Tag: business

Categories
Management

University Internship Search Guide (Tips from 3 MNC Experiences)

Slide Covers university internships

Hello everyone! It’s me again. I understood from a few of my NTU NBS juniors that first year students are now required to do a compulsory internship as part of their curriculum. I am sure many of the other universities will start to have this requirement in place, and even if there is none, I definitely encourage you to think of how you can make full use of your time.

I did not have a year 1 Summer Internship unlike many of my peers so if you are reading this and did not manage to secure an internship in your first year, you are not alone! Here are some steps which you can take to find your internship.

1. Have a Good Resume or Portfolio with Unique Value Proposition

The first thing you need is your job hunt apparatus — your resume. I heard of many formats in the resume which may or may not work, but personally when I was looking for internships and my graduate job, I used the one page resume format. Some key parts to include is Education, Skills (Especially when you have no work experience), Work Experience, Projects, Co-curricular Leadership and Achievements.

However, the key focus is not on the format, but how your resume tells a story. Personally, I took a Business Analytics and Entrepreneurship Undergraduate Degree with an intention to apply these skills in management. Having the technical skills on my resume without work experience helped me in getting my resume spotted by the hiring manager for a Regional Talent Management role at my first internship company, Schaeffler, a German MNC operating in the Automotive industry. As for my other internships, I believe that most of my interviewers also looked at my co-curricular leadership as well as achievements in making the holistic decision to shortlist my resume for interview. One way to do it is to focus on what is transferrable to the job. With a business analytics degree, I am well-positioned to join almost any business function of any sector since it is a very broad and general degree with the technical power to do wonders in many functions and sectors.

If you need some reference, I recently ported most of my resume to my own portfolio site. If you need help refining your resume, do drop me a note in the comments section below or reach me through my LinkedIn! Do let me know you reached me through this blogpost!

2. Prepare a Good Cover Letter Format

In all honesty, when I found my first internship, I did not use a cover letter. However, I found out that after hunting for my subsequent internships and full time job, I had a higher rate of success whenever I included a cover letter in my applications. So please prepare a cover letter.

Each cover letter should be in a specific format which the recruiter wants to see. It is not merely sharing about your value proposition, but about how your value proposition aligns with the job description provided by the employer.

The general rule of thumb I have when writing a cover letter is to write it accordingly to the job description. This will do your recruiters a great favour when they comb through the many job applications for the particular role.

Same as before if you need assistance, do drop me a note in the comments or LinkedIn!

3. Utilise the resources you have in the Job Hunt

For starters, here are some resources which you can use during your job hunt:

A. Career Services Office(s) in your University

In Singapore, most local universities have a dedicated career office. Some like NBS has an extra one in the school for dual job search prospects! These career offices have dedicated career coaches and advisors who can help you with your career planning as well as internship search. Do reach out to them early!

The career services offices in my alma-mater also have exclusive job portals, CareerAxis and CareerFit for NTU and NBS respectively to help students with their internship and full-time positions.

B. Job Portals

To gain more possible avenues for internships and jobs, especially from the hiring freezes due to COVID-19, you could try job search portals too!

I have previously consolidated a list of useful job portals which could be used over on my LinkedIn post!

C. Professional and Personal Network

Another way to find an internship is through professional and personal networks. You could create a LinkedIn profile to reach many professionals who would love to connect with students and might even offer a role!

Some students have managed to secure internships through their professors, family members or friends.

If you love this post so far and want to connect with me, here’s my LinkedIn Profile!

4. Rehearse for Your Interviews

Forget those memorised long model answers for all the possible questions. From my internship and job hunt experience, the key questions a recruiter wants to know are these:

A. Is the candidate interested enough?

This is through your research about the company, their key achievements, how you want to grow while taking up the internship roles. Do prepare some questions which show your interest in the industry as well as proper research about the company.

B. Is the candidate able to do the job?

This part looks at your past experiences, how these experiences could help you with the role you are applying for. You might want to try learning the STAR and CAR approaches to tackling these types of questions when they are posed.

C. Does the candidate fit in?

For this, just be yourself. Do not try to be someone you aren’t. Many recruiters and hiring managers can tell if you are faking it. Even if you made it through, personality and cultural mismatch may be a potential cause for a less than ideal experience. Therefore, be as genuine as you can! Basically, most questions which don’t fit the first two belong here! (E.g. What’s a superpower you want to have, what is your favourite hobby, etc.)

