This is how I kickstarted my journey at J&J -By Radhika Hingolikar from IIM Calcutta

At J&J, I’ve experienced a culture of growth, innovation, and learning, driven by a solid commitment of support to the employees by the people in positions of leadership. During my MT stint, all the managers that I worked with were immensely supportive and patient with me as I navigated the world of FMCG for the first time. Here is a brief of how I kickstarted my journey at J&J!

My first interaction with J&J was through their case study competition, Quest, in which I had participated in, along with three other college mates. Two unique things about Quest were the length of the contest and the mentorship we received from people at Johnson & Johnson throughout.

Once selected as the campus winner, we got over four months to work on the solution to be presented at the National finale. During this period, we were mentored throughout and put in touch with people who could help us to arrive at a better solution. Because of this, it never felt like a conventional case study competition but rather a huge learning opportunity, where we learned not only about J&J, but also developed an understanding of the FMCG landscape.

Bringing the A-game forward

After winning the national finale of Quest, we were offered PPIs. For the interview, I prepared a list of probable questions that I could face and tried to develop a basic outline on how I would answer these questions. As a PGP2 student, I had many marketing subjects and I was parallelly working on a live project in sales & marketing - this gave me the understanding to answer sales and marketing related questions.

Personally, I believe, the preparation right before interviews should be about consolidating and structuring your experiences that you’ve gathered throughout your MBA through interacting with peers, teachers, solving cases, and being involved in co-curricular and extracurricular activities that give you the ability & confidence to ace interviews during placements.

The heart-warming first day at J&J

All the nervousness of the first day at my first ever job was put away by the warm and welcoming people at J&J. The first day was all about getting to know the company’s history, values, and the people giving all us MTs time to settle into the company’s atmosphere. It was followed by a 7-day induction filled with exciting sessions with brand managers, sales managers, old MT’s as well as team-building activities which helped the MT’s build camaraderie with each other.

One experience that stood out was a visit to an NGO, where all the MTs went and spent half a day helping around and interacting with the residents of an old age home. It helped us experience J&Js commitment towards the community and taught us to carry that legacy ahead.

Starting things off on the right foot

The MT program at J&J is a very well-structured program with clearly defined learning goals. As a part of the MT program, I got to do a sales and marketing stint. In the six months duration of the sales stint, I got exposure to the entire sales & distribution structure of J&J consumer, right from shadowing a salesman & working with one distributor in the first four months to handling an entire territory with 7 distributors and a team of more than 20 people in the last two months. More than understanding the practical aspects of sales, the most important learning of this stint was the people management experience that has been critical in shaping me as a leader.

Post my sales stint, I did a marketing stint in digital marketing, where I got to work with digital marketing agencies and learn and contribute to the digital media strategy at J&J. Today, I am the zonal manager of Madhya Pradesh West, and these two stints have helped me shape my way of working. The two stints helped me open my eyes to the various roles that I can take up in my career at J&J be it sales manager, brand manager, or working at the intersection of sales and marketing with roles like channel manager, customer marketing manager, commercial excellence manager, etc.

Everybody was constantly mindful of the fact that the stint must be full of learnings and hence ensured that I get opportunities to discover different avenues of the FMCG sector. The encouragement to learn more and more did not end with the MT stint, and even after taking up my current role, my manager has constantly pushed me to discover new ways of working and keep learning as I navigate those. This has helped me to bring new ideas to the table and not fear experimentation!

Read more about such inspirational experiences:

Radhika Hingolikar - IIM Calcutta

2017-2019

She is a B.Tech (Production) graduate from VJTI, Mumbai, and has completed her MBA from IIM Calcutta, the batch of 2019. Currently, she is the Zonal Manager (Madhya Pradesh West) at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health.