Giving Back and Keeping in Touch: Helping Those Like Himself

Armed with a master’s degree in biosystems engineering from the University of Minnesota, Amit Aggarwal, ’15 MBA, was working as a laboratory manager in Nashville. Wanting something different, he returned to Minnesota to earn a business degree focused in marketing and business strategy.

Now he’s in Washington, D.C. working in corporate strategy and innovation at Capital One Bank. He’s involved in many projects, including leading a team of analysts to identify growth opportunities for the commercial deposits business by 50 percent over the next three years.

While at Carlson, Aggarwal devoted a lot of time to expanding his network, believing that would be the best way to land in a career he was interested in. He got to know many professors and worked closely with the head of the Carlson Consulting Enterprise in terms of his recruiting strategy. “Initially, I was looking for connections around the area,” he says.

The GBCC was a big part of all this. Aggarwal attended all the career events that were organized by the center and went on many center-organized site visits. He also credits the center with keeping him motivated in terms of his job search. Its most valuable contribution, however, was offering Aggarwal help with his resume and cover letter. “Oftentimes it is hard to get feedback from someone who is not in the program or those who are not working in the role I’m looking for,” he says. “But they look at so many resumes and they have an idea of people coming from different backgrounds and how they can leverage their past experience in what they want to do moving forward. They can help tailor your resume for that.”

Since graduating and moving to D.C., he has kept in touch with Tomas and the GBCC in order to help other students like himself. “Sometimes they have candidates they want to refer to Capital One,” he says. “Since Capital One doesn’t have an official relationship with Carlson, I speak to the candidate and if I think they will be successful at Capital One, I will submit their resume to the recruiter and try to see if I can get them an interview. Sometimes I just connect with people. Other international students are having a hard time getting jobs, so I show them how I looked for jobs and how I succeeded.”