Interview with Business Analyst of Leading Online Shopping Company

Recently, we interviewed Manu Gupta, working with Amazon in various roles in Luxembourg. Following are the excerpts from the interview:

PracLabs: Tell us about the company in which you work and various job roles in your company?

Manu: Amazon is the Hub for online shopping which provides a place for customer to shop vast category of products online. There are many job roles in Amazon like Technical program manager, Business Analyst, Supply Chain Planning, Transportation are the major ones.

 

PracLabs:  What day to day activities do you perform at your work?

Manu: Technical support, supply chain analysis, project management & coordination, requirement gathering.

 

PracLabs:  What kind of challenges do you face at your work?

Manu: Challenges - communicating with multiple teams sitting all over the world, sometimes it is difficult to have everyone available in a single meeting due to different timezones and working hours.

PracLabs:  Which skills should a student learn to work in your company and specifically in your job role?

Manu: To be a Business Analyst, one must possess SQL, Excel reporting, business analysis and for Technical it depends, we have Ruby on Rails, Java majorly in technical jobs.

 

PracLabs: Which subjects do you feel you should have learned better when you were studying atcollege/university?

Manu:  At college Level, we should really have a subject that teaches business analysis. This is very interesting and extremely useful for career growth. Also, there should be some effective writing and communication skill subject as well.

PracLabs: Which skills do you feel student should always learn to become successful in corporate world?

Manu: Business Analysis and Analytical skills play an important part to become successful in corporate world.

 

PracLabs: Which book you are reading right now? And which books you will suggest students must read?

Manu: BABOK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) - It's a great book to learn business analysis. It is a must read.

Interview with Chief Technology officer of Product Development Company

Recently we have interviewed Anirudh Gupta, he is working as a CTO for a product based company in Bangalore. Following are the extracts of the interview:-

PracLabs: Tell us about the company in which you work and various job roles in your company?

Anirudh :A product based company based on Microsoft stack. Working as CTO and lead architect of the product

PracLabs:  What day to day activities do you perform at your work?

Anirudh: While in sprint I do development

Otherwise presales, roadmap, representation for the organization in events etc. related tasks

PracLabs:  What kind of challenges do you face at your work?

Anirudh: Implementation, Scarcity of skilled resources. People who want to learn are not really needed but actually resources who can have short learning period and then actually write quality code to deliver the functionality

PracLabs:  Which skills should a student learn to work in your company and specifically in your job role?

Anirudh: SharePoint, jQuery, HTML5, javascript

PracLabs: Which subjects do you feel you should have learned better when you were studying atcollege/university?

Anirudh: Needed practical knowledge. More onus of implementation related innovation rather than just theory.

PracLabs: Which skills do you feel student should always learn to become successful in corporate world?

Anirudh: This is too subjective!! More practical & logical skill set rather than theory

PracLabs: Which book you are reading right now? And which books you will suggest students must read?

Anirudh: Not into books so not the right person to advocate about reading books. I can suggest students to try and break the code to atom level to understand how things work rather than just following someone else code !!!

Interview with Operations Manager working with HCL Technologies

Vinci Dhir is working as an Operations Manager working with HCL Technology- Infrastructure division . She has a vast experiencing of working with MNC's like Oracle, IBM and now HCL. PracLabs has interviewed her to help students understand what all goes on in Infrastructure management company  like HCL comnet. For those student who don't know what "Infrastructure management" is , in simple words it means managing the servers and database(taking backups or installing and setting up new servers). Though there are much more in then just managing servers and Database)

PracLabs: Tell us about the company in which you work and various job roles you perform in your company?

Vinci : Operations Manager, HCL Technologies –Infrastructure Division ie HCL Comnet

People Manager, Technical Lead

PracLabs: What day to day activities do you perform at your work?

Vinci : 

a. People Management

b. Escalation Management :- where I have to assign the cirtical issues to concern teammebers and get them solved within given timelines.

c. Set Delivery Standards

d. Plan, Create, Review, Present Performance Reports of servers and database.

e. Lead/Participate Operations Service Improvement Projects

PracLabs: What kind of challenges do you face at your work?

