FROM ZERO TO HERO

Houtman Zainal Arifin is an office boy then later become a vice president of Citybank Indonesia, number 1 position in Indonesia as the president director is in USA. Back to 60’s, Houtman started his career in Jakarta as Hawker (Pedagang Asongan). He found that Jakarta was very tough for such person like him who only holding his high school certificate. However, this condition did not make Houtman gave up to reach his dream and goal. Houtman believes that someday he will become a successful person, able to enjoy a nice car and wearing good cloth. With the faith, he started to deliver his resume to every companies in each tall building in Jakarta. Every time he saw a big, tall and nice building, right away he sent his resume to companies inside it . Then one day, Houtman got his first interview in a very famous company in the world, The First National City Bank (citibank), a bank from USA. Houtman worked as an office boy, the lowest position in the company hierarchy with main job to clean office, toilet, and any other rooms in the building. However, For Houtman, this is a good opportunity for his future. He always work hard and did his job perfectly. He always has a willingness to help other staffs and in return he studied the banking term with them. As a result, Houtman as an office boy who knows couple of banking term such as letter of credit, Bank Guarantee, Transfer etc. One day Houtman impress with a machine call Photo copy. In that time, this kind of machine was hardly find in the public place and only big company owned it. This machine needs a trained person to operate. In every afternoon, after finishing his job, he visited the photo copy machine and ask the operator to teach him how to use it. In the short, Houtman finally been able to operate the machine and appointed as photocopy machine operator. Houtman really worked hard and keep learning many other things in the bank. He was always helping other staff to do their jobs. Someday as a result of his kindness and hard work, he got to position as administration staff of the bank. 19 years after that, Houtman reached the highest hierarchy of the company structure, which is Vice President of CitiBank Indonesia. The insight of this true story is do not lose hope, and keep working hard to reach your goal and dreams.