Shivdeep is a 2nd-year student at IIM Lucknow, majoring in marketing. He interned at Nestle during his summer internship. At IIM Lucknow, he is also a part of Prism, the Marketing Cell of IIM Lucknow. He worked at Mastercard for 3 years before joining IIM Lucknow. His journey from a chemical engineer to a marketing intern at Nestle is truly inspiring & worth listening to. We interviewed him to find out what is actually needed in a CV looking from the eyes of marketing companies!
Q1. What is needed in a CV for marketing roles?
1. Customer centricity
"Only through consumer focus, you can gain consumer insights"
What marketing companies need to know is that are you capable of extracting those consumer insights. How much value do you provide to your customer? Marketing firms are totally consumer-centric & look for those candidates who know how to think from the perspective of consumers.
For the freshers, in the positions of responsibility & extra-curricular activities, draft the points in a manner, showing how you did those activities. Students usually commit a mistake that they highlight outcomes, like xxx footfall, instead, students should focus on highlighting if they led an event, showing the company how they have experienced some situations which made a change in their lives.
For the people with work experience, draft the points showing how you empowered your client. Also, try to show how you thought for your client and made a huge impact for them.
2. Groundwork
The next important thing is, how much you have gotten your hands dirty. This is where the positions of responsibility & extra-curricular activities play a huge role and show how much groundwork you can do and take ownership of your work.
3. Values
The most important thing which companies look at is how well-aligned are you with their values. Marketing companies pay great attention to this aspect, that is why you will notice, mostly all companies take the psychometric test as their eliminator and also only after you pass that test, you are eligible for further processes.
When I started my internship with Nestle, I realised how much this is important for them. We even had a consultant assigned to us who evaluated our psychometric test and told us our strengths & weaknesses and gave soft targets for ourselves, which managers tracked later.
4. Passion
If you have passion, you can do anything in life. Your CV should be a story of how passionate you are, regarding marketing and more importantly for learning because, at the end of the day, this is what matters. A passionate person can do much more than just a knowledgeable person.
5. Up with trends
Marketing is all about keeping up with the recent trends. So, if a person is paying attention to the current trends, is more involved in digital marketing, analytics, know how to use data to extract some crucial information, and has knowledge about social media in-depth, you are definitely going to have an advantage over others.
I would suggest someone looking for a career in marketing to know about their environment & accordingly, learn.
Q2. It is difficult for people with work ex to enter into marketing roles, do you feel it is true?
We were 2 people who got selected at Nestle, and both were with work experience. So, I feel it is more of a myth.
Q3. What do you feel is most important for someone eying for marketing roles?
A knack for getting consumer insights & passion. If you possess both, you will sail every boat easily!
Keep following this space as we will cover Shivdeep’s summer internship preparation journey and his internship experience in the following articles!