How this FMS student bagged a pre-placement offer from L’Oréal India

A few months ago I was offered a pre-placement offer (PPO) with L’Oréal India right after I finished my 9-week internship with them. Being a fresher, I was super excited about working in a corporate setting for the first time. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed & anxious about working from home. However, these 2 months turned out to be a huge learning experience. Not only did I learn a lot about marketing in FMCG but I also went from being a complete beauty novice to being conversant with it.

Birth, FMS, and everything in between

I am a Marathi guy, born and raised in Nagpur, Maharashtra for the first 22 years of my life. Since childhood, I had been fascinated by two things: computers and advertisements. Though I was studying chemical engineering, I dove deep into coding – working on multiple projects, assisting start-ups, etc. I even secured an offer from a reputed financial services firm. This experience drew me towards the business side and in September, 2 months before the exam, I decided to sit for CAT 2018.

It was difficult to cover so much ground in 2 months’ time, but after considerable hard work and support from friends and family, I scored a 99.64 percentile in my first attempt and entered the Red Building of Dreams.

At FMS, I was awed and overwhelmed by my peers who had excelled in diverse domains. I was determined to learn from them and diversify my palate. The best way to do this, I realized, was to participate in case competitions. I found a great team and we tackled various cases from diverse fields which hugely improved my decision-making, ideation, teamwork, presentation & stress management skills.

Why marketing? 

As I joined MBA straight out of my engineering, I was unsure about which domain would be the perfect fit for me. I dabbled a bit in consulting and finance before finding my real passion – marketing. I was interested in the FMCG sector and I spent hours every day poring over marketing strategies of FMCG companies.

How did I bag an FMCG marketing internship at FMS?

I can break down my preparation for the internship into the following steps:

Consultation with seniors

In order to understand what a sales & marketing role exactly entails, I consulted with many seniors who had previously interned in this domain. I learned about the various roles that are offered and zeroed in on the ones that best matched my profile. I also tried to understand their preparation strategies and continuously sought advice on my basic marketing answers, CV gaps, and HR answers from them.

CV building

As a fresh graduate without any experience in the domain of S&M, I was quite anxious about my CV. From the first day, it was clear that companies shortlist you based on CVs, and thus, it was the most important document in the preparation process. 

A good CV should be a balanced mix of your abilities, achievements, and interests. Like any manuscript, ideally, a CV should go through multiple iterations made after consultations with seniors & batch mates. I was lucky to have received feedback from various seniors & after a number of iterations, my polished, balanced CV was worlds apart from my first draft. Since the summer process is conducted within 4 months of us joining the college, there wasn’t much that could be added to the CV but I still managed to complete a few certifications and win one case competition. This strengthened the marketing part of my CV and helped me immensely. 

Marketing domain preparation

Marketing interviews are usually a mix of both HR and marketing-related, case-based questions. It is necessary to have a sound knowledge of the concepts as well as to be updated about the various campaigns/initiatives by various companies. The Marketing Compendium produced by MarkSoc, the Marketing Society of FMS, was a comprehensive starting point for me to learn the concepts. 

Additionally, I formed a group with my friends where we used to discuss various case studies published by WARC as well as share and debate on marketing news – primarily from websites like ET Brand Equity, Marketing Mind, afaqs!, WARC, etc. Seeing the real-life deployment of marketing concepts & the process of finding key customer insights further attracted me towards marketing.

HR preparation

The most important thing that a company sees in a candidate is the culture fit. Preparation for a whole battery of HR questions like tell me about yourself, strengths, weaknesses, achievements, failures, etc. & frequent mock interviews on these boosted my confidence and made sure I wasn’t caught off-guard when such questions were asked in the interviews. I believe this was the singular most important part of the preparation strategy.

Selection process

L’Oréal followed a very unique selection process where before the regular process, we had to submit a creative CV. We had to answer various interesting questions like My Pet Peeve, A trend I can’t stand, my favorite website & book, etc. We had to be as creative as possible. We were given the freedom to make either a video, ppt, or document. 

This was followed by a case-based GD and an elaborate interview which was a combination of both marketing concepts, HR answers, and general interest in the beauty industry.

The one-of-a-kind internship experience at L’Oréal

I was very excited to go to Mumbai for my internship as it was my first corporate experience. However, due to the pandemic that became impossible. I was impressed by the agility with which L’Oréal adapted to the new normal and honored all of its commitments and timelines. As communication – both with your team and with fellow co-interns became a challenge in the online mode, I made it a point to reach out to them personally and connect informally.

My first project revolved around gauging growth drivers & recommending solutions to boost sales for the retail range of a salon brand. My second project was about developing an e-commerce strategy for the same brand with changes to content, promo, and visibility strategy. Both the projects were heavily research-intensive. 

I conducted over 25 telephonic interviews, surveyed 150 people, and analyzed over 500 e-commerce listings. The continuous feedback & complete freedom from my mentor allowed me to explore untapped opportunities while correcting myself whenever I went off-course. My proudest moment was when I proposed 4 new product ideas with the entire marketing mix for the brand. It took me twice the effort as I was a complete beauty novice and had to figure everything out by myself. I understood the importance of prioritizing work, working as a team, and effective communication.

Throughout the duration of the 8-week internship, there were regular informal sessions as well as interactions with various business leaders that helped us understand the company and the people better. 

All of the hard work paid off as at the end of the internship at L’Oréal I received the star intern award and eventually also received a PPO.

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