Ghayatri Sivakumar

Tell us about your professional experience prior to joining the Full-time MBA?

I studied my bachelor’s in engineering at the PSG College of Technology in India and after graduating I joined Deloitte Consulting as Tech Analyst, progressing to Senior Analyst quite quickly. My role was mainly in project management, agile coaching and data reporting. I got to work in a variety of industries like hospitality, healthcare and retail, mostly in digital transformation roles which was great experience.

It was a good start to my career but I wanted to grow and move into a strategic role and I knew I needed a holistic understanding of business to secure a more senior role.

Why did you choose Bayes to do your Full-time MBA?

There were a few reasons but first and foremost as my career objective was to move into a strategic role I was looking for a business school that excelled in corporate strategy. Bayes is a pioneer in corporate strategy and is very strong in the Financial Times rankings and this stood out to me.

I had also connected with an alumna of the programme who was also working at Deloitte and who spoke very highly of the programme, and in particular the Bayes Careers and Professional Development Team.

I also made sure to reach out to alumni on LinkedIn as I was keen to speak to people from India with a similar background to me who had got a job after graduation. Speaking to alumni is something I’d recommend doing if you can, it was very reassuring and gave me a lot of confidence embarking on my journey.

Finally, I wanted to move abroad to do my MBA and I loved the hustle and bustle of London so it was the perfect fit for me.

I loved the hustle and bustle of London so it was the perfect fit for me.

How have you been able to apply what you learnt during the MBA into your professional life?

The Strategy module was super important and the most useful for me. In my prior work experience, my teams worked in silo, basing decisions on what has worked previously for clients. Learning about strategy in my MBA helped me think about the overall business and department impacts and this really helped me help my clients.

I also learned how to take a project from beginning to end – for example how to analyse the capacity of company and how to do an industry analysis to understand the entire perspective. Other modules I enjoyed and that were extremely useful were change management and digital transformation.

My absolute favourite module was Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and this is what inspired me to join EY Seren – a global research and design consultancy who help businesses to meet the needs of people and the planet. I wanted to work somewhere that create more shared value, and EY Seren stood out to me as their projects derive from CSR.

The Business Mastery Project (BMP) is for many a ‘stepping stone’ to the next stage of their career. Could you tell us about your project?

I knew I wanted to work at EY Seren after hearing about the company at a Bayes networking event. However EY Seren is a design consulting firm and I realised that I lacked the design thinking experience, so I used the rest of my MBA as an opportunity to address that gap and I decided to do this through my BMP.

It was through a speed networking event with start-ups at Bayes that I met the CEO of Swoop Funding. I said I would love to intern with them to understand how they work and that I was particularly interested in data analytics in the fintech industry. In May of that year, I saw a project with Swoop Funding appear on the Bayes Careers portal, with the aim of establishing a data drive decision-making process by leveraging design thinking. I immediately applied and won the project which was a triumph as I now had the means to gain experience in design thinking.

The experience itself was great. I was put in the drivers seat and was empowered to be able to tailor the project to their needs by using design thinking methods so I could fill my experience gap. Within fifteen days they had implemented my proposal!

Overall the experience lead to a new role with EY Seren and it was an excellent discussion point in the interview. I would highly recommend that all MBA students work out what they want to do and then attend every networking event that the Careers and Professional Development Team host. If you can find a BMP that aligns with your career objectives, it’s just down to you do the work!