Diving right into the digital advertising world with summer internship at Amazon -By Sankalp Srivastava from VGSoM IIT Kharagpur
Amazon is known to hire people with diverse backgrounds to bring in unique perspectives and ideas for business. When Amazon visited VGSoM IIT Kharagpur for summer placements, my first preference was the profile that falls under the advertising department of Amazon, for which I was ultimately selected. Here is a brief of my entire internship experience at Amazon.
When disruptions caused by Coronavirus hit the job market, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding summer internships as to whether they would be delayed or cancelled altogether. However, the Students Program team at Amazon was in constant touch with us and kept us informed of every development thereby allaying all negative thoughts. The internships were moved to a work from home format to give us an enriching corporate experience from the safety of our homes. The Amazon IT team also reached out to us to ensure we had the requisite infrastructure prior to the internship commencement so that we could have a smooth onboarding.
Engaging with statistical analysis and insights
The profile I worked in was a business facing role and people here handle end-to-end advertising campaigns of brands. I was given a project based on a business problem and I had to use statistical analysis to generate insights and build a value proposition. Amazon is a data-driven organization and prides itself on using data analytics to generate business insights. I used MS Excel to compile raw data, create dashboards, and also used RStudio for the part on statistical analysis and data visualization.
Amazon’s narrative process
One of the practices at Amazon that stands out is Narrative Writing. Reports are written in detailed document formats and strong emphasis is laid on structuring and analytical depth. Tutorial sessions are conducted for new joiners to get them accustomed to this unique style of writing at Amazon. According to Jeff Bezos himself, narrative writing forces critical and coherent thinking and brings out more details.
The secret to handling business problems
One of the key takeaways for me was the multifaceted approach to problem-solving. Business problems often do not have a unidimensional solution and there might be many perspectives to them. The key is to reach out to as many relevant people as you can and take their opinions on the problem statement. People at Amazon are always willing to help you out and I reached out to almost 10 people before starting off with my project.
Overall, it was an enriching 2-months internship experience at Amazon.