sowmiya fought the prejudices to get admission in hotel training programme and eventually landed a job sooner than her peers in conventional coursesdespite substantial work experience in india and internship with three different organizations sowmiya sakthivel native from ambattur village in tamil nadu found herself to be novice in the culinary world in bahrain where she had opted to do her postgraduate certificate in hotel training program bahrain institute of hospitality retail bihrmy internships helped me build my cv and also put weightage to my admission application for bihr but that is all they did during a student exchange program as part of my graduation i got the opportunity to work in kuwait with students from all across the world by that time i had worked in many hotels as an intern but my knowledge was way lesser than my foreign counterparts says sowmiyaduring the internship in kuwait in the kitchen department we were given 20 theory classes along with practicals it was during those sessions that i developed my interest in patisserie she says we were given work and were mapped against our workrelated skills and behavioral conduct on a given assignment while in india we were treated as support staff she addsit was during this program that i decided that i would go abroad for my higher education she addsbut convincing her parents was a task in itself i always had a passion for cooking but being a girl it was seen as a natural instinct for me my parents wanted me to pursue an engineering or medicine degree like most of my peers as they thought that cooking and culinary arts can be pursued as a hobby but has no future in job market she saysto make myself updated with the job market was why i started doing internships along with my graduation but for the masters degree i had to look for a course which was shortterm focused and professional i settled down for a pg diploma now i wanted a course that was financially viable most of scholarships provided by indian government are for degree courses thus i could not apply for any after months of search i narrowed down to uae and then applied for bihr she saysduring my college there were students from all across the world i was the only indian woman in my batch this gave me opportunity to taste flavors from across the world we organized food fests and were given handson experience in all type of kitchens this gave me an edge while applying for job says sowmiya she is now employed as a chef with an international hotel i got a job during campus placement while my peers who did engineering are still looking for jobs my parents are finally happy she saysfor me more than the work skills the soft skills and the attitude to learn has worked the best i was informed later by the recruiters that they were looking for someone with right approach