Hello internet! For this particular post, I'll be focusing on the Taylor's World Class Scholarship: Final Interview. I'll link the other 3 interviews at the end of this post.
Taylor's World Class Scholarship: Final Interview - 23rd April 2015
So, if you've read my previous post, you'd know that I attended the initial TWCS interview previously and managed to ace it, which lead me to this final interview. Basically, during this round, all you have to do is present in front of the sponsoring company and answer whatever questions they ask during the interview. In my case, my interview was with the Veritas Design Group Sdn Bhd as I had applied for architecture. We were only given the topic of the presentation 7 days before the actual interview, and it was to present about your strength and passion towards architecture and how this particular scholarship fits into your plans for the future. I prepared the presentation and went for the interview which was scheduled at 2.30pm on the 23rd of April in the Taylor's Lakeside Campus.
Lets talk about how the presentation went. I was given a remote to present (which I have never used before) in front of Ar. Zainal, representative from VDG, as well as Dr Veronica and Mr Keith (the interviewer from the first interview) from Taylor's. I was informed beforehand that the presentation must not exceed 5 minutes, and I think I stayed well in that time limit, although it wouldn't hurt if I had elaborated more on the presentation. After the presentation, the interviewers asked me a few questions and gave me several feedbacks regarding my presentation. I have to admit, out of all 4 interviews that I have attended, this has to be the one that affected me the most. This is due to the feedbacks as well as the presentation itself which I'll explain right after this. Anyway, after the whole session was done, I was sent back downstairs and was allowed to go home. Again, I had to take the public transport to KL Sentral, only this time I took the shuttle bus instead of the taxi and it saved me so much money. I had to go to KL Sentral as my flight to Langkawi was later that evening.
Anyway, here are some of the feedbacks that I had received regarding my presentation.
1. Mr Keith said to me that before I entered the room, he actually told the other two interviewers that I was in fact one of the most outstanding candidates that he had interviewed, and that they had really high hopes for me. This might seem like a good thing, but unfortunately for me it wasn't. Apparently they were extremely unimpressed by my slides, which was in PowerPoint by the way.They wanted it to be more visual and they said it would be a perfect presentation for law as I was able to demand attention just by using words.
Now, here's the thing. I had no idea how to use PowerPoint. I use a MacBook, which means I've been doing all my slides on Keynote and the problem is when you transfer keynote files to windows or vice versa, the files don't always work. Which is why I didn't put in too much effort as I was afraid it might not work during the presentation itself. Plus, based on the email that I had received, it seemed like it is crucial that I stay in the time limit, which is 5 minutes. My original slides actually had enough information to allow me to talk for 25 minutes long. I decided to remove most of the pictures as I was so afraid of going over the time limit.
2. He also asked me how long did I take to make the slides as it seemed as if I totally took it for granted and relied on my speaking skills to wow the interviewers - he said that I was being overconfident.
I took 2 days to make the slides. Because I only had 2 days to do so. The previous week had been hella busy for me as it was my birthday that Sunday, and I spent 2 full days with my friends/family to celebrate my birthday, and I also had to attend another interview (UiTM) on that Saturday. My schedule was pretty much packed and I guess it is rather sad that I didn't allocate more time to do the slides. But then again, the whole slides thing wasn't really something that I was good at to begin with.
3. Ar. Zainal said that my presentation was rather theoretical, and that he was expecting to see more of what I have done to build my interest in architecture and not what I plan to do.
Man, if I could show him all the work that I had done, I would definitely take longer than 5 minutes. But it is a shame that I completely missed out my TARDIS, my balcony model, and also the KEVA competition that I had won. I guess during that presentation my brain was just telling me to speak out about all the things that I plan to do and not shower them with information of things that I have achieved. At that point, I was just thinking to myself, well you can see most of my achievements in my cert book, I don't see how talking about them is even relevant anymore.
All three of the interviewers did say that I do deserve a scholarship, not this one particularly, its just that I have used the wrong technique for this interview. Also, when I mentioned that I have something else to show them, which was my really bare and incomplete sketchbook, Ar. Zainal was just like pls PLS show me something else, wow us! and I was just like well ok thats unfortunate as I don't think this is good enough. That was one of the parts that kept on replaying my mind till this day. Like can you imagine, someone telling you that you had left such a great first impression but now, after a second look, you're really not that special at all. Maybe its just me, as I am the kind of person who constantly wants to be a better version of me that's always improving and always better than the me from yesterday, ya feel?? They did ask a few other questions which I don't think really matter.
All in all, the experience went by extremely quickly, and by 2.45pm I was already on my way to the bus stop. I have to say that this particular interview made me feel a bit upset, I kept on thinking about it even when I was in Langkawi trying to have a nice vacation. When I was in KLIA waiting for my flight, I sent like 10+ voice notes of me ranting about to Tsara, I bet you can tell how frustrated I was. But I did learn a few important lessons from it, and I feel like I am more that prepared to attend another interview after this, which unfortunately won't be happening in the near future.
I hope this post has been an interesting read, and if you would like to see my slides, do let me know! I have yet to receive the results for this interview, but I'll update you once I get it!I
If you'd like to read about the first round of the TWCS interview, click here!
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Hi, may i know what topic you got for the presentation interview? May i see your slides?
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