How A CA Bagged A Marketing PPO From Amazon - Nehal Garg, IIM L

Nehal Garg is an IIM Lucknow alumnus, class of 2021. She is also a qualified Chartered Accountant with 2.5 years of work experience. At IIML, she is an Institute Rank Holder and a core member of the college Admissions Committee, Team Ignicion. In this interview, Nehal talks about her summer placement preparation, how she switched domains from finance to marketing, her experience at Amazon as a Marketing Manager intern, and what did she do differently to bag a PPO from Amazon. Let’s dig right into it! 1. Hi Nehal, being a CA what led your interest in Marketing? I was always creative and curious at heart, and I am lucky to have realized it early on. While writing my CA final exams, I had decided that I will give myself at least one opprtunity to try my hand at marketing. So I left a ‘prestigious, well-paying’ accounting job, and interned at a few startups to test waters. And there was no looking back. For two years I worked in marketing strategy roles, and was confident I want to ‘see myself here even after 5 years!’

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2. Tell us in brief about how you prepared for summer placement interviews? Unlike most others, I was preparing exclusively for marketing roles. So my preparation included everything in between: General:

• HR answers and CV preparation
• Group discussions

Domain-specific:

• Key concepts and frameworks
• Marketing cases/GTM strategies
• Market sizing, guesstimates
• Analysis of advertisements
• Scope of marketing roles that come to campus
• Insights on retail industry

Company-specific:

• Product lines and brand portfolios
• Latest initiatives, news, sustainability goals
• Favourite brands, products and ads

Also Read: How I Bagged A PPO From Marico With A Sales Internship

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3. Any special placement preparation you did for the Amazon interview? Yes, absolutely. In fact, Amazon’s interview process is very different from all other marketing interviews. I first read through and understood Amazon’s leadership principles (LPs), and tried to gather instances from work or otherwise where I had put them to practice. There will definitely be specific questions around these. Other than the LPs, I learnt about Amazon’s businesses, new ventures, and went through the Amazon marketplace app to familiarize myself with the user experience. I also prepared for questions such as ‘how would you go about introducing an XX new category on the Amazon app.’

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4. How does the summer internship process look like for Amazon? Amazon has a rather straightforward summer internship process. They come for over 5-7 roles, and candidates have to apply for their top three preferences. Shortlists are announced close to the placement week, on the basis of candidate’s CV and preferred roles. On the day of the interview, you will have a 40-50 minute interaction with a panel with questions on LPs and domain-specific scenarios.

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5. What were the reasons according to you that helped in cracking the interview? It was a mix of my preparation and how I could think on my feet at that time. The interview lasted for an hour, and there was a lot of cross questioning. So I consciously made sure that I did not lose structure and took a few seconds to think through my answers every time before I spoke. Also I feel it is important to make it seem more like a conversation than an interrogation, so I kept my energies high, asked questions and requested feedback.

Recommended For You: Samaksha's Summer Internship Experience At TAS

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6. Tell us about the day to day work as an intern at Amazon? Honestly, no two days at Amazon were the same. I interned with the Amazon Foods team, and the energy here was always high. Most days would include interacting with sellers/merchants, customers, people from other departments at Amazon (all of whom were extremely helpful), and leaders from my own team. Some days were only about research, others about not making great strides. But I took one day at a time. There were daily catchups with my manager to check if I needed help and if I was moving in the right direction, but I was given complete complete freedom to nurture my project the way I wanted to.

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7. What according to you, you did right to bag the PPO from Amazon? Three simple yet effective ideas that worked wonders: (a) Do not stay stuck at a stage for more than 2-3 days, because 8 weeks is a really short duration. Raise flags or reach out; (b) Don’t expect all your ideas, research, suggestions to be accepted, and don’t get demotivated when they’re not. Trust the process; and (c) seek feedback from your manager, but more importantly, close-loop on the feedback.

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8. What are the most cherished moments from your internship? Has to be the day of my final review with the leaders. I thought I had totally messed up my presentation and had lost my chance at the PPO. But later my manager called to say that my presentation went well, and that he was happy with how I’d performed. His words of encouragement meant the world!

You May Also Be Interested In: How To Get Into Amazon, Uber, Microsoft, BCG And More | Tips From PPO Holders

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9. One piece of advice to the aspirants who want to change their previous domain or want to start a career in Marketing? If you want to switch domains, I’d say just go for it. It won’t be the easiest, but trust me you’ll have numerous opportunities on campus such as clubs & committees, case competitions, online courses/electives, independent studies with professors, etc. where you can build a story for yourself and gather points to show intent on your CV. Prepare well for your interviews, and you’ll hit home!

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10. You are an Institute Rank Holder; one advice you would like to give on managing academic rigour as well as preparation for Summers? I think what worked best for me was being attentive in classes. I barely missed any classes during the first two trimesters, and that with little effort afterwards was enough to get me through the exams. Hence, I could pull out a lot of time to prepare for summers.

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