Typically, Astro awards about 7-8 full scholarships a year to students who will pursue their undergraduate degree in various fields of study locally and abroad. For your information, the scholars in my year(2013) are studying degrees ranging from Economics to Geophysics and Computer Science in the UK, US, Australia and Singapore.
For more information regarding the scholarship and to apply, visit this website :
http://www.astro.com.my/careers/indices/index_184.html
From my observation, Astro does not seem to maintain the same, exact shortlisting procedure every year. Therefore, my experience may or may not be entirely relevant to what you will experience during your assessment sessions.
Below are the 5 stages of assessments that you will undergo :-
Stage 1 : Application Form + CV
This is the usual application form where you fill in the necessary details and also attach your CV. You can find various examples of CVs and good guides in writing a CV online.
Stage 2 : Online Assessment
The online assessment will test you on your Verbal Reasoning/English and Mathematical ability. There are some practice materials available online which you can work on. Also, you will have to provide a response to an essay question which may vary on different years. On my year the question was “How best can Astro (being a pay service) reinvent itself with the avalanche of "free" content?”. There was an option to choose another question, but I can’t remember what it was.
Tip 1 : Do some practice before you take these sort of tests to keep your mind sharp and prepared.
Tip 2 : Speed and accuracy are both important. Try not to dwell on the same question for too long if you can’t answer it.
Tip 3 : For the essay, remember to answer the question and also check your grammar.
Stage 3 : Interview
I was interviewed by two ladies, one is the VP of Human Resources and I think the other was the head of the business strategy department. As usual, they asked me to introduce myself and then the interview progressed from there. We also discussed about the essay that I wrote in Stage 2.
Stage 4 : Group Activity – facilitated by Leaderonomics
We were put into groups and underwent various team-building activities, in which several members had opportunities to lead the group(voluntarily). There were Leaderonomics representatives who were facilitating all the sessions and watching our every action and speech throughout the day. At the end of the day, they gave each of us personal feedback (5-10mins) regarding our character, strengths and weaknesses.
Stage 5 : Final Interview
The interviewers were Andrew, the Head of HR and the VP of HR(my interviewer in Stage 3). I remember one of the questions asked was “ Tell me about 3 of the most important lessons that you have learnt in your life.” Unfortunately, I can’t recall the other questions. However, the questions in this stage were definitely harder and less mainstream than that of the previous interview.
Tip 1 : Interviews ALMOST ALWAYS start with you introducing yourself. So be well prepared for that. This is your opportunity to direct the interview to your advantage.
Tip 2 : Analayze all the relevant extra curricular activities and experiences and be prepared to elaborate on them. Pinpoint some “winning points” that you know they will like to know about you. For my case, they were stuff like introducing the KPI in the Prefect Board,etc.
Tip 3 : Prepare for the basic questions like What are your strengths and weaknesses, where do you see yourself in 5-10 years time, etc
Tip 4 : Good interviewing skills always comes with experience. Don’t take it too hard if you don’t do as well as you would like to the first few times around.
Good luck!