Vinci : Operations and Projects are two important aspects of Infrastructure Management wherein operations focus on providing day to day services and projects focus on providing specialized service by highly skilled and experienced professionals.

Aligning right human resources with the appropriate requirement is a common challenge. 

AS technology advances at a very fast pace, finding people with the right skills is a major challenge faced. 

Hiring new people and bringing them on-board in shortest possible duration is another challenge.

PracLabs: Which skills should a student learn to work in your company and specifically in your job role?

Vinci : 

a. Infrastructure Engg.

b. Operating System Admin

c. Application Server and Middleware Technologies Adminsitration

d. Database Administration

e. Industry Specific tool Administration

f. Email Etiquettes

g. Professionalism and Understanding Diversified Culture 

h.

PracLabs: Which subjects do you feel you should have learned better when you were studying at college/university?

Vinci : 

a. Operating Systems

b. Programming Language and Data-Structure

c. Application Servers, Middleware, Web Sites Management are not taught in college

PracLabs: Which skills do you feel student should always learn to become successful in corporate world?

Vinci : 

a. Good Learner

b. Effective Communication Skills

PracLabs: Which book you are reading right now? And which books you will suggest students must read?

Vinci : Am neither a follower of a specific author nor I have an Idol. Would suggest to 

read Biographies of Leaders , Successful and successfully failed people. Behind every success story and behind every failure there are lessons learned. 

Interview with Senior Strategy Consultant working at IBM India pvt Ltd

In an effort to help students understand how things work in corporate world, we interview top performing employees in different organizations. In this part of series, we have interviewed Vishesh Sethi, who is working with IBM India Ltd. He has previously worked with Microsoft, and has done his MBA from ISB Hyderabad.

PracLabs: Tell us about the company in which you work and various job roles in your company?

Vishesh: I am working for IBM India Pvt Ltd. I am working as a Strategy Consultant. Apart from 

consulting there are various roles in Sales, HR, Finance, Service Delivery, Marketing , IT 

departments etc.

PracLabs: What day to day activities do you perform at your work?

Vishesh: We have various offerings such as Technology Strategy, Business Process Redesign, Market Entry Strategies etc for which we provide consulting services to client

PracLabs: What kind of challenges do you face at your work?

Vishesh: We deal with new people, new geographies, and new clients very frequently as our typical consulting assignments are for 4-8 weeks. Working in such as dynamic environment keeps us on our toes all the time. Consistent learning, short project timelines, and adjusting in new business and cultural environment are some of the challenges of my job.

PracLabs: Which skills should a student learn to work in your company and specifically in your job role?

Vishesh: Problem Solving, Communication and Presentation are the key skills required for my job.

PracLabs: Tell us how your job at IBM now is different from the one at Microsoft?

Vishesh: My job at IBM is consulting whereas as at Microsoft it was Product development. Both the jobs have their own challenges. At Microsoft I use to develop tools and softwares to test the quality of Windows Code whereas in IBM we design Processes for organizations so that they can operate efficiently, make technology and business strategies for them so that they can achieve their long term goals and missions

PracLabs: Which subjects do you feel you should have learned better when you were studying at college/university?

Vishesh: Schools generally teach us tools and frameworks to understand and solve business problems. With time constraints at hand they have prioritized to teach fundamentals of disciplines such as business or technology to students. I believe understanding of business sectors and application of technology to those sectors is something I should have learnt better during my graduation and post graduation.

PracLabs: Which skills do you feel student should always learn to become successful in corporate world?

Vishesh: Business environments are very dynamic in the corporate world. Strategies , Technologies , macro environments etc keep changing very frequently so students should always keep learning new advancements in their fields and keep working on their problem solving and communication skills.

PracLabs: Which book you are reading right now? And which books you will suggest students must read?

Vishesh: I am reading “ The Quants” by Scott Patterson. The book talks about how a new breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and nearly destroyed It. I suggest students to read books related to their fields and some generic books that can provide them a 50,000 foot view about the world and how various disciplines such as economics, mathematics, arts etc are shaping it in a way it is now. Few books that come to my mind are: The world is flat, The Lexus and Olive tree, Men of Mathematics etc.

