Indranil Chatterjee is a student in the NC State Jenkins MBA program studying marketing and finance. Vikas Anand, associate dean of academic programs at NC State’s Poole College of Management, recently interviewed Indranil about his experiences. Get to know Indranil in this Q&A.
My name is Indranil, and I also go by Tito. I am originally from India. I did my undergrad in electronics engineering in India and then worked for four years at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a technology consultant.
From the beginning of my career, I had the thought process that I wanted to get an MBA post after a couple of years of work. I started looking for opportunities in the U.S. I could pursue. That’s when I found out NC State was ranked as one of the top 10 ROI MBA schools on the website Poets&Quants. After coming here, I can say confidently that I made the right choice. I landed an internship at Dell. I worked with Annie in our Career Center from the beginning. She trained us from A to Z. I landed a full-time position at Dell in a product management role which I will start in July.
What have been your favorite experiences in the Jenkins MBA program thus far?
It might be a little different back in India; how we learn things [in the US] is more application-based here. I enjoy that we have regular projects, and we work with students, not just full-time graduate students but also professional students. Having those continuous assignments and, at the same time, working with these people on different projects of different concentrations was challenging but exciting to me. The professors are excellent.
When you look back to your MBA program, what top skills have you acquired in the program that have helped you get jobs?
I think confidence is definitely one of the things I now have. As an undergrad, companies were coming to you to recruit you. It is very different over here. You need to reach out to the company. You have to do the extra work. I am a mix of an introvert and an extrovert, so the kind of confidence I gained through all of the career fairs and having that practice of meeting new people and different employees all the time really helped me. I also learned how to present myself. It’s more about how you reach out to people, as we don’t have a resume-based approach here when it comes to job searches. The career management center (CMC) groomed us well regarding how to keep the conversation alive and relevant. Finally, the networking side – that’s a third thing I’ve learned a lot about over here.
What advice would you give to international students?
I have been in touch with a couple of upcoming candidates. A couple of them reached out to me, asking what to expect. Try to learn as much as you can. I keep telling them that the school is going to give them a platform. The school is good enough to open the doors to big-name companies. I know people from my cohort who have interviewed at Apple, Tesla, and Amazon. The big names are approachable. The school will do its job to prepare you well, and after that, it’s on you to make it happen.
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