5. Do Start Early

There is a saying that the early bird catches the worm. This is also true when you search for an internship. Some companies love to confirm their head-counts earlier as internship hiring may be just a small part of what they need to do. Therefore, do start early!

Hope that this helps with your internship hunt! Do let me know down in the comments below if you have other ways to hunt for an internship as well as you want to learn next!

Hope you liked our story today. Do bookmark this site, leave a comment in the section below, and follow us on our LinkedIn page as we look forward to curating new content for you!

Got your internship and want to make it a memorable experience? Here are some rules that I follow!

Tracking your web traffic? This post on Google Analytics may give you some business insights.

Working from home during this period? Here are some key takeaways from my in-office turned work-from-home internship.

If you are looking at acquiring some technical skills to stand out, try reading these selection guides for Business Analytics Modules or for General electives!

Image Credits: Photo by Peter Nguyen on Unsplash
Original Post Date: 27 Jul 2020

Categories
Analytics

Nanyang Business School: Business Analytics Module Selection Guide

Nanyang Business School Analytics Module Selection Guide

You have finally decided that you want to do a business analytics curriculum, and want to know what you have in store for you in analytics; you log into the system and find out that there is so many courses available (correct as of July 2020):

Specialisation Core Courses

BC2402 Designing & Developing Databases
BC2406 Analytics I: Visual and Predictive Techniques
BC2407 Analytics II: Advanced Predictive Techniques

Specialisation Prescribed Electives –
Choose 3 Specialisation Prescribed Electives:
AC2401 Accounting Information Systems
BT2403 Service Operations Management
BC2408 Supply Chain Analytics
BC3402 Financial Service Processes & Analytics
BC3405 Lean Operations & Analytics
BC3406 Business Analytics Consulting (I did this)
BC3408 Decision Modelling & Analytics (I did this)
BC3409 AI in Accounting and Finance
New Course Programming for Business Transformation

Information from NBS Website

Business Analytics Core

The three cores are necessary to take and you would not be able to avoid them. Something new to you is probably the addition of prescribed electives, where you can pick 3 modules (or more if you want to) to add up to your final degree in Business Analytics!

Business Analytics Sub-specialisations

Something you may want to note is that in Business Analytics we unofficially have sub-specialisations too! I have classified according to how seniors have looked at how the courses fit in and also added my own opinion with regard to the newer modules.

Finance Analytics Track:

AC2401 Accounting Information Systems (Sem 1 & 2)
BC3402 Financial Service Processes & Analytics (Sem 2)
BC3409 AI in Accounting and Finance (Sem 2)

Operations Analytics Track:

BT2403 Service Operations Management (Sem 1)
BC2408 Supply Chain Analytics (Sem 2)
BC3405 Lean Operations & Analytics (Sem 1)

Management Science & Analytics Consulting Track:

BC3406 Business Analytics Consulting (Sem 2)
BC3408 Decision Modelling & Analytics (Sem 2)
New Course Programming for Business Transformation

What modules did I pick?

Prior to my year, there were modules which form a marketing analytics track. I was really interested in taking those modules, but unfortunately they were no longer offered. I decided to go with the next best alternative, which was in Management Science & Consulting. I took BC3407 R & Python, now restructured to the GER-Core BC0403, as well as BC3408 Decision Modelling & Analytics and BC3406 Business Analytics Consulting. On top of that, I stayed true to my initial interest by doing an unrestricted elective which is offered by the marketing department, BM2507 Marketing Analytics (Unfortunately not a Business Analytics Prescribed Elective though moving forward I hope it gets approved as one as inter-disciplinary knowledge is increasingly important).

While not the most commonly picked modules by most Business Analytics students, with very little seniors with precedent knowledge, I believe that benefitted greatly from taking the modules which I have taken and look forward to sharing more.

What modules should you pick?

At the end of the day, there is no fixed best modules to take, but rather what aligns with your passion and purpose. My advice is to picture where you see yourself in future, and take the modules to build yourself in that direction. Hope this helps with your module planning!

If you liked our post, do follow us on our LinkedIn, or our writer’s personal LinkedIn Account for more tips.

Now that you are done with planning your prescribed electives, you may want to read about general and unrestricted electives over here.

You may also be interested to pick between business and marketing.

Here’s another blogpost from a senior which I previously got some reviews and found really helpful!