Is employability for our Indian students a real issue?

There are many articles about our Indian students employable. First lets talk about what do employbility means. From companies perspective it means that people they are hiring should be productive from day one without any or minimum training.
Companies spend a good amount of money on training fresh graduates out of college.And still I have seen that even after an year of on job training, students struggle to perform the basic work required for there job.In this ear of slow moving economies, companies specially MNC's are struggling to get the business. And whatever business they are getting, is also at lower rates(I am specifically talking about IT industry here). And if you are not productive and not able to deliver the things, companies now days are not hesitating to show you the doors.

So whom to blame for the employability of the students?Is it our education system and our colleges, where emphasis is on the theory, Or to blame our Prof/lecturers or to blame our industry of expecting too much from students or to blame our students?
I think every one.

So what's the solution: I still remember my manager always told me, Vikram dont come with problems, tell me solution. So what's the solution to the problem of emploaybility. Lets de-scope the problem, and talk about the solutions for students. I still remember when someone working in the Industry came at our university to deliver a session on how industry works and which skills are important.

That session helped me alot and I started putting my energies in the right direction.I learned the right skills of learning basics of data structures, learning to do programming well, improving my communication skills. As a student, we have ample time to invest in upgrading our skillset. Frankly speaking, I still feel I should have better utilized the ample time I had during my college days.

Interview with Senior Software developer working at McAfee

In an effort to help students understand how things work in corporate world, we interview top performing employees in different organizations. In this part of series, we have interviewed Japneet singh, who is working with Macfee, and with an overall work experience of 8 years.

        PracLabs: Tell us about the company in which you work and various job roles in your company?

     Japneet: 
      I am working in McAfee Software Pvt. Ltd. which is wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. McAfee is a world’s largest security software providing company.

      Various job roles in McAfee (Product development only)

•      Software development engineer
•      Quality Assurance Engineer
•      Product Manager
•      Program Manager
•      Principal Engineer
•      Software Architect
•      Solutions Architect
•      Evangelist
•      Tech Lead
•      Project Lead

Dev Manager

•      QA Manager
•      Engineering Manager
•      Technology Director

       PracLabs: What day to day activities do you perform at your work?

      Japneet:

•       Coding
•       Design
•       Bug fixing
•       Code review
•       Collaboration with other teams
•       Dev testing
•       Meetings

PracLabs:  What kind of challenges do you face at your work?

Japneet:  Since, the nature of challenges have been changing as my career has progressed, but I can outline challenges which I *currently* face in my work life :

a. Overcoming career monotony via Creativity and innovation

b. Dealing with social challenges like Peer competition, and communicating with Team members across geo locations

c. Keeping long term vision alive while delivering day-to-day routine work

d. Work-to-learning balance to survive and avoid getting obsolete

e. Preserving Focus and attention

f. Establishing an independent identity

      PracLabs: Which skills should a student learn to work in your company and specifically in your job role?

Japneet: A student should following skills:

1. Very good coding and designing with deep understanding of C++

2. Solid understanding of Windows OS internals

3. Sound logical analysis and reasoning 

4. Good written and verbal communication 

5. Ability to handle details as well as big picture at same time

PracLabs:      Which subjects do you feel you should have learned better when you were studying at college/university?

      Japneet: I feel now that I should have achieved some sort of expertise in at least one subject during studying like in C++, Algorithms or Operating systems etc. That would have saved lot of my career time. Also, if I could have participated in some open source project during study time, it would have leveraged my career while providing a solid practical foundation at same time.

      PracLabs:      Which skills do you feel student should always learn to become successful in corporate world?

       Japneet:

       General skills

       a. Communication skills both written and verbal

 b. Creativity

c. Social skills

Technical skills – No single skill, but should have passion for at least one subject leading to in-depth understanding of that subject as early as possible.

PracLabs: Which book you are reading right now? And which books you will suggest students must read?

       Japneet: Currently reading “Mastery” by Robert Greene

 Recommended reading for students:

1. Clear your concepts deeply during study by studying best books for your subjects 

2. Be hands-on in your subjects