Sonya Dutta Choudhury's Blog, page 2

Preparing for placements comes as a part of the IIM package, and I was thrown into it as soon I started business school. Not only did I have to tackle forms, mock interviews, and group discussion, I also had the task of finding the appropriate placement outfit. As trivial as it may sound, how you dress can actually make or break your interview.

I had attended placement before after I completed my graduate degree at Sardar Patel Institute of Technology. There I had worn a basic shirt and trous...

As a young girl, Jagruti Jaykar carried her sketchbook everywhere. When she joined college, she would take it with her on the long train journey from her home in Virar to her college in Mumbai and sketch people and places around her. “I didn’t really know then that I could make my hobby into my career,” says Jaykar. Today the 30 year old designer works at ad agency Creativeland Asia and works on designing websites 7 apps for Godrej, for Benetton and even for the Government of India .

How she...

Danny Kahnemann and Amos Tversky have changed the world as we know it . The two were the first to establish that people don’t make decisions based on hard data. Instead human beings rely  on comparisons as well as swift simulations of the future ( what will happen if I decide thus- how much will might I regret it – how attractive will the other option be )  These rules of thumb work – except for when they don’t – which happens quite often !

I came to Kahnemann late in life . By the time I got...

If you ever wondered what  the secrets to Cleopatra’s power were , you may find the answers in the biographies of this famous Egyptian queen . I’ve been reading Stacy Schiff’s biography of Cleopatra  , a meticulously researched story of this cult queen who lived  24 centuries ago in the city of Alexandria. There are many reasons for how Cleopatra became the legend she is today. Some were easy lessons to take inspiration from , the others harder! The Easy Lessons 1. Be an orator – C...

Yes, foreign internships have a cost and require careful planning, but it’s time Indian students started pursuing them more aggressively. After all, there is nothing quite like an internship to find out more about people and places.

 Here are five ways to ensure that you don’t miss out on that international internship experience –

Join AIESEC, the international organization for students which offers internship programmes with companies around the world. Check free listings on sites such as...

In a large room , on the first floor of North Block in the Ministry of Finance, sits Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor, to the Government of India. It’s cool inside with the air-conditioning and the high ceilings, even though its mid May. Outside  the New Delhi skies are blazing with the mercury  at 40 degrees . Bright blue skies, with no traces of the storm clouds that will gather almost a month later , as Dr. Subramanian, the economist who left Washington to  join the Government of...

Jack Ma , the founder of the Alibaba group has never been a techie . He was bad at maths, failing twice in high school and he got his first computer at 33 . Ma’s route to becoming the  billionaire founder of one of the world ’s largest tech companies was through English . When Jack Ma was a teenager, growing up in the Chinese province of Hangzhou , he used to cycle to the Shangrila hotel to speak to foreigners and thus improve his english .  Being fluent in English gave the young Chinese his...

My grandfather would be 115 years old today. To celebrate, I’m re-reading his autobiography Memory’s Gay Chariot. He was a judge in the Indian Civil Service. In 1949 he judged the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi. But he had mixed feelings about his career. In his autobiography, he explains why .

“It was the beginning of 1921, during my second term at  Cambridge that I came upon a group of Indian students excitedly discussing the pros and cons of joining the I.C.S. In the centre of the group st...