Posts by nugisk

nugisk

Oct 28, 2020

Scholarship / Chevening Essay - network is the investment for my personal growth [3]

@Holt

I agree with your comment about the result of networking. Actually, my idea was to put a brief result for each story then put general conclusion of the results in the last paragraph. But now I know that idea wasn't good enough to be easily grasped by the reader.

Thanks a lot Mary, hope you are always well during this situation because I believe your presence is very important for hundreds (even thousands) of people. Stay healthy!

nugisk

Oct 27, 2020

Scholarship / Chevening Leadership Essay - Leading Ourselves And People [4]

Hi linduputra16, actually I am currently also a Chevening applicant. But I'll try my best to give feedbacks from what I learnt from previous experience.

first paragraph: I don't have many comments, but I suggest you to check for grammatical error, you could check on google docs or grammar. I'm not a very capable on this, but I spotted little mistake such as "is highly required". I think the correct one will be "persuading others require blabblabla". I wont comment on the content for this.

second paragraph: I suggest you to change the story with a concrete leadership example. I understand what you mean by leading yourself, but I think what the committee want to find is can we demonstrate how we lead others to a certain task. maybe after this you can check several competitive leadership essay examples that Holt (one of contributor of this forum) said already complied to the Chevening Standards, most of them will talk about leading other people. And to ease your framework, I'd suggest to use the STAR method as suggested by the Chevening and most people, eventho it's not a mandatory.

3rd para: dont forget to check the grammar, since it happened in the past so you must use simple past. while this para already used the STAR method (actually I couldn't comments on the process since I wasn't working on your field), but I think you need to make it simpler. For instance,

S: (give one or two opener sentence). There was a project in my office to install WAN connectivity for a rail transportation company. The rail company needed solution for a reliable and efficient WAN connections.

T: In order to have those qualities, I need to do blablabla (general task you need to do).
A: I proposed a different solution called SD-WAN. I performed presentations to the company's BoD how easy to operate SD-WAN. tell your proposal for the three months testing (give conflict about how they requested performance testing for one month and how you persuade them). tell all your actions.

R: you persuaded or convinced them to test the performance for 3 months and tell how satisfying the result was.
close the paragraph with the lesson learnt.

close the essay with general conclusion.

goodluck! enjoy your scholarship journey!

nugisk

Oct 27, 2020

Scholarship / Chevening Essay - network is the investment for my personal growth [3]

Dear Holt, first I want to thank you for giving a detailed comments in several threads which I could learn from them how to convey and show to the reader about my idea to succeed in Australia Awards Short Course selection process. Finally, I decided to create my account cause I need your suggestions on my Chevening Networking Essay. Hope you have time to evaluate it, and please give me some feedbacks whether the essay already comply to the standard or not.

P.S: PLN is a state-owned enterprise who is the sole provider of electricity in Indonesia. I didn't describe PLN on my essay because there was special section for describing my office, so I assumed the reader already read that.

Chevening Networking Essay

I often tried to expand my network because I believe that network is such an investment, it is important for my personal growth. Since my undergraduate study, I actively built my networks, especially with those who had interests in energy sectors. I took part as human resource manager in the International Student Energy Summit 2015 in Bali which invited 500 delegates from 50 countries. That position connected me to bright energy enthusiast students who are currently practitioners. I stay in touch with them as sources of insight for my professional development in the area of energy. The network also helped me in raising renewable energy (RE) awareness in society. For instance, my colleague, the lecturer of Pertamina University, asked me for career sharing of geology graduates. I presented to 40 students how geologists, who have a close relationship with fossil fuel, could also contribute to RE development. Recently, they even held a RE paper competition that showed their interest.

I also actively expanded my network by joining external courses. In August 2020, my application for waste to energy (WtE) short course from Australia Awards was selected and helped me to connect and collaborate with different national agencies in solving low WtE growth problems caused by business processes. I gave my perspective as PLN's representative and we tried to understand each agency's role and challenges. We brought the results of our discussion to our executives, hoping that with the same baseline understanding will increase the WtE deployment.

Exposure to international networks has also helped me to excel in my workplace. From early 2020, I worked on guidelines to standardize hydropower feasibility study in PLN. What makes it important was the guideline will be used nationally. I was responsible to ensure the quality of the guideline to fit with international standards. With my connections, I contacted experts in the application of international standards for project finance that I knew from hydropower training held by Norwegian's agency. I was introduced to the World Bank's Environmental & Social guideline and Norway's Hydropower Planning standard as useful tools to ensure hydropower projects comply with international standards. I also discussed the technical calculations with Japanese engineer colleagues from previous projects. I learnt how hydropower projects are supposed to be on an international level and finished the guideline. The guideline got good responses from my superiors. Aside from that, I was entrusted to present the guideline across regional PLN branches.

From aforementioned experiences, I learnt that having a wide range of networks will open more opportunities to come. Not only for my self development but also on decoding RE issues. Therefore, I intend to broaden my network in the Chevening community and the UK so that I can contribute to my country's development through partnership in the area of RE such as the UK's Mentari Program. I could assist the UK's RE investors on that program to understand the business process and regulation which will help strengthen the relationship between Indonesia and the UK.