While many students treated themselves to a vacation, METRANS student assistant Deepa Rama Hegde made the most out of her summer by interning at Symantec, Culver City, one of the leading American software companies providing security, backup and storage.  Hegde is pursuing MS in Business Analytics at the Marshall School of Business, and expects to complete her degree in Spring, 2018.

I asked how she secured her internship. “I connected with an HR representative on LinkedIn, and she emailed me about the opportunity; she thought I would be a good fit,” she shared. “I had several rounds of interviews covering both technical and behavioral questions. Then I got a call from HR saying that the recruiting manager liked me and he wanted to offer me an internship in his team!”

She reported her job to be interesting, challenging, and rewarding.  “I am in Business Intelligence and Telemetry building a predictive model for Customer Churn using Deep Learning and Machine Learning based algorithms. Each day is different as I am working on different kinds of data collected by the team, applying various algorithms and testing them for the required accuracy. Also, I collaborate with many different teams to get the required data for my analysis.“

For those of us who are actively looking for internships, she recommended, “Be patient. Be positive. Even if a recruiter e-mails you on LinkedIn for a job in which you are not particularly interested, respond back stating your interests. They also might be a good connection. Network with the HRs and recruiting managers. This will help you understand the current job requirements in the industry. Reach out to people and get appointments for an informational interview. If they like you, even if the team doesn’t have the right match for you, they might refer you to another company where they have contacts. According to me, making connections and having the right attitude is the key in getting an internship!”

We heartily congratulate Ms. Hegde on her internship and wish her good luck in all her future endeavors.

METRANS Student Assistant Deepa Hedge at work

About the Author: Madhurima Bhattacharyya

Madhurima Bhattacharyya is a graduate student pursuing MS in Engineering Management at the Viterbi School of Engineering and expects to graduate in December, 2018. She is the lead student assistant for METRANS and specializes in event organizing. She intends to pursue a career in data analytics and is also interested in exploring project management after graduating. She can be reached at [email protected] and her number is 949-522-00287.

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