Jatin Gupta

Indiana University, Kelley School of Business

“I look for getting perspectives about various things and gaining new experiences.”

Hometown: Jaipur, India

Fun Fact About Yourself: I went on a 15-day bike trip when I was 19 from my college town to Leh, which is in the northernmost part of India. The road there travels across one of the most difficult terrains in the world, including a mountain peak called the Khardung la Pass. I also play three musical instruments – the guitar, ukulele and clap box – love to cook spicy Indian food, make cocktails and watch stand-up comedy for hours.

Undergraduate School and Major: Bachelor of Electrical Engineering, Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, India.

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Google, Channels Data Analyst

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: At Google, I have worked with teams across the globe for solving problems in the recruiting domain using data. I have gotten opportunities to work with the leaders and help them take decisions to improve candidate experience (reduction in time to hire, seamless process, etc.) and aide in finding the best talent for the company. These employees further join various teams at Google and build products for the masses which are helping in making their life easier and better. I feel very accomplished having helped in hiring 3,500 such employees in the last three years.

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? Everyone that I have met has been very supportive and helpful. People really go out of their way to help the fellow classmates. Everyone is very driven and passionate about something and wants to bring a change in the world.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you? For me, it was mostly about the fit. Everything about Kelley fit for me, the people, the community and my future plans. I was impressed with how much emphasis Kelley puts toward offering the cutting edge in terms of education. Professors come down to the major cities in India and talk about the school and are very open to share things with a lot of transparency.

It wasn’t only academics though; the culture at Kelley was warm, unassuming, collaborative, and driven, which I felt through each interaction I had with alumni, students and faculty. It clicked for me though when I had the opportunity to talk to the people who visited the campus during their Experience Weekend. Right from the beginning of looking at Kelley, it became abundantly clear that this was the place for me. Kelley has a very active Consulting Club and the Entrepreneurship Club, which I’m quite interested in. Also, my interactions with everyone from Kelley made me feel like I was a part of this huge family.

What club or activity are you looking most forward to in business school? Consulting Club, Entrepreneurship club

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? I feel right now with the analytics growth and the ways in which consulting is getting influenced by Big Data, this is a right time for me to use my 4-5 years of analytics experience and add value to the shift in consulting industry. Also, with whatever I have learned in Analytics, I’m keen on building on it and leveraging my skills in other fields now, and an MBA will help me do that.

How did you decide if an MBA was worth the investment? It was by speaking to seniors who are working in the domain I aim for, and researching on the skill sets required to do things I intend to do. With all the research, I figured out an MBA is probably like a fine wine that becomes more valuable with age.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Duke University, Darden School of Business, Cornell University

How did you determine your fit at various schools? I looked at various factors while determining the fit:

• Class size and culture of the school
• Faculty
• Alumni
• Active clubs and overall university experience
• Employment statistics in my preferred domain

What was your defining moment and how did it shape who you are? I interned at Havells, one of India’s largest electrical appliances companies during my undergraduate years. I was working with the testing department, where my role was to understand the designs of various electrical switches and suggest changes to increase customer satisfaction. In the department, a 17-year-old boy was working as an assistant for the engineers to look after the machines. Hearing me speak in English, he approached me to ask if I could teach him basic conversational English. He realized that learning the language was very important for his growth and finding a new job. He was the only working member in a family of four and wanted to support his family better by finding a job with higher pay, which was proving to be difficult due to his lack of English-speaking skills.

Hence, I decided to dedicate two hours every day after my work to teach him at the factory for four months during my internship. On the final day of my internship, he thanked me and mentioned that I had made a huge difference in his life and that he is now confident of being able to continue learning the language on his own. Six months later, I got a call from him, and he said that he got a new job and was very excited about it. That was the day I realized how one person can make such a huge difference in someone’s life and how education is life changing.

What do you plan to do after you graduate? Joining a top-tier consulting firm (such as McKinsey or BCG) as an Associate.

Where do you see yourself in five years? Attaining a C-Suite position at a tech multinational.