Photo Credits: Photo by Wengang Zhai on Unsplash

Categories
Analytics

3 Reasons: Business Analytics at Nanyang Business School

Business Analytics Specialisation at Nanyang Business School

Having recently graduated in Business Analytics, here are 3 reasons why I picked Business Analytics:

1. Management Science and Problem Solving Skills

My biggest takeaway from doing a business analytics degree was that merely knowing how to code in R, Python, SQL, etc does not make you a good business analytics student. Instead, understanding the problem forming and solving framework is key in tackling any business problems which we want to solve. All my modules consisted of heavily hands on projects for me to exercise good business sense, along with a sprinkle of technical and statistical flavour.

Ultimately, in order to succeed in Business Analytics, it is not about how good your algorithm is, but how your proposed solution solves the problem at hand! While coding is a must-know, it is definitely not the crux of business analytics.

You may be interested in this article if you would like to get started on bridging between analytics and management.

2. Classroom Diversity and Versatility

Business analytics gave me the chance to meet classmates with a variety of interests. I enrolled into business analytics to make an impact in the marketing and management sectors and adding value through analytics. While going through the Business Analytics curriculum, I managed to also embark on Human Resource projects, as well as a real-life business analytics consulting project with Aon. Do stay tuned in future for updates.

I had the opportunity to interact with friends working in various sectors, including Finance, Supply Chain, Logistics, Consulting, Data Science. Previously, I had internships in Market Intelligence, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing and Human Resources in the Automotive, Information Technology and Medical Devices sector. Currently, I’m putting my knowledge to the test in the retail sector!

Hence, you can see that the beauty of business analytics is that it can be used anywhere!

In the meantime, here is a post on how to maximise your experience in Business School!

3. Relevance of Business Analytics in Industry 4.0

Initially, I took business analytics to future proof myself. All around the world, we hear buzzwords like Industry 4.0, or big data being the next big thing. Especially in Singapore, there is an increased emphasis on Technology and Analytics. All the universities in Singapore have started offering analytics as part of their degree programme offerings. In NBS, the analytics cohort in 2018 (Based on the database classes, our core module) was 4 classes, in 2020 it has almost doubled to 7 classes. Therefore, we can see a clear increase in supply of classes to meet the increasing industry demand. (Hope you like the casual economics, and fun fact some countries call business analytics econometrics!)

Do stay tuned to some of my future blog posts on my Business Analytics curriculum review as well as other topics in the near future!

Next, you may want to read this module selection guide if you have decided on Business Analytics! Otherwise, you may want to read this to select your General and Unrestricted Electives.

We have also did a tiering of modules in NBS and NTU on our Youtube Channel!

If you liked our post, do bookmark this site, or follow us on our LinkedIn page as we look forward to creating new content for you every week.

Image credits: Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Categories
Analytics Management

Integrating Analytics and Management: Where and How to Start?

Recently, while at work, I was given the opportunity to run some data analytics on some data in order to create some business insights and recommendations for a colleague. While I have learned about Business Analytics while in school, implementing it in real life as a one-man analyst is not just a walk in the park.

After practicing in real life and coming out with some insights so far. Here are some possibilities you could explore if you are keen on introducing data analytics into your day-to-day management work.

1. Establish the Goal of your Project

When given a project, there is surely an end goal which is required by whomever has assigned you the project. One way to establish the end Goal of the project is to ask the project leader who has provided the project. If he or she does not have a goal in mind, you could look into the data to propose the possibilities. With a goal, it would be easier to scope your project.

2. Determine the Nature of the Project

Once you have established your goals, you will have to figure out the nature of your project. Is it more descriptive in nature? Or more predictive? Do you want to see what your data says, or try to use the data to predict something else? With the nature of the project in place, it would help you to know whether you should be focusing on descriptive or predictive methods, especially since there is so many analytics tools out there and there is no way you can try everything on the same project in a limited period of time.

3. Try your Visualisations and Models

With so many models out there, which to use? I am also in the process of figuring this out and you could stay tuned to future blog posts if I come across the chance to do more projects.

For now, a good example of visualisations can be through Tableau, Google Analytics and Excel Charts.

A good example of models can be Machine Learning Models through R, Python and Microsoft Excel.

4. Prepare Insights, Recommendations. Rinse and Repeat

Once you are done with your models, you have to summarise your insights which are paired with specific recommendations. You can then engage your project leader, check if everything is going along the right direction. Over time, if you can continue to work on the project, find ways to consistently relook at the data, the insights and think of ways to improve the model and the connect to the business.

At the end of the day, when you are doing analytics, always focus on the needs and requirements of the business to propose strong insights and recommendations, and not the models which you are using.

