So, before beginning my story I would like to tell you that I am a fresher and got admitted to SIMSREE the same year in which I completed my Engineering. So, I was a bit afraid about how will I be able to compete with these experienced colleagues of mine. Finally, the placements began in the month of September and my resume was shortlisted by the Barclays. I cleared their 5 rounds of interviews and in the final round, only 1 among 4 of us was placed.
But that day I was completely boosted up even after my rejection and I started to study harder. I used to apply only in the companies whose profiles would attract me. Further, also I cracked rounds of few companies but used to get rejected in the final HR round. Finally, there was a company on campus named Equity Levers. Basically, we can call it a startup, as their product was not yet launched and they offered an Equity Research Analyst profile. Their day to day responsibilities of intern also attracted me and I found a huge scope of learning there. They assigned a project to everyone and selection was based on that project. I got selected as an intern in that company along with 7 other colleagues of mine. I was the only fresher among the selected students.
So, on the 1st day, we were asked to read an annual report of a company and create a background of that company. We all were pumped up and started working on it. While reading it, I got stuck on a graph as I was not able to understand it. I asked my colleagues, but even they were not able to crack it. So, I asked our mentor, he just took a glimpse of that graph and gave me a hint. After analyzing that hint I got to know that my doubt was silly. On my 1st day, I heard scoldings of my mentor for almost 20 minutes in front of all my colleagues which was very insulting. But during the course of 2 months, everyone got scolding at least once from our mentor, but as it was my 1st day, it hurt me a lot.
After that incident, my image was not good in my mentor's view, so I was assigned simple things like stock trend analysis, report on how to read financial statements, etc. with short deadlines for almost a month. Within that course of 1 month, I learned the most important thing from one of my colleague, i.e to say ‘NO’. Whenever our mentor used to assign her some marketing job, she would simply refuse to do it in an extremely polite way and said that she was being selected as a finance intern, so she would do only finance-related work. So, after my 1
st month, I gathered courage and refused my next simple task and asked sir to give some challenging task which would test my analyzing skills. After my 1
st day scene, I never gave sir chance to complain about my work, so even sir agreed and gave me a task related to Monetary Policy. He asked me to analyze data of Nifty index, 10-year bond yield, REPO rate, Inflation and P/E of Nifty for past 20 years. I was supposed to make a case study on how a change in monetary policy can affect the economy as a whole.
This time I was very excited and decided to nail this task. First of all, I collected data and arranged them in Excel for all the economic terms for past 20 years as it was not available easily. Then I selected 1 company from each sector and plotted a graph of its stock price movement for the past 20 years. I also looked at sectoral performance and tried to derive a relation between the monetary policy terms and sector wise stock performance. I read various articles, saw videos, asked my colleagues, took inputs from our mentor and was finally able to make a case study. I was showered with lots of praises from our mentor who scolded me on my 1
st day and he said that you have evolved completely in past 2 months. That comment meant a lot to me and I was also praised by other office staff. So, after that, I received challenging tasks and my performance went on improving.
So, after those 2 months, I got to know why the internship is compulsory after 2 months and I was blessed with such a company and an excellent mentor who would just give a hint and showed the path and asked us to walk on that path. He improved our approach towards financial data, taught us to think and analyze things. There was no spoon feeding at all. I also got to learn a lot from my colleagues as they used to tell me various cases of their work experience in previous companies and taught me how to tackle those problems.
So, I would recommend to all the people reading this article that never be afraid of your mentor even if he scolds you. Take it as an opportunity and work hard to meet the expectations of your boss. Never agree to the kind of work you are not interested into because you will not be able to give your 100% inputs to that work. Keep on considering suggestions of your mentor at regular intervals.