Life is all about making the best of what we have. There is nothing we can’t achieve. With the right attitude and positive mindset, one can even move mountains, believes Priya Shukla, who has made it into Infosys, which she always wanted. She talks to Corporate Citizen about her journey into the corporate world
For Priya Shukla, her mother, who is a source of positive energy and father, a role model, have been the two live wires behind her success story. A graduate in Electronics and Communication, Priya started her journey into the corporate world spending two and a half years with TCS Mumbai before she moved to Balaji Institute of Modern Management (BIMM), a private business school in Pune. Now she is working with Infosys Ltd., settled in the city with her soft-spoken husband Harsh Jain from Jaipur, a software Analyst at Fiserv Pune. Hailing from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, Priya has a younger sister who is a professional singer and a pet, Oaky, a Labrador, which she feels is a wonderful and the most compassionate canine.
‘Never refrain from trying,’ has been her motto since kindergarten as she recalled her first reward, a Mango Bite for her act of thinking something out of the box. Today, when she goes back down her memory lane, it is not the reward, but the smile and the affection of her teacher which counted the most. Priya’s urge to learn has made her someone special in everyone’s life, her husband being one among them in a very special way.
With her friendsDaughter of a banker, she did not have a ‘settled’ life as her father kept moving to new places. This meant that she enlarge her friends’ circle, time and again, and in the process gave her and her sister everything new friends, neighborhood, different cultures, every time. Priya always wanted to excel in everything and this saw her try her hands at everything she found interesting. She actively took part in competitions such as singing, dancing, painting, debates, speech and even hand-writing competitions. She learnt calligraphy just because she found it a novel and non-conventional hobby.
Even during her MBA internship, she religiously did her market research project, drafted the report, prepared the file, presented the supporting data and documents and aced the presentations with an all-time high score of 91. She gives credit to her teachers right from the time she stepped into four walls of class room till her MBA. Mathematics had been her favorite subject. After her four-year graduation stint, she did get the first taste of campus placement at TCS Mumbai, and it was here she realized her hunger for more. She did not want to spend her entire life as an engineering graduate working in an IT firm in Mumbai. She wanted to upgrade her skills, profession, degree, and status. And she decided to pursue higher studies in management. She was selected at BIMM, one of the elite MBA colleges in Pune where she took up MBA in marketing. It was here she discovered the value of time and family, and started enjoying everything around her.
Having got the taste of placement after her graduation, the second innings at the same was not as pleasant. It was a torture for Priya. Due to some unfortunate events she couldn’t appear for the first 70 companies for placement. As the firms came and went, Priya’s worry escalated, it was a very hard time for her. But there was a silver lining to all this as it taught her patience and gave her time for self realization. ‘Nothing is permanent’, she felt. All these difficult times do come but gradually fade away.
Everything fell in place one day when she submitted her resume for Infosys. She always wanted to be there. After having lost out on many companies, this was her first and last chance and she wanted to make the most of it. She spent sleepless nights learning all about the organization, the policies, its turnover, about the CEO, the place it held in Gartner’s matrix, its strength and the areas of improvement. Her market research came in handy as she created a project of her own on Infosys. But as judgment day approached tension had filled the air. Many questions were asked, but her internship project did it for her as she saw that the person interviewing her was impressed. The confidence and positive approach of Priya saw her make it to the most sought after organization in the IT Industry, the company offering one of the highest packages and for the role of a Consultant. She called up her father who was equally anxious and gave him the news. Drowned in accolades and hugs and congratulations from her friends she got emotional; it was a beautiful father-daughter moment, one of the happiest moments of her life.
"Life to me is all about making the best of what we have, not whining about what we lack and working hard to achieve what we long for. There is nothing we can’t achieve, with the right attitude and positive mindset, one can even move mountains"
“Life to me is all about making the best of what we have, not whining about what we lack and working hard to achieve what we long for. There is nothing we can’t achieve, with the right attitude and positive mindset, one can even move mountains,” she says. She wanted to be a judge, a journalist, an architect and even the president of the country-the wish list went on. “Unfortunately, I was not amongst the lucky ones who knew from the very beginning what they wanted to become. I just kept enjoying life, lived the moment, gave my 100% to what I did, and destiny kept paving the way for me, and finally everything fell in place.
“Today if you ask me about my career, I guess I am doing pretty well in the organization and have received quite a few awards and recognitions in a short span of 15 months. I love my job. Love what I do, love taking challenges, love overcoming the problems because the joy we experience at the end of the road is worth the pain,” she says.
Priya with her parents
With her sister RiyaBy Joe Williams