If you’re interested in how to formulate insights, do take a look at my analysis of 500 users on Google Analytics.

Looking to improve on your skills amidst this pandemic? Here are some skills you could learn to future proof yourself!

Categories
Analytics Marketing

Which Major to Pick? Business Analytics vs Marketing (Ex-NBS Student)

As a recent business graduate, I was once faced with the choice to select my specialisation in business school. Two of the most important contenders being Business Analytics and Marketing. For the record, I have taken 6 Business Analytics Modules in Nanyang Business School, 1 Marketing Module in Nanyang Business School, and 2 Marketing Modules during my exchange at ESSEC Business School in France. I eventually decided after my first year to specialise in Business Analytics. I shall do a one by one comparison by features so you could make the informed choice in knowing what you want to specialise in.

Career Prospects

Let’s face it, most of us come to business school with the intention to focus on our careers. This shall be the first point which I will focus on.

As a Business Analytics Graduate, what I observed is that Business Analytics Students are very versatile. A large proportion would decide to go into Banking, Technology and Consulting related roles as business analysts, data analysts, financial analysts, operations analysts, marketing analysts, human resource analysts, etc. There would also be a certain proportion who will end up in leadership programmes organised by the various multinational companies due to the fluid nature of analytics being applicable to many walks in management!

For Marketing Students, classmates who I have met tend to be interested in a variety of careers. A significant portion would aim to go into the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) or Retail sector, or into Marketing Agencies, focusing on branding, trade marketing, social media, e-commerce, sales among many other possible roles. There would also be some students who move on to B2B marketing, non-profit organisations or Human Resources. Marketing also similarly can be applied to many walks in management and are also highly sought after by leadership programmes.

Be it whether you’re a Business Analytics or Marketing Student, this post may be relevant for you!

https://tanweixiang.com/ntu-nbs-internship-hunting-guide-tips-from-an-nbs-graduate-with-3-mnc-internship-experiences/

Quantitative Content

For Business Analytics, the quantitative content tends to be the massive amount of coding involved. I have personally been involved in Python, SQL, R, SAS, Tableau, PowerBI, Excel projects among many others. It is also important to understand the underlying assumptions behind each of the statistical models which are used when doing analysis. Some of the models include regressions, decision trees, linear and non linear programming, association rules etc. This content is generally more applicable to the wide business context.

For Marketing, there is some quantitative content. I shall use the example of the marketing module which I took in NTU, Marketing Analytics, where we did a variety of analysis, with perceptual mapping, Customer Lifetime Value Calculations, Regressions, Conjoint Analysis. This content is more specific to the marketing and management context.

Qualitative Content

For Business Analytics, there is a focus on problem solving approaches, problem formulation, analysis and conclusion, along with recommendations. It is a rather standard but important framework.

For Marketing, there is more qualitative content, including creative problem solving, connecting the dots between the theory and practice.

Classmates

For Business Analytics, in Nanyang Technological University, there is a good mix of classmates, with a third of the cohort being students who take computing classes. This means that you could learn from the computing perspective, coupled with your own business knowledge.

For Marketing, classes tend to be majority business students, with a sprinkle of social science students occasionally. There will likely be more knowledge exchange while in class and expect class participation to be extremely exciting!

Tutors

For Business Analytics, tutors tend to come from a variety of fields, with some who have a mathematical and programming background, and others with business management and consulting backgrounds.

For Marketing, tutors tend to come mainly from the business management sector, specifically in the consumer business industries.

Mode of Assessment

For Business Analytics, the mode of assessment is commonly group project heavy, with it taking up a majority of the semester time even outside of class, as well as some quizzes. Out of my 6 modules, only one had a formal final examination, and every module had at least one project deliverable.

For Marketing, the key focus is on in class activities, quizzes and final examinations. Besides some readings and exam preparation, most of the learning is done inside of the classroom while interacting with one another. You may have a bit more of a work life balance while doing marketing modules, but they definitely require in classroom attendance.

This is my two cents worth when comparing Business Analytics and Marketing!

Follow me on my newest journey of Adult learning in marketing:

Why I decided to return to University while Working Full Time

Do read this article for why I took Business Analytics.

https://tanweixiang.com/three-reasons-why-i-picked-a-specialisation-in-business-analytics-at-nanyang-business-school/

For more on how to maximise your business school experience,

Make the Most Out of Your Business School Experience (NTU Nanyang Business School Graduate)

Photo Credits: Photo by Samson on Unsplash