Chandana Varma talks about her journey to the coveted Gold Medal of HR & Finance at VJIM, Hyderabad

Chandana Varma a medalist of Vignana Jyothi Institute of Management (VJIM), Hyderabad’s batch of 2016 from HR & Finance comes from an academic background of B.Tech but that is where the similarities stop. Chandana is not the run of the mill Engineer who opted for Management education to enhance her career. Her’s an acute sense of understanding in the field of Management. It was this acumen that drove her to pick one of the best B-schools of the country and qualify for it. Her quest for learning gathered more momentum the minute she stepped at VJIM, Hyderabad.

Chandana worked hard and pushed herself to the top, emerging victorious after two years of grueling studies and hard management schedule at VJIM, Hyderabad. When you talk to her about being the medal winner, she takes it in stride and says that she did what she always wanted to and the accolades came through. With her eyes firmly fixed on the future, she laboured and her labours bore fruit.

Moving further, she adds- “CGPA shouldn’t be an ultimate aim for a student. Learning should be.” It was this fire within her and the constant desire for learning that got her placed at GGK Technologies as an HR Associate. She however believes that there isn’t a huge gap between what she was taught in the classroom and what she eventually got exposed to in the work place. “The lessons transform, translate and come in handy every step of the way,” says a happy Chandana with her academic accolade in her hand.

Chandana remembers concepts that detailed effective utilization of resources among many other things that VJIM helped her pick up. What in her mind was exactly different at VJIM? “The exposure that I received which I think no other B-School would probably have given me. I had acute fear of the stage and with the regular VJIM assignments, I completely defeated that fear.”

The first time she realised that she had made it to the medalists’ list of the 2016 batch, the news took her by surprise, but what a pleasant surprise that was!

She did her Summer Internship Project (SIP) at Tata Projects Limited. This experience laid the foundation of what promises to be an illustrious career ahead for her.

We asked Chandana her parting message for the young aspirants of PGDM. Unlike the world that keeps harping on CGPA, she wants her juniors to keep learning. “Don’t focus more on CGPA, keep learning”, she emphasises as she walks into a bright future that now rests at GGK Technologies.