Jared Bales
I am interested in interviewing someone in the financial field because it is my
area of study, and I wanted to see what a possible career in the financial field would
be like. I interviewed Jasmeet Sabharwal.
Mr. Sabharwal recommended a lot of skills and education that would be very
helpful to have in the field he is in. One skill in particular that he highlighted
throughout our conversation was that it is very important to be able to view and
present information from many different perspectives. What he means by this is
that when his company receives data from their clients he has to be able to analyze
this data and then view his discoveries from multiple different perspectives such as
a marketing, financial, or accounting one. This is relevant to education as well
because you have to be able to learn and understand many concepts in the financial
world from not only a financial perspective, but a marketing and accounting
perspective as well. This means that when you are in are in a meeting with all the
different departments you will be able to present the data in such a way that all
these different groups can relate to and understand it. Thus, making
communication between these different departments clearer and more concise
which makes your company much more efficient. But, you also have to be well
versed in each of these disciplines otherwise this aforementioned goal of efficiency
is just a dream. That is why Mr. Sabharwal recommended to me that I should try to
double major in something such as finance and marketing, and that I should
definitely consider going back to graduate school after gaining a few years of work
experience. He suggested graduate school because he said that graduate school
helps you to open up your mind to view things from the many different perspectives
of the business world. In turn, you then can achieve this verbal literacy required to
be able to effectively communicate between the different disciplines and
specializations. Another benefit of graduate school that Mr. Sabharwal mentioned
was that it drastically improves your network and networking skills. He gave me a
few examples of how if there were an opening at his company he would reach out to
his network of friends that he gained through graduate school, and that they would
do the same thing for him. He stressed that having great networking skills can be
very beneficial to someone who is looking for a job. Also, he talked about how the
better your network is, the better chance you have of not only getting a job, but
getting a high-quality job. A few other skills he talked about were being versatile,
being able to work well a variety of people, constantly being well informed on
different industries and trends, and being well informed on the competition. He
talked about versatility in the sense that industries are ever-evolving and ever
innovating and that one has to be able to adapt to these things at a moment’s to
notice to stay ahead. Mr. Sabharwal also talked about how being able to work with a
variety of people in the sense of a variety of different personalities would be very
beneficial to helping someone move up in their career because it would establish
them as a leader. Constantly being well informed on different industries, trends,
and other companies helped him to keep his clients well informed about their
products and how to stay competitive and get ahead of the competition. Mr.
Sabharwal finished off the conversation by talking about how being well-rounded by
being knowledgeable in multiple areas is more valuable then having mastery in just
one area.
Alliance Data is a loyalty program, baking, and analytics company. Mr.
Sabharwal is on the strategy team for marketing, and their main overlying job is to
Acquire customers for the company’s credit card and loyalty programs. They also
are a marketing consulting team once they obtain the clients. For the marketing
part of his job, he not only consults for the clients, but also tries to find the right
market for that specific company to sell its product in. He also has to teach the
company how to compete on differentiation rather than price. Mr. Sabharwal also
clarified to me that these companies do have marketing departments of their own,
but oftentimes these marketing departments are not very big or aren’t as highly
trained as his company is. He also encourages his clients to get involved with
coalition marketing which he summed up as when multiple retailers combine their
separate loyalty programs into one large loyalty programs creating a more
differentiated loyalty platform. For the financial side of his job he has to project the
impact the previously mentioned loyalty programs will have, and he also has to look
at the return on investment of such programs. His job and company are in a
relatively newer field. The field is believed to be a growing field that has potential to
be in business for a very long time. It makes logical sense for a business like this to
exist because as a company it is cheaper to contract out for a professional team of
marketing consultants like Alliance Data then to try and go out, find, hire, and train
your own team of professional marketers. Alliance Data also has a banking and
credit card division and these markets more than likely will never decrease, but only
stay the same or increase. Mr. Sabharwal also explained to me that although his
main focus is in marketing there are positions for people who specialize in finance,
accounting, and data analysis. I did not ask about internships, but he did talk a little
bit about a tuition reimbursement program if someone wanted to go back and get
his or her masters.
I thought this interview was very helpful and informative. It helped to
broaden my view a little bit about what the job world is like because as a student
oftentimes I can be close-minded to certain things. This is mostly because I don’t
really have a lot of experience with them. One thing I learned about myself is that I
need to be more open to other areas within the field I’m interested in and not just
focus on one specific type of job.