Scholarship / "Leadership is not a genetic grant", Chevening Scholarship Questions [4]

Hi All,

I am applying for chevening scholarship. This is my first time. If you are familiar with the scholarship, there are four questions, the other two are about networking skills, and post-study career plan. But as of now I've finished the leadership and studying in the UK questions. Your feedback is really, really appreciated.

Leadership and Influence Question:
Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

Leadership is not a genetic grant. I believe that it's a capability that needs to be developed by exposing ourselves to various challenges. To me, leadership is more than just being the head of the gang, but rather entails responsibilities, along with other important characteristics and motivations.

During my undergraduate studies, I was student leader in student council, where I led and guided new students in their orientation. I was also trusted to head many projects in school assignments, including branding strategy, which won my team and I the best presentation award, and business simulation along with 2 teammates whereby I was the head-planner, which earned good criticism. I was also the pioneer to encourage students to participate in International model conference and succeeded to get the school to sponsor 2 other delegates and I to represent our campus in a conference in Hong Kong.

However, perhaps the most significant leadership skills that I demonstrated, which played an important role in my self-growth occurred in my current work experience. Working as operational auditor in a manufacturing company, I have to overlook more than 100 manual labours to make sure they comply with the company's procedure and safety. This, of course, requires leadership capabilities, not to mention flexibility to adapt to different characters of the labourers here, which can be very challenging. As their first internal auditor, partnering with the management representative, I am also spearheading their quality management systems documentation according to ISO 9001, which has not been present before. Being their youngest staff doesn't make me feel intimidated or inferior. Instead, they expect fresh ideas from me and that's why I take initiative to innovate with work formats for us to work more effectively. I was also given the opportunity to lead meetings with senior management and present recommended action plans for the company to achieve continuous improvement. Notable things implemented that I recommended for the company included restructuring of their trading division to reach a more beneficial core business, and family day outing. Working as team with colleagues has allowed me to increase audit effectiveness, and reduce repeated findings to less than 13%. Audits conducted also have improvement towards positive attitude of the labours.

I think, that's the advantage of working in a SME compared to a big company. While change can be hard to implement, SME is more malleable. You can literally pioneer anything, and when you initiate something in a smaller environment, you can really feel the impact you make. From this, I become excited at the idea if I can improve a community with bigger magnitude, like Indonesia; I would feel immensely proud.

At my age, I'm confident of my achievements. However, I don't want to be satisfied just yet. I will continue to seek for more and gather as many experiences to achieve my goals, so I can come back with new ideas that hopefully can be applied to improve Indonesia. I'm excited to achieve change and face new challenges that the future holds.

Studying in the UK question:
Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future.

*Please do not duplicate the information you have entered on the work experience and education section of this form (minimum word count: 50 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

As a developing country, there are so many issues that Indonesia has to address ranging from economics, finance, education, infrastructure building, rural development, and many other enforcement-related issues. However, Indonesia is still deficient in skilled labours mainly due to its high rates of school dropouts caused by poverty in certain provinces, including my home-province, Aceh. Hence, it always lacks specialist labours that are expert in their field to help with the development and implementation of its programs.

That is the reason why I want to make a difference. I want to be part of a generation that are aware of the power of education. I want to be the right person with the right qualification to serve my country, creating an impact and ultimately helping it to improve to be better, especially in the areas of my interest: Economics and Development.

Having been majoring in business in my undergraduate studies, I have learned all the aspects needed in entrepreneurship and business. However, contrary to the misconception of many Indonesians that a business degree is more or less equal to an economics degree, it only touches the topic of Economics superficially and more into business management. For me, I'd like to get in-depth into developmental economics and its role as well as its interconnectedness to the world, thus, concluding my preference in "International" courses that are International Studies (Durham University), International Economics Development (University of Reading) and Applied Economics and International Development (University of Kent).

Apart from being multidisciplinary, it would facilitate me to really diversify my expertise. Since I have taken on a management-centric undergraduate program as well as forward-thinking role in my work experience as an auditor, it would be a remarkable combination of skills. I believe that possessing skills acquired from the courses would be a great asset to the nation's development, especially in the areas of social and economics. Additionally, a country with economy as developed as UK is also the most conducive place to engage in this study. Besides getting an opportunity to learn from UK as a country with most competitive economy, it would also allow me to meet new friends from diverse background and challenge my perspectives.

While my first degree and these choices of International studies may not be so linear, I believe the subjects provided on each of these courses would be a valuable and favourable knowledge. These courses seem to suit my career goals the best, whereby it will serve as a stepping-stone to my career objective of aiding Indonesia's development. I am confident that these choices would facilitate my self-growth, and equip me with skills needed to tackle developmental issues in Indonesia.

Thanks in advance

Scholarship / Career Plan upon returning Home question - Chevening [4]

Hi all. This is for the career plan question for Chevening Scholarship. The prompt is as follows.

Chevening is looking for individuals who have a clear post-study career plan. Outline your immediate plans upon returning home and your longer term career goals, considering how these relate to UK priorities in your country.

There are a lot of UK priorities for my countries, however, the one that is suitable for my goal is Economics and Public Sector Management. Can you tell that from reading my essay? Or not? I feel like my essay is still vague and not clear/specific enough when it comes to the plan. So your feedbacks are much appreciated and welcomed. Thank you in advance.

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With maladies that have been going on, Indonesia is still far away from true democracy that it aspires to achieve. Questionable transparency coaxes people to blame government officials, but people sometimes neglect the fact that Indonesia is a very populated, large archipelago, which makes implementations and enforcements onerous. It has always been my dream to be involved in the nation's development process in the field that I am most able in, Business and Economics; I want to make sure that Indonesia's ambitious development goals are not merely wishful thinking, starting from myself. However, I don't have prior experience in development-aid organizations that allows me to comprehensively understand how our government body works. Although it is why I want to pursue further study in the courses that I have chosen previously, people may still see my lack of experience as an issue.

A friend who is in the industry, and is currently in a project to improve accessibility of clean water to all islands and rural areas of Indonesia once told me, in order to understand how the whole anatomy of Indonesia works, and to know what action plans to recommend, we have to take a "dive" into it rather than observes from the shoreline, as there are lot of immaculate planning and donors involved. There is only so much we can grasp through exchanging information, which prompts me to "take a leap" as I believe more is learned by doing the actions.

With that in mind, my first objective is to gain sufficient industry experience. My immediate plan would be to return to my home country and seek employment with management consulting companies in advisory or consultancy division, as it pertains to my entrepreneurial vision and my end-career goal of being an expert/consultant. I understand that securing a position in renowned management consulting companies can be very competitive, which is why during my master's, I intend to distinguish myself from others by participating in student organization that will polish my leadership skills.

As a consultant, I will be directly helping the development of many organizations and companies in Indonesia, whereby it will prepare and ready them for the soon-approaching ASEAN Economics Community/AEC, consequently impacting both our Macroeconomics and Microeconomics. Moreover, this position will also allow me to network with many influential people, including business owners or government officials. After 5-7 years of sufficient experiences in the industry, with the networks and skills that I have established, my next objective is to become specialist manpower in public agencies and municipalities, especially the ministry of industries and development.

With the experiences that I will obtain, I can contribute a lot to the development of Indonesia, from helping more Small-to-Medium-Enterprises survive the competitions, easing aspiring entrepreneurs to do business that will boost local employment, to even improving social-education and rural development. In the future, I see myself creating an organization of my own where I can continue to serve Indonesia, and help its social and economic development to the best of my ability.