As part of the #studentswhoinspireme #SWIM series, let me introduce Shruti Chaudhari .

Shruti comes from Nashik, having done her schooling there; primary and secondary included. Post schooling, she has done her diploma in engineering from Government polytechnic in Nashik. I have a faint idea that to be eligible to study in government polytechnic, you have to be academically above average.We are just setting up the field to highlight that she is better than average academically (Well that is something I could only dream of during school days, anyhooo…).

She pursued her Mechanical engineering degree from VIT, Pune. Normally, students coming from core engineering background have a concern of not getting a suitable job offer in their own corresponding stream and then they drift into other streams and job roles and such. Going against the grain, Shruti secured a job with an electronic company based out of Hosur, Karnataka.

Let me give you a perspective: A woman, staying away from family, in an unknown land with language barrier, working on the ground, working in shifts. While these words by themselves do not mean anything extraordinary, when considered together it paints a picture of a woman who is willing to do anything and everything to succeed in life. Career is just a side effect of that. I have heard so many reasons (excuses?) people use to shirk away from getting out of their comfort zone: Family is not allowing to go away from home, How will I stay alone without any support? I cannot work in a shift, etc etc etc.

She worked in the electronics company for almost 12 months and then she realized that there is a severe lack of growth in terms of personal and professional upgradation and she decided to switch careers. While exploring the possibilities, she talked to her elder sibling who was doing a course with a well-known semi-government organization. After consultations with few other people, she decided to switch into IT.

She came to know, through the aforementioned sibling, there’s a trainer in the same semi-government institute, who teaches really great and she should take a look at it as a possibility for learning the foundation and basics if she wants to join the IT. The trainer being mentioned: Vinayak Ujalambe . He was conducting training as a guest lecturer and had started focusing on his own training organization FirstBit Solutions (Yes, the same one that you see on my profile). She attended the first few free sessions and realized; she was able to keep up with the technical discussions inspite of not having a lot of programming background.

The technical journey: After attending the sessions, she decided to opt for Full stack Java course with FirstBit Solutions and started learning everything from scratch. I will not talk about the course details as this is not a company marketing post, so sticking to what she has shared over multiple discussions that I have had with her.

But, before we talk about her exploits, it’s important to understand why she’s the one we are talking about it. After the course was finished, she got placed in a company in Mumbai. What’s so great about this. Shruti had given an interview in another company but it was taking time to process, she decided to go for the second company that she was eligible for, through the FirstBit placement process and travelled to Mumbai to give the interview (the interviewed lasted till late evening / night) and succeeded in the interview to the extent that she was told by the interviewer that it was one of the best interviews that she (the HR) had conducted in the entire day.

Again, Perspective is important: She came from a non-IT background (without having done any excessive coding), worked in the core domain and YET cleared the interview in first attempt.

While, this is great let’s understand why someone should be interested in listening to what she has to say about the whole learning journey. She has proven that the journey she has undertaken, works if followed religiously.

To understand her journey, I asked her (rather interviewed) few questions to understand the process from a student’s perspective.

From the entire discussion that I had with her few points that have emerged strongly:

1.      Before coming to FirstBit, she tried learning from YouTube. It does not work, she was adamant about this point. It DOES NOT work because there is no one who can answer the questions as soon as they come to mind.

2.      Attend all sessions live (Online batch) and not depending on the recordings to learn, cleared all doubts as soon as they were encountered. Focussed learning due to attending sessions.

3.      Focus on learning while learning, without thinking of placement.

4.      Trust in mentors, almost to the level of blind faith. If the trainer says to do something, do it without questioning. She gave an example of memory diagrams.

5.      Surrender to the trainer’s knowledge and follow the path shown by the trainer / mentor

6.      Once, she was in placement phase, she focussed completely on getting ready for facing interviews. Attend / clear all mocks and project presentations, implement assignments / projects on time.

7.      Trainers / mentors will spend a lot of time on the students but at the same time the students will also have to put in efforts by themselves.

 

Why am I inspired:

1.      She has proven that laser-sharp focus gets you the result you are looking for regardless of any obstacles (perceived) in your path.

2.      Surrender yourself to an expert in your field and trust their knowledge / experience to better yourself.

 

Looking at her journey and the difficulties that she has faced, I know she can be a source of inspiration for many.