Sai Sirisha

Amazon is one of the dream companies for many students and so it was for me too. Being someone from a three tier college, I knew it was going to be a struggle to get into a company like that. Hence, I started working on my skills, and gradually improved. I dedicated my time to co-curricular activities too, as I had always been great at multitasking since my school days. I had won state-level painting competitions too. I had started teaching kids younger than me since I was 13 years old and that continued during my college too. My hard work paid off when I was selected amongst the top 80 students from two states i.e Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for training by industry experts at IIIT Hyderabad. As we entered the final year of college, placements began. I applied for Amazon off-campus after a lot of rejection. Nervously, I went ahead with the recruitment process. I cleared off rounds of online assessments and with each round, I became more hopeful. As I was preparing for the next round, I got the news that my dad had a heart attack. We all went numb. My dad has been my source of motivation in everything I have done in all these years of my life. At that point, I gave up on the thought of going to the interview. Then it was my sister who encouraged me to attend the interview. We decided that my mother would go to Chennai to be with my father and my sister would stay back to take care of me as she had been doing this, since we were kids. Somehow, I mustered all my courage. Multiple thoughts were going on in my head. “When the operation is going to be over”, “When is he going to come out of ICU” and so on.
Given the situation, I went ahead with the interview and gave my best. My dad came out of danger. That was huge relief for all of us. The next day I had an NCC exam. After all this that happened in few days, I was exhausted and didn’t want to go but then my mother motivated me to just give it a try. I had been part of NCC for years and it was a golden chance. By the grace of God, I cleared the exam. Out of 250 cadets who had written the exam, only 10 got selected and I was one amongst them. Results of Amazon also came after few days and eventually I had cleared the interview. I was on cloud nine to finally achieve a place in my dream company. These whole 10 days of my life were such a roller-coaster but at last, all went well. It wouldn’t have been possible if my family wasn’t by my side.
Our parents raised us as independent girls. My dad used to stay in different cities because of his job so it was my mother and sister at home, in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Managing the family without any male member was tough for my mother and on top of that she had her job as well. But it was because of the struggles that we had in our past, now we don’t have to rely on anyone for help.
As I said, I was not just into academics but also in extra-curricular. I have been painting for years. So, one fine day my friend suggested, why don’t you make money out of painting? And that’s how my business started. It was limited in the beginning. I used to get only 2-3 orders per month. As my paintings grew popular, orders too came in large numbers. This was the start of the new venture in the field of business. Now we are planning to open an art shop in Hyderabad itself and let’s see how that goes.

Total Work Experience : 1.2 Years (Amazon)