Meet Bhavana Reddy Vanga—a Hyderabad girl who sets extremely high standards for herself and risks it all when those standards aren’t met. She is diligent, persistent and has a focused approach to life. Just in her early 20s, Bhavana knows what she wants and is not afraid to give her all to get it. This is her story.
A goal in mind
Bhavana’s father is a banker; mother – a homemaker; and elder brother – a software engineer. Her family was okay with her pursuing whatever course she wanted. But Bhavana had a goal in mind.
Inspired by her brother, she wanted to become a computer science engineer. And so, she started preparing for the JEE, while in school.
She did fairly well in the JEE Mains and got a seat in NIT Agartala to study Chemical Engineering. But her ambition prevented her from taking up the course. She took a chance and got admission in Vasavi College of Engineering to study Computer Science Engineering.
Building things from scratch
Bhavana is someone who is not afraid of taking tests. For her, it doesn’t matter if she fails. What is most important is that she gets to learn new things.
It was at one such coding event – Being Zero – that Bhavana took part in that she realised that she enjoys building applications from scratch and that she’s good at it.
She says, “I moved to the second last round of the competition and was among the 7 people who qualified out of 20… This was when I realised that building applications from scratch gives me a high and that I am good at it.”
Lessons in coding
In her third year, a faculty member informed Bhavana about WE Program, offered by TalentSprint, supported by Google, that aims to increase the number of women in India’s technology sector.
The program trains and offers a scholarship to girls who code, from all over India. If selected, the girls attend a bootcamp where they learn how to thrive in a corporate environment.
Bhavana appeared for and cracked both the test and the interview.
She recalls that she didn’t interact much with the other girls in the first week. But that changed when Asokan Pichai, Chief Learning Officer at TalentSprint, insisted that the girls get to know each other. She says, “getting to know the other girls really inspired me.”
The program not only improved Bhavana’s coding skills, but also helped her hone her communication skills. She says that she started noticing changes in herself when she got back from the bootcamp and that the month-long training helped her ace the interviews that were to come.
A bunch of interviews
As is her nature, Bhavana appeared for as many tests and interviews as she possibly could. Some, she couldn’t crack, while others she aced. She landed offers from Oracle and TCS Digital.
But neither were her dream company. Around the same time, she also had an offer to intern from ServiceNow. She says, “ServiceNow was hard to get into. The internship offer did not guarantee that I’ll get a job there. If I took this up, it would mean giving up on the Oracle offer. It was a risky move but I knew what I wanted and so I started interning at ServiceNow.”
Bhavana’s team at ServiceNow was really impressed with her, but didn’t have the budgets to hire her. As a result, she was left without a job offer after her internship.
There’s a saying that if you really want something, the universe helps you achieve it. And that is what happened with Bhavana. A few weeks later, the HR at ServiceNow informed her that there was a vacancy. She cracked the interview and finally got an offer to work at her dream company.
Today, Bhavana is very happy. All the risks she had taken has finally paid off and she’s exactly where she wanted to be. We are very proud of this go-getter and salute her all or nothing spirit.
