A saga of a lifetime: Summer internship at The Coca Cola Company -By Swareena Jain, IIM Calcutta

Meet Swareena Jain, who found her proclivity towards marketing by the end of her graduation days and worked like a Trojan to study the subject she was so smitten with. The story of Swareena's internship at The Coca Cola Company is bound to thrill and tickle us pink.

“You find love when you least expect it.”

I remember finding out about my love - Marketing, sitting at a TCS interview during my 2nd year of graduation. “Hey Swareena”, called out my interviewer, “We found your HR round very interesting but have you ever considered doing an MBA after graduation?”

First, that was the politest rejection I have ever received, interview or otherwise. Secondly, no, I had not considered an MBA as a possible career option. So, I went back home, searched for the courses offered by B-schools, and there it was, staring at me - Marketing. I searched about the job description of a marketer and I was surprised to find that I was attracted to a respectable career option for the first time in my life.

Fast forward to my third year, I took marketing electives to see if it could possibly love me back. By the end of the semester, my grade sheet confirmed that it was indeed a match made in heaven. By the final year of my graduation, I had realized that the only way to get out of my toxic relationship with engineering was to go after my love and appear for CAT 2018.

Life happens, CAT helps

I still remember the way I used to steal the little time between my college classes and lunch breaks, only to be able to make some time to prepare for CAT. Time flew by and on 25th November, 2018, as I walked out of my examination hall, I called up my mother, crying, telling her that I had done so poorly in the Quant section that I would have to reappear for CAT in 2019. Little did I know that almost everyone that year did poorly in the Quant section. To my utter amazement, I did score a 99.05 percentile afterall.

Fantasy fulfilled

On January 4th, 2020, my dream institute, IIM Calcutta sent me an email inviting me over for an interview. To say the least, I was thrilled. I remember telling my panelists I wanted to do an MBA to be reunited with my love, marketing. They must have been convinced because on April 16, 2019, I knew I had made it.

I started my journey at Joka determined to make it into the top tier marketing firms. I spent the first two months in my new campus meeting (read: networking with) my batchmates and my immediate seniors. It took me only a few meetings to realize that the B-school placement buzz word was - Consulting, and firms like McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), were considered sacred. Be it the sheer number of students who competed for these firms or the selectivity with which these firms shortlisted resumes, everything made the entry into a consulting firm grueling and all the more desirable.

I would be lying if I said I never eyed consulting. In fact, in the first 2 months itself, I had my CV reviewed by 15-20 seniors who interned across different consulting firms and by August, I had the names and faces of MBB PPO (pre-placement offer) holders memorized. Simultaneously, I also learnt about the numerous marketing firms that visited our campus the previous year and started building an alternate CV that I could send to marketing firms.

Learnings never exhaust the mind

I have always believed that most learnings happen outside classrooms and my time at IIM Calcutta has nothing but reinforced this belief. One of the major lessons that I learnt in the first three months of my MBA was to manage time. So, even when I spent my evenings meeting my seniors and understanding the imminent placement process, my daytime was spent attending the classes. In my first term itself, I had the pleasure of learning a beautifully taught course, Marketing Management. It was taught to us by the marketing genius himself (and my personal favourite), Professor Krishanu Rakshit. Even today, the learnings from the course have stayed with me and the course came out to be one of the many reasons why I was not swayed into opting for other (sought after) career options like Finance and Consulting.

Don't decrease the goal, increase the effort

Then came September and one of the many perks of consulting firms is that they release the list of students shortlisted for further rounds relatively early. Fortunately or unfortunately, I did not secure a spot in the firms I was eyeing and hence, I never had to choose between consulting and marketing. I then wholeheartedly began my preparation to secure a marketing role.

My preparation for marketing roles included aspects that groomed me for both, group discussions (GDs) and interviews, both equally crucial elimination rounds. For group discussions, I tried best to attend most, if not all, mock GDs conducted by our seniors on campus. I maintained a diary to track the feedback that I received after every mock round and tried to implement it in subsequent mocks.

However, the part that stood out to me the most during my preparation was the time I allotted to my individual preparation. I divided my limited time for self-preparation equally into two parts - industry analysis and company analysis. For conducting industry analysis, I thoroughly researched the relevant market trends, consumer sentiment and market leaders (in terms of market share) across industries like Beauty & Personal Care, Health & Wellness, Food & Drinks among others. This helped me deepen my understanding of consumers, their preferences and the wide portfolio of products available to cater to these preferences.

To do an in-depth company analysis, I visited official company portals of all major recruiters like Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble, ITC, Johnson & Johnson, AB InBev and made a note of their company objectives, product portfolios and their sustainability initiatives. This element of my preparation did not just add value to my arguments in the group discussions but also helped me make relevant, data-backed points in my interviews.

