Working with One of the Big 4 – Sanket Choughule’s Placement Story at EY

Sanket Choughule (Big Data & Visual Analytics Program – Class of 2018) recently aced his interviews with Ernst & Young, one of the largest professional services firms in the world. What is his success story? We caught up with Sanket to find out.

Hi Sanket! Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your course at SP Jain?

I completed my graduation with a specialisation in Mathematics in March 2018. After this, I started looking for some exciting professional courses which would help add an edge to my skillset. SP Jain’s Big Data & Visual Analytics (BDVA) program stood out for me – it was a short and crisp program which also included industry projects and gave us hands-on experience in coding, algorithms, mathematics, and statistics. The course allowed us to specialise in Marketing or Finance, helping us tailor our degree per our interests. It was obvious that this was the course I wanted to pursue.

You recently cracked the interview at Ernst & Young and got placed even before completing your course! How did you achieve this?

Ernst & Young (EY) was one of the first companies to visit us, and this was going to be the first real interview of my life! The pressure was immense and yet, I believe I maintained my cool.

I brushed up my technical skills including coding and several Machine Learning algorithms. The first round was a Group Discussion (GD). The topic we got was Cryptocurrency and since I had done my project on the same topic, it was easy to ace this round. I was the first one who got shortlisted for the Personal Interview (PI) round as well! Reading up about the company was my top priority then. Being a Big 4 company, EY had spread across different domains. But being a Finance major, I knew where to focus. My background in Mathematics, coupled with my newly acquired expertise in Data Analytics, is what helped me crack the interview.

Did you receive adequate support from the SP Jain community during this process?

 The SP Jain faculty, our Program Director – Dr. Abhijit Dasgupta, Malabika ma’am (Malabika Ahuja, General Manager – Corporate Relations) and Ravi sir (Ravi Kapadia, Manager – Corporate Relations) were constantly training us with corporate grooming and mock interviews. The mock interviews helped me understand the type of questions I could expect and taught me how to tackle difficult situations.

We were trained under the tutelage of some of the best faculty in the industry including Navnit sir (Navnit Belur, Faculty – Machine Learning), Aditya (Aditya Narvekar – Faculty, Data Science), and Maddulety sir (Maddulety Koilakuntla – Faculty, Statistics). We even got a wonderful chance to meet Dr. Joseph Konstan – the father of recommendation systems! It was a once in lifetime opportunity, organised by Dr. Abhijit Dasgupta.

What tips would you want to give the current SP Jain students who will be preparing for their placements soon?

You must be very thorough with your coding skills, as it’s the most important skill that will drive your career. Your interview can go either way – be short, crisp and confident in what you say. Research well about the company you’re interviewing with. This will help you have a conversation with the interviewer and also show how dedicated you are.

I know I mentioned this before, but I’ll stress this again – get your coding straight! It’ll do wonders for you in the future. All the best.