Know It All About Career in Strategy and Analytics With Vaibhav Jain

Vaibhav Jain shares his experience on Strategy and Analytics in an interview where he points out some crucial aspects of this career. All the aspirants looking forward to build their high acclaimed analytics careers can find these words useful. It is evident that any career journey has some individualistic characteristics that are unique from the others. The experience and professional background has helped Vaibhav Jain achieve success, which is surely going to inspire many aspirants who want to set their long and short term goals in the same career. Read on to know about the career path of analytics and some interesting insights from an exponent.

• Early Career: Vaibhav Jain grew up in Delhi, India where he pursued an engineering degree course in computer science. After graduating in computer science, he moved to the US to pursue masters in management science and engineering. He managed EMS in his area for the last fourteen years.
• First Role Insights: The first role that Vaibhav Jain initiated his career with was working as a business analyst for a start up for two years. It was a company named Efficient Frontier that was later acquired by Adobe. At the time he had joined the startup company, there was a team of thirty five people that increased up to two hundred when he resigned. The first hand experience of this role was sheer excitement to be a part of the workforce in a corporate domain in the US. The knowledge about corporate terminologies, language that he gathered there helped him in the long run.
• Working in Google: After being informed about a vacancy in finance at Google, he took a chance in stepping forward as he felt the need to challenge himself with something bigger. He gave an interview and got the opportunity without having any finance background. The opportunity was for financial planning and analysis in corporate finance at Google where he worked for eight years. 
• Present Role: Later, he switched to operations at Google where he worked for three years. Presently, he is a part of consumer operations team. Within the operations team, he leads a small team of data analysts providing customer support analytics.
• Each Day as an Operation Strategy Manager: Like all the big enterprises, Google has its own journey and Vaibhav Jain has seen his team growing since the last eleven years. Earlier, the structured functions that had run the company were for engineering, product, marketing, finance and other units. Since the last four years, the company grew to follow a new model and strategy for the business unit level. Vaibhav Jain is presently a part of a unit called consumer hardware where he observes customer care analytics.
• Fun Part of the Work: As a customer care analytics team, he considers problem solving to be the fun part.
• Three Challenges associated with Analytics: The first one is managing volatility in the business, specifically in consumer hardware being a new area. Keeping up with the trend by challenging the competitors like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft is the first challenge. The second challenging is managing the fragmented tools and technology stack at the customer support space. The third challenge is the cross functional aspect of working in fourteen to fifteen teams. 
• Strategy for Entry Level Positions in Analytics: Considering strategy as the rules for the analytics careers, the basic strategies for analytics would be having an analytical background, pursuing management degree, networking within the consulting firm, building it up gradually etc.
• Required Certifications or Qualifications: For strategy, there is no need to acquire any special certificate and the applicant need to get involved in building the analytical skills. Besides, skills in finance and mathematics will be really helpful. There are some courses where an applicant can join if they wish to learn. For analytics, it is important to take courses and learn in detail. Certification is optional for both.
• Best Job Search Approach for Entry Level Position: After graduating, one can attend career fares and can start networking in school, in LinkedIn or the internet. Secondly, one can send polite applications and wait for the feedback. Updating the LinkedIn profile as well as keeping oneself updated with the latest trends is also important. Finally, creating a suitable resume makes the most professional approach.
• Three Tips for Resume: The first tip is to summarize the accomplishments and making a one page resume. The second tip is to be able to self assess and quantify the accomplishments. The third tip is being honest to whatever one is claiming.
• Three Common Interview Questions: In interviews for entry level positions, the three common questions being asked are questions about the company, about the applicant’s interest in analytics, about the applicant’s analytical skills.
• Career Path of a Financial Analyst: Since corporate finance is quite different a domain than banking finance, portfolio management or any specific financial advisory services, the applicants must focus upon the rules and responsibilities associated with corporate finance.

Advise to the Professionals: Working hard, setting long and short term goals, taking challenges, reading books and staying motivated are the advises for analytics careers.