Internship Experience at Nomura Research Institute

 

- Sparsh Goyal

Hello guys,

Hope you all are healthy and staying safe.

Introduction

I am Sparsh Goyal, a fourth-year undergraduate. I am pursuing a major degree in Chemical Engineering and a minor degree in Management. This article is an attempt from my side to help you understand my journey through the internship season at IIT Bombay and finally being lucky enough to land at Nomura Research Institute, a Japanese management consulting firm.

Starting with some personal background, I worked as an Internship Coordinator in my third year and I was a DAMP mentor as well. I had a decent CPI (8.5+), which imo only matters to get you shortlisted for some companies. People at consulting firms look for distinctive features in your resume, 3-4 should suffice. You should ensure that the person screening your resume looks at how efficient and productive you have been in your two years of institute life, how have you honed your leadership skills and personality.

Pre – Internship Phase & Preparation

In my second year, I had an opportunity to work as an associate intern at Ernst and Young under the Performance Improvement Advisory vertical. I got this opportunity very late, nearly at the end of my second year. And I had no clue about consulting at that time. I applied just to get some experience in the consulting sector which proved to be handy. It won’t matter if you don’t have a second-year intern, what will help you get shortlisted is how you spent those two months doing something which made a powerful impact on you and others in general.

Now comes the preparation part. The interviews are broadly categorized into technical and HR. For technical part, there are various sorts of things which can be asked depending on the company. Many companies apart from specific domain knowledge like finance test analytical skills as well through math puzzles and probability questions. Consulting companies test case solving skills. You can start by watching Victor Cheng videos on YouTube and then move on to solving cases from book named Case Interview Cracked. You can form groups of 2-3 and try to solve case problems. The basic motive of this exercise to be done in group is to look at the same case from different perspective so that you can finally arrive at a more holistic approach to the case. Practice Guesstimates thoroughly and you can utilize your free time solving one as it doesn’t require a partner unlike cases (You can create your own questions for guesstimates and work on your approach). The HR part can be prepared by making a doc with answers to some common questions like Tell me about yourself (sector wise), strengths, weakness, why a particular sector, why a particular company, Examples of where you showed a particular skill etc. ( More questions from the book ‘64 HR Questions’). Get the doc reviewed by seniors and take a look at this doc before going for the interview.

Interview Experience

I was shortlisted for almost all Consulting companies on Day 1 except L.E.K but didn’t get an offer from any company. I messed up my interviews especially the HR part and was demotivated. To all the students reading this, especially the ones who are going to sit for internships, remember what is needed the most at such depressing points in life is the ability to move on quickly (A friend told me this and believe me when you apply this to your life, you will reap awesome results). Don’t waste time crying over something you don’t have any control over and try to come out of your deep sorrow as a stronger and motivated person. Search for where you went wrong and how you can improve.

Cut to my interview at Nomura Research Institute. Keeping all my fears aside, I went into the interview room without any fear of rejection. I had only one round which was a combination of Technical and HR. Though my interview was an odd one out, it was a total delight. The interviewer didn’t ask me any case questions. But he pointed out at one of my projects on Data Analytics I did under a professor at SJMSoM and asked me to explain to him the entire project. He gave me a sheet of paper for making a general outline and left the room for 5 mins. I used those 5 mins and tried to note down all the points I could think of to present to him. After he returned, he asked me to begin and I used the blackboard to present. I made sure to make a story of my project covering every aspect of it. For my juniors, this is the thing I would like to point out. People in consulting love stories and it would be great for you if you can present them one. Be it your introduction or a very basic question like Why consulting, make sure you have an interesting story which answers this question. One more point which is useful to keep in mind is to have an exhaustive knowledge of everything you have on your resume. Never think your interviewer isn’t going to ask questions about something on your resume of which you have very limited knowledge.

Work Experience

During my one-month virtual stint at Nomura, I worked on a single live project. The project progressed in a very agile manner and most of my weekends were occupied with work due to the short duration of the internship, although we also had fun Fridays to release the week’s stress. My project leader, an IITB alumnus, was really helpful and devoted ample time to ensure that I was learning, growing and delivering results. Everyone at NRI was very approachable and you could discuss with them any problem you might be facing without any hesitation. The broad goal of the project was to analyze the root cause of the sales decline and improper brand perception of a client using data gathered from social media and the key tasks involved secondary research, insight gathering, hypothesis creation and validation and finally making a presentation. I developed the skill to approach a problem in a systematic and structured way and refined my interpersonal skills. The short-term goals for each member were important to keep everyone engaged and to have proper ownership of their respective deliverables. My team had to work hard constantly to deliver the final proposal by the end of the duration without any slack and to be honest I enjoyed being occupied with something all the time as I hate to sit idle.

Virtual internship certainly hampers interaction with people and might lead to a decrease in efficiency. Traditional internship at office surely would have been more enriching but I am grateful for whatever I had in these challenging times and made sure to make the most out of this opportunity. I am grateful to NRI to give us a wonderful experience despite the challenges.

I have tried my best to cover all the major points which are relevant to students who will be sitting for the internships. In case you feel like talking over this more or anything else, ping me, I’d be happy to help.

All the Best!!