Interview and b-schools are the two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. So, if you see, from joining a b-school till getting the final placement, interviews are a must, and everything depends on whether you make or break the interview. When you are used to this flow and things happen differently you are bound to be startled.
I still remember when the Mumbai Branch Marketing Manager of LG came to our college, Universal Business School, to hire interns, at the end of his presentation asked the students who would like to intern at LG. He was our mentor during the internship, Mr. Ashutosh Agrawal. The interested students stayed back in the presentation room. The profile was that of sales. It was the AC season and we, as interns, were the extra manpower for the brand promoters in the retail stores and we along with them had to drive the sale of LG Residential Air Conditioners.
Now, only with the interested group of students Mr. Ashutosh Agrawal just said one thing, that our attitude in the interview room might be completely different from when we will be working on the floor and it could not be judged by asking just a few questions. I realized the significance of this during my internship. Now that I reflect back, this statement was truly an eye-opener, provided I understood the meaning of this statement at that time but over the course of the internship I have actually decoded that statement. I guess that’s how leaders motivate, with few layers of mystery which we need to unfurl to get to the real connotation.
So, there we were, a room full of 30 students, all wanting to intern at one of the largest consumer durables company, all hired without an interview!
During our orientation, the students were allocated into various retails chains like Tata Croma, Reliance Retail, Sumaria and such. I was deployed in Croma.
So, here I was interning for LG at Croma and more than that of LG, I had to be abreast with the policies of Croma. The internship was of a period of three months, 5th March 2019 - 31st May 2019. On my first day at Croma itself, I got a reality check; life in retail is a cut-throat competition and it is far severe than passing exams in schools and colleges. Here the competition is to earn that “incentive”, to run the family, to buy that good dress for the kids and above all to achieve those “numbers”- the monthly target.
Though we were hired for selling ACs, with the help of my brand promoter and Croma staff, I gained product knowledge of other home appliances as well like, Refrigerator, Washing Machine, Microwave and Water Purifier.
Being in the retail sector helped me broaden my horizon. Starting with just greeting customers and observing how each brand promoters pitch their products, over the period I closed customers, handled customer complaints and more importantly grew connections.
One of the takeaways from this internship would be that in retail you don’t just sell products, you sell an experience. You need to understand consumer behaviour, help them and build long term relationships so that they become loyal customers of that retail store.
Mentors
The best part about interning with LG was that I got to have a dual learning experience – LG and Croma. So, it was not one person, Mr. Ashutosh Agrawal, whom I can specifically call my mentor but also two other people, my Area Sales Manager from LG, Mr. Ashish Punjabi and the Assistant Department Manager at my Croma store, Mr. Karim Sayeed.
While from Mr. Ashutosh Agrawal I learnt that motivation is the driving force for employees, Mr. Ashish Punjabi with his kind of work taught me that there is no such thing as procrastination and your customers should always come first no matter what. Mr. Karim Sayeed effortlessly showed that one can be the politest person and still manage his or her employee and earn the respect of their employees. Working with them and under them has been a privilege and they added on to my life being good with LG.
In the end, I can only explain what we were told in that presentation room about not taking an interview. In the interview room, it would have been one of us facing and dealing with one interviewer. In the retail stores, every day, we had to deal with different customers, with different behaviour, having different needs and wants.
We had to adjust our approach accordingly.