00:00Hi, my name is Aditi Shukla. I did my Bachelors in Commerce from Mootilal Nehru College, Tendon University and I got into KPMG via campus placement in 2020 and till 2025 I was in KPMG only and then I shifted to Soil Institute of Management to do my one year MBA in finance domain.
00:17There were multiple factors, I'd be honest. So to start with, again, AI coming into the picture and then, you know, I always felt the need of people upgrading and upskilling with the changing world, especially when AI taking over in a very extensive way, I'd say.
00:36And the second main reason is that I wanted to pivot from auditing to finance role in which one is also auditing is majorly about how you check the numbers that has been created by the management.
00:47But finance is more about how you take inferences out of those numbers to help the stakeholders.
00:55We all come from different domains altogether. And when working in a group project or actually hanging out with people, you get to learn a lot from them, not just academically,
01:05but also on a humanitarian ground, that how people think, how differently people think from other domain, how do they solve or tackle the problem.
01:14So maybe for finance, I feel it is more numbers driven. However, when I meet a person whose major is marketing, they are more creative in such a way that some terms are very easy for them to understand and some thinking is just so easy for them to interpret.
01:28There are a couple of factors. First, here the faculties are not really people who are here to teach, but they are actually getting the industry background and they would rather want to give us real life examples, real life exposure, industry exposure, I'd say, to the students.
01:49So that was a very plus point for me. So like my professor, Nitika Batra, she had been teaching for a long time, but also she had an industry for even a longer time.
01:59So when she talks and when she teaches, it actually gives me a lot more exposure than any professor could have given me.
02:05So that's one thing. And then the leadership here, the value based learning we have, especially a subject that I would want to mention.
02:12We have a leadership class, a self leadership class that we have that we have taken from Anil Sir, who is the founder of Soil Institute of Management.
02:20So that class at the start, that course at the start actually structured a lot of students here that actually help them understand themselves in a better way that how can be you be a good personality, a good human being and a good asset to the society.
02:38And then again, the last thing was that irrespective of domain, you can sit for any class, say, suppose we have elective courses, such great courses around consulting, around extra classes of marketing, when I actually talked to the program office that I want to take some extra classes of marketing, I actually got a chance to sit on those classes and understand how it actually works.
03:02Talking about those finance courses that we have at Soil, so I would like to divide into three terms.
03:09So initial term is actually to build the foundation for the people who are studying finance for the very first time or who want to shift their career to finance.
03:17To begin with, we had financial accounting, we had corporate finance, and then we had project finance.
03:23And then comes the valuations. And then again, to build on to those projects, we have SAPM security.
03:29We have a portfolio management and then security analysis and portfolio management course, which actually helped us understand the markets better than as an investor and as a firm that what is the correct time to invest and what markets talk about.
03:45So the roles that a graduate would get would be completely different from a one year PGPM program student would get.
03:55So finance is a very big domain, a very big umbrella. There are many roles that require people with experience.
04:03A couple of examples are wealth management, asset management, your portfolio management services, FP&A, and then also followed by a fund manager and then investment bankers.
04:13And also, I'm really happy to share that I am placed at Oxane Partners for portfolio management services.
04:23Talking about my interview at Oxane Partners for portfolio management services, it was divided into four parts.
04:30First, the aptitude test that we sat for and then the people who got shortlisted then had three rounds, three more interview rounds, two technical, one HR round at the end.
04:39My initial round was with the manager and followed up we had the round with AVP and the last round was with the HR and it was core technical round.
04:50The two rounds were around core finance knowledge from giving case studies to actually asking some straight questions.
04:57So it juggled in between these two and at the end it was more about my values, what values the person or the candidate has.
05:09The core finance questions that were asked in the interviews were more around debt equity, what are the risks, what are the returns and if I were to invest certain amount in an industry and in a company in that same industry, what would be the points that I would look at.
05:23Those were also around the ratios, valuation ratio, profit ratio, the multiple ratios that we have, financial ratios.
05:31They also asked about fundamental and technical analysis that how would a person do it.
05:36And they also talked about some recent news that were around the market and also they asked me about the US crisis of 2008.
05:45So that I described. There were a couple of more points that were around WAC, NPV and IRR.
05:54I was able to answer all of the questions considering the fact that here at Soil, I managed to sit for more than five to six rounds before because I sat for mock interviews with the faculty, with the peers, with the leadership team here.
06:11So I got an exposure beforehand and that made me confident enough to actually speak in front of the management at Oxane.
06:18First advice would be to make yourself comfortable with the financial terms because the more you understand about finance, the more you would be able to actually grasp on or get a hold on to things.
06:33What's so start connecting things to the market to what's get a cause and effect situation.
06:42If you are doing that, what if you're doing the thing, what impact can it create to the surrounding or to the market?
06:48So once you would start building, see the financial aspect of every news or everything that's happening around.
06:53So once you would start develop your thinking in that basis or in that term, then I think so you'd be able to understand and with a good curriculum, of course, you'd be able to reach where you want to reach eventually.
07:08There were so many motivating factors, I would say, sheer motivation that you have to keep alive till the last day of your college.
07:13It's also people who are around you if they are actually motivating you, if they are actually putting you on spot.
07:21So sometimes we I mean, there were some days, of course, where I wanted to hide because that was not my forte or maybe that was the topic that I wanted to run away from.
07:30But there were friends of mine who actually pushed me to center and they asked me, this is your day, you have to deal with it, of course.
07:35And then there is faculty who is one more of your mentors, because I remember the very first conversation that I had with my professors were more around life.
07:47How can I achieve a bigger goal in life?
07:51So again, that actually building on my personality as well as I would say it actually build a lot on my academics as well, because that gave me a perspective that how big the industry could be or what space can I get into?
08:05I'll go.
08:06I'll go.
08:07I have.
08:08I know.
08:09I can think of what's better than that.
08:10I know.
08:11I can think of people that have a great job.
08:13I don't know.
08:14I don't know.
08:15I just want to see a very beautiful thing.
08:17Let's get to see a lot of the things.
08:18I don't know.
08:19I really like to sort of work in my personality.
08:21I think I really like to think of somebody in my personality.
08:25It's hard to see a lot of the stuff, but I kind of know what they have to think of.
08:29I'm kind of really afraid to get was I.
08:30And I don't know what's going on, but I think that's not my job.
08:32I'm going to look at the hard work.
