1.Can you talk about yourself?

I’m finishing my Master in Accounting Financial Management & Control at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. I worked at a startup company during my first-year Master’s degree. Then I worked at Amazon as an intern and landed there as a full-time analyst. For my Bachelor, I studied business administration with an exchange program at Rotman. 

2.What were you doing at the startup?

The startup was at the very beginning stage, so like many startups, you have something that you focus the most on. But it varies on what the company needs. I started as an accountant at the beginning of 2019. I was responsible for moving all invoices to electronic databases. It was an internship for the first 6 months, and I analyzed its competitors and resellers. I started as an accountant but moved to an analyst position later. After 6 months, I got the full-time job and stayed there for one year. 

3.How do you find the time to do an internship? 

There’s a compulsory internship that lasts 6 months. During that period, there is no class and no exam. And for a short period of time, I managed to do both study and work. Since everything moved online since COVID, I was able to take the Amazon internship while taking online classes. 

4.What were you doing as a financial analyst at Amazon?

At Amazon, you have more work as an intern compared to a full-time analyst. Amazon treats an intern as a full-time employee from day one, expecting you to do the work of a full-time analyst. On top of that, you have projects that you have to deliver. I was bridging information, week over week information, month over month, just to see how the productivity of the building was going. I was also creating a project which was based on Power BI, a Microsoft data visualization tool. 

5.What kinds of questions operation managers might ask?

The most important thing in Amazon is your year plan. They are tracking how the building is going against the plan. We use lots of SQL to extract data and display it on Power BI or Excel. Amazon is quite against PowerPoint and uses more Word documents. A policy in Amazon is that anything that you can explain and have to present is written in a 6-page word document. During the first 10 minutes, everyone was going through the docs in silence.

6.What are PowerBI and SQL, and how do you learn to do them?

I learned Excel at school. But when you get into the job, you realize how big is the depth of the data you’re analyzing and how huge are the various databases. In Amazon, you are responsible for your own growth. SQL is like a coding language that you use to extract data from databases. I didn’t know it beforehand, and my manager helped me by sending me links for video tutorials and online courses. It took me 2-3 weeks to have a decent knowledge of SQL and start doing some work. We use Power BI that once you have gathered the data from an SQL query or from Excel, you can create visuals and you simplify the data in a comprehensible form. VBA are ways to automate MS Excel. There are lots of free resources for you to learn at Amazon, and some are compulsory. You can even do it in your pay time.

7.How was the schedule of your work?

It changed over time. In the beginning, you are not sure what ways you can do it most efficiently, so you are losing lots of time. The fullest time is Monday. It could be anything between 8 hours to 15 hours. During peak time, it can be very overwhelming. On usual weeks, it’s like 40 hours. And it’s very flexible.

8.What would you like to call your work?

It’s like a data analyst. Amazon is very focused on numbers, and you have to provide numbers to explain what you did. 

9.How do you transform yourself from a business student to a more technical-focused role? What advice would you like to give to students?

Don’t be scared about those numbers. You can learn a lot. And you know these skills are important to you even if you left Amazon in the future. And companies are definitely asking for this. Amazon is a great place to learn as a business student trying to do analyst roles. The limitations are your time and willingness to learn. It can get tough, but it’s a good opportunity.