The Brilliant Youth Competition (BYC) is a Business Case Competition organized by LifeatBRI on November 30 – December 1, 2023 in Jakarta. Through this competition, students can get up to IDR 75 million in funding, internship opportunities, and a career opportunity at Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI).

The BYC opens wide opportunities for students and fresh graduates (undergraduate level) with a competitive, collaborative spirit, and strong courage to show their potential in building creative and innovative ideas to support the nation’s economic growth, especially for the future Indonesian banking industry.

The student of the Development Economics Study Program, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS), Magdalena Asmara was the only UNS delegate participating in the competition.

Her strong motivation and enthusiasm to participate in BYC finally paid off with her success in taking home the 3rd Place championship title in the Competition. This competition is not the first business case competition for Magdalena. She has often participated in similar competitions and often also takes home an award trophy.

To feb.uns.ac.id, Magdalena explained that the main reason she likes business case competition is because of her interest in the banking and fintech world. This race for her is challenging, fun, and full of opportunities for her.

Magdalena also explained that in the BYC competition, there are several screening stages that must be passed by each participant. Starting with administrative document screening, where participants submit their curriculum vitae and motivation letter, at this stage 30 finalists are selected from the total of 1,400+ participants coming from 11 universities in Indonesia. In the next stage, the 30 finalists were grouped into 10 groups, which were determined based on the proportion of the case theme selected by the participants. Then at D-7 of the race, each group was given a new case that they needed to review through the brainstorming process, analyzing case the groups can use various methods or tools such as SCQA, pastel tows, etc., or alternatively, they can do strategy discussions and presentations.

“Other than that I just need to prepare myself, make sure to always think positively, be optimistic, and don’t give up easily, just be confident,” she said.

Behind all the selection stages, of course, there are some challenges faced by the FEB UNS student. The challenge she must overcome in this competition is related to how participants shall ‘not only serve the best’ but also have to ‘make it different and interesting’. Moreover, each team is formed based on the screening process carried out by the committee, thus, all members face new and new environments for the first time. Thus, in this aspect, students also face different challenges in terms of teamwork and team agility.

Tips and tricks that are effective in this race, according to Magdalena are with “PDKT” (approach). “Participants must approach the company profile, values, and goals. They should also not forget to approach the team members, because no matter how good an idea is, if it is not followed with mutual cooperation and good teamwork, it will be less perfect,” she said.

Finally, Magdalena revealed one of her life motto and motivations so far. “Don’t be afraid to fail, just keep on trying until we exhaust our allotment to fail and finally succeed.”

Hopefully, her statement can provide encouragement for all of us to keep on trying and never be afraid to fail.