Sharvaree Sinkar - Wells Fargo

Hello Everyone! I am Sharvaree Sinkar, a to be fourthie in Electrical Engineering Dual Degree (CSP) Department. Currently, I am doing an offline internship as a financial analyst at Wells Fargo, an American Multinational Financial Services company, and also an investment bank. This blog is all about my experience of the internship journey. Let’s dive into it straight away.

The Internship Season:

Consulting was something I always wanted to explore and hence was hunting for an intern in the same domain. But, being a dual degree student I was not eligible to apply for the consulting firms I wished for. After talking to seniors, and attending various internship preparation sessions, I decided to go for Supply Chain and Electrical core profiles. However, I was open to applying to other profiles as well.

Heading to the first week of August 2021, luckily HUL, and P&G were open for EE DD people for supply chain profile. I applied, and got shortlisted in the aptitude tests, but wasn’t selected in the final interview rounds(Hard Luck!). Having done a few past projects in ML and a second-year internship at Tech Mahindra, I started preparing for an Analytics profile along with the companies such as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, etc. With the ongoing hectic semester schedule, everyone including me was occupied with continuous tests, interviews, etc. Everything was in the online mode of course.

‘Wells Fargo’ had opened for Btech students, hence I didn't even give a thought to applying. After 3-4 days, out of the blue, its IAF re-opened for DD students as well for software and analytics profile. Having no idea what this company is, I blindly applied by just seeing the ‘Analytics’ profile. There was a 3hr long test that included aptitude, English, and some coding questions. After qualifying for the test, there were three interviews. Since Wells Fargo (WF) had come for the internship season for the very first time, I had no idea how the selection process would be. In the first interview, they mainly asked some conceptual questions about probability and coding. They also asked about ML applications in my previous projects. The second round was more challenging which included trickier and more thought-provoking questions about statistics. They asked a few questions on my resume as well. The third interview was a 15 min HR round, which was just a formality. After the selection, I was indeed happy but, I had no clue what this company does, how the internship would be, is this something I really want to do, etc. So many questions popped into my head at the same time. But yeah, one thing was assuring me peace i.e. ‘Summer Sorted’ xD.

The Intern itself!

After surfing through Google and talking to people, I got to know that Wells Fargo is a renowned financial services company and among the top 5 banks in the United States. I was very excited for an offline intern. I was placed in Bangalore for a 2 month internship period (I will refer to Wells Fargo as WF henceforth xD). Honestly, I had not expected that WF’s office would be so big, posh, and amazing! They provided us with free cab services right from the first day for commuting purposes. In the first week, there was an induction program along with technical training sessions which covered topics such as Python, SQL, and SAS. Along with IITB people, there were interns from other colleges such as IITR, IITG, BITS, NIT-K, etc. After the training got over, they gave us office laptops and we all were allotted projects in different domains. For each intern, they assigned us a buddy, a mentor, and a Project Manager.

So, I am working in the DSAI (Decision Science and Artificial Intelligence) team under the ‘Corporate Model Risk’ team. So, there were two projects assigned to me. The first one included understanding of bank’s model development, validation process, and working on its optimization through data analysis, database design along with web development part. The second one focuses on ML, specifically Natural Language Processing (NLP). Since I had no prior experience in some of the domains, learning everything from scratch, and learning from peers proved to be of great help.

I personally found the workload not that hectic, as there is a pretty good work-life balance. It is fun working here as we get to interact with a lot of WF employees, senior leaders, co-interns, etc. Since I had never been to the corporate world, it has altogether been a completely new and thrilling experience for me so far. I got the chance to understand how different teams work collaboratively in a huge bank, how the banking sector works, the corporate work culture, and whatnot.

According to me, there’s a lot of difference between an offline and a WFH intern. Working on field, getting to know and understand things in offline mode matters a lot. Apart from the internship, coming to a new city, figuring out PG, mess, travel facilities on our own, interacting with people, etc do hold significant importance. I learned and experienced every aspect of it thoroughly. Exploring Bangalore, visiting different places, traveling and adventures, trying authentic South Indian food, meeting new people, etc were some of the things I really enjoyed doing. These two months have proved to be the most happening and amazing times in my recent past xD

Final Words:

Concluding, I am grateful to everyone who has helped and supported me directly, and indirectly throughout the internship preparation journey as well as during the internship as well. Similar to every other student, I was also confused, and was not able to figure out what would suit me the best. There will be rejections but keeping oneself strong, calm, and composed and trying our best is what one can do. Bagging a good intern is not an end, there’s a lot to learn throughout and beyond this process. Talk to seniors, get your doubts clarified, make proper and systematic use of resources. And most importantly, don’t get overwhelmed, there are various options available. Just try to find what is best for you, give it your full efforts and the rest will be taken care of itself!

For any queries, feel free to reach out to me!