Hard Vs Smart Work…
“In the formative years of ones career where one has to manage only his or her performance to succeed, hard work plays a pivotal role. But as one moves up the organizational hierarchy, ones performance is dependent on how one manages the performance of a larger cross-section of people including subordinates and peers. This is where smart work assumes significance. To my mind both are important based on the situation which one is in and may not be generalized.”

Work-Home Balance…
Key to a good work life balance is time management. One needs to clearly segregate work into 2 buckets –“Urgent” and “Important”. At our levels one will not be asked to do something which is not important. Therefore everything naturally becomes important. So you need to finish off what is urgent from the bosses point of view first and then go on to do the balance. If you try and do everything together you end up doing nothing properly.

Secondly it is very important that you love your job, whether it is official or the household chores. When you love doing something, it ceases to remain a burden and you manage it pretty fine.

Leisure to me means….
Traveling, listening to music, watching movies…

Hobbies…
Singing, Cooking, Shopping, Listening to Music, learning new languages…

Preet feels that good educational credentials mean a lot, coz if that is good… all other personal / professional attributes, skills and talents fall into place. However there are some personal qualities that are essential for being successful in the banking sector. Here is what she has to say “In a financial industry one attribute that cannot be compromised with is Integrity. So for a person to be a successful banker, he has to be very high on integrity. Other qualities may not be very specific to the banking industry itself but to make it big one needs to have the ability to take decisions based on ones gut feeling. You will never have complete information, or if you wait for complete information it will invariably come at a price which may be too high to pay. So your ability to combine available facts and use your gut to take decisions makes you too hot for competition to handle.”

She further says that “Banking is no rocket science. You basically should be able to analyze and interpret data. Today the banking industry is revolutionized to the extent that people from various walks of life like FMCG, Pharma, Insurance et al, are moving into this industry and doing quiet well for themselves. Therefore, I don’t see the need for any special internship to be done.”