A game-changer

As the placement season started, I was thrilled to find my name in all marketing shortlists, with the exception of one or two firms. But the struggle had just begun. As the companies started coming in, I found myself moving from one room to another, closing in on 10-15 GDs in a single day, taking mini-meals in between. And for two consecutive days, I thrived on little to no sleep.

The incident that I cherish the most during this grueling process was one where I was shortlisted for the group interview rounds of two major recruiters at the same time - AB InBev and Hindustan Unilever (HUL). I remember coming out of the GD process of AB InBev and as they told me to stay back for the group interview round, the placement team informed me that I was being called for the HUL Group Interview (GI) too.

Since this was going to be AB InBev’s last Group Interview round, I decided to stay back to interview for AB InBev and informed my friends to keep track of the ongoing HUL process. As I went inside the closed doors of the interview, I hardly knew what was happening outside. HUL had decided to wrap up early and like a lot of other marketing enthusiasts, this firm’s interview was very important to me, something my friends were highly aware of.

As I was giving my AB InBev’s interview, my friends tried to push my interview slot with HUL as much as they could and when they could do it no more, they pressured the placement team to get me released from AB InBev.

I remember a placement coordinator coming into the interview room of AB InBev when the interview was almost over and requesting the interviewers to release me for another process. As I came out of my room, I saw 5-6 familiar, friendly faces all telling me to urgently run to the floor above. I did not know what was happening but I kept following them and as I reached outside another interview room, one of my friends just whispered, “You are about to enter the final Group Interview round before HUL wraps up, all the best.”

I was panting and beaming at my support system. Even though I did not make it through the GI round at HUL, I am glad I was able to appear for the process and utterly grateful for my support system at Joka.

Interning at The Coca Cola Company

Even after the two hectic days lined up with GDs, sleep completely evaded me as interview shortlists started coming in hours after the GD rounds ended. Instead of sleeping, I revised my marketing notes and industry trends and got dressed for the day I was going to be placed.

My first interview was with ITC and even though I thought my interview went decently, I could not get through. Without losing hope, I went on to the next interview room, a room filled with people who were going to be my recruiters, employees of The Coca Cola Company.

During the GD round of The Coca Cola Company (TCCC), they had attempted to do something different from the other recruiters. Instead of conducting a regular GD, they went ahead and divided the 10 students in a room in two groups. The groups were then given a target consumer and his consumer profile. We were given a total of 10 minutes to come up with a product/service aimed at the consumer along with the Go To Market Strategy for the product/service. We were also provided with whiteboards, charts and sketch pens to demonstrate our ideas.

After such a creative GD process, I was looking forward to an interesting interview round and TCCC did not disappoint. While they had tested my marketing acumen in the GD round itself, the interviewers in the Personal Interview Round were very friendly. We talked about why I was attracted to marketing, where I saw myself in the coming years and what I did in my free time.

Something must have clicked because my internship at The Coca Cola Company in 2020 started and as I worked with one of the most creative marketing teams that existed, I finally got into the career I loved. Ever since I started my internship at The Coca Cola Company, I was surprised to look at the competence the company gave to its employees. In my first week, I came to know that I was going to work at Coca-Cola’s Campaign for ICC's upcoming T20 World Cup. I was blown away by the amount of responsibility they believed I could shoulder in the forthcoming two months.

Even though the T20 World Cup has been postponed and is no more going to happen in 2020, my campaign scope was designed to stay relevant in any year the World Cup is conducted and hence, any work I did regarding this campaign is confidential. Not only the project was very interesting, but the support system offered by the company was admirable, too.

I remember that we had long-hour conversations with my manager, Sameer Pathak, General Manager, Activations Team at TCCC. No one was ever too tired to talk to me or resolve the doubts I had. I even managed to stand out in one of the many activities weekly conducted by the company, My 60-Day Journey - internship at The Coca Cola Company. I got awarded for the best journey that I demonstrated in the form of a snakes-and-ladders board, wherein the snakes were the various obstacles I faced and ladders, the growth curves I inherited along the way.

A bewitching tour

All in all, what a ride!

As of now, it has been two months since my internship ended and I am in regular touch

with not only my fellow interns but also my manager who keeps sending us movies, articles, magazines and anything that he finds interesting. Even though PPO results are still not out, I had a wonderful time as an intern and learnt enormously in the domain I loved. What more can I ask for?

To read more enthralling internship stories, click on the links below :

Swareena Jain - IIM Calcutta

2019-2021

It cannot be gainsaid that her strong acumen for marketing and her sharp mind has made her come a long way. It is her diligence and persistence that never fails to astonish people around her.