Preparation Strategy

My strategy to crack the interview included 3 important pillars. First, to know the business model of the company. Second, to be technically sound and third, to prepare for basic HR questions that are asked in every interview irrespective of the specialization. I maintained a book to make notes about the companies visiting the college. Once the company visited my college for Pre-placement talks, I made sure that I write down the important points in my notes which I can glance through before the interview.

Understanding the basic shipping terminologies was not difficult as I had done a course on international trade and finance before joining the college and received an all India rank. To understand the business model of the company, I used to get help from youtube and the company's website and I also went through the company’s social media handles to get the latest information about the new products and services offered by the company. I had also focused on statistics, Tableau, R, SQL, and Excel to be technically sound. After this, I practiced answering for basic HR questions. These basic questions were framed and given to all the students in the college by one of the committees and I practiced answering the questions diligently. After this, I gave mock interviews which helped me to know how I performed. I worked on the feedback given to me by my senior who took my interview. Along with this I did one more important thing, as and when I was getting shortlisted for further rounds, there was a short break given and in this break, I went through the social media handles of the companies and luckily I was asked a question “what do you know about the company apart from what was told in the pre-placement talks” and I had my answers ready with the new products and services launched by the company.

Overall Internship experience

My internship experience was amazing. I got to interact with the senior management of the company daily and the best thing about Maersk GSC is that they invest time in their interns. My team included 4 other members and they always made sure that I got all the information and guidance needed to implement the task. One of my team members Preeti Dalal was always there to guide and take the project in the right direction. She also made sure that I get to interact with other employees and see if I can contribute to any of the tasks. My manager Vidya Padmanabhan made sure that I got enough exposure by the senior management. Utkarsh and Swati Parikh were my mentors and their guidance and inputs always helped me. One of my seniors Mr. Balasubramanian V.K. who is working at Maersk GSC guided me to know what tools and technology I have to prepare before joining as an intern and how I should approach and have an open mind to work on any project or tool which is given to me.

Key learnings and takeaways from the internship

I learned how Machine learning and data science can help solve complex problems faced by the supply chain business. Maersk GSC is using machine learning algorithms to solve complex problems. I feel the future of analytics will be in the supply chain industry and working with Maersk GSC gave me a chance to explore this field and to find out how analytics can solve such problems.

Learning from the first year of your MBA and how it helped you during the internship?

I think apart from the normal studies in the college, we all should keep asking for more from the college. I never hesitated to ask any question in the class and my teachers never hesitated to answer it. They made sure that our doubts are cleared and we have enough hands-on experience before our internship starts. The interactive classroom coaching cleared all my doubts. This kind of education makes us more diligent towards our objective. This is one quality that I always wanted to show to Maersk GSC.

What advice would you like to give your juniors?

Have a focused approach. Find out your weaknesses and work on it and never miss any class.

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Ranit Oberai

Summer Internship Experience At Maersk GSC