on hitting me with questions from the case study as well as my proposed plan so there wasn't much time to think and I just said whatever came to mind. There wasn't any right or wrong answers, they just wanted to see how creative and innovative your thoughts can be.
Next up was the group assessment where I was paired with another candidate and together, we would have to come up with 2 projects to propose to Shell as part of their social investments. From there, we would have to re-group with another pair and decided again on the 2 projects for Shell while making sure we fulfill their criteria and stay within the allocated funds.
A mock 'press conference' was held after the discussion as the assessors role-played as journalists and asked us questions about our 2 choices. I thought that was a fun session. The whole thing actually. Something different than the typical, boring interview like JPA's (Zzzzz...)
I'm not sure of my chances of securing this scholarship (JPA just rejected me, by the way) since there's some tough competition and the places on offer are very limited. But otherwise, this had been good and if this still doesn't work out, I'm ready to make the best out of my time in UIA.
UIA, that's another story. Another day, perhaps.
The 8 candidates of the day
Deep in discussion about our interview sessions after they ended
With Weiyang, one of the candidates
Tee hee :)
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