Interview with Keertana Anandraj, Research Associate at Franklin Templeton Investments
This week, we had the opportunity to talk with Keertana Anandraj, a Research Associate at Franklin Templeton Investments. Keertana is a 2018 graduate from Wellesley, where she majored in Math and Economics.
We talked to Keertana about her role at Franklin Templeton, what research associates do, why her job is a great fit for her, and how Wellesley students can position themselves to do well in the interview and onboarding process for firms like Franklin Templeton.
What did you study at Wellesley and what you are doing now?
Keertana: Hi, my name is Keertana Anandraj. I graduated in the Class of 2018 as a Math and Economics double major at Wellesley. Right now, I work on Franklin Templeton’s Global Macro Team. We are composed of about 25 people in total. The breakdown is that about half of the team is composed of traders and the other half work on research and there are two portfolio managers as well. I am on the research team which is right now is composed of 3 research associates, like me, who are recent college grads and four research analysts who are Ph.D. economists. The analysts each cover a region of the world, essentially, and each associate gets assigned an analyst to work with. I have been covering Eastern Europe since I started. What my job entails is macroeconomic research on these countries. I do a lot of forecasting, regressions, and a brief update on politics, too. We’ve had a lot of different types of majors be very successful in this position, like math, economics, political science, and even history. It’s definitely a job that uses a lot of what I learned at Wellesley daily, which I don’t think is something that’s true for most alums.
What does your research entail and what does your day to day life look like?
Keertana: My team and I have meetings every morning to report on any latest statistical news or updates from our countries. In order to track that, we have Bloomberg terminals. We also have a couple of other services that essentially act as economic calendars. For instance, this morning the Russian Central Bank cut their interest rates. I came into work, logged into the Bloomberg terminal, and that was one of the first things that I saw.
Typically, we have a quarterly calendar of our upcoming reports and when they are due. In the last quarter, I had 4 reports due, so I had to plan out my day and give adequate time to each country and each report. The research is very self-driven, but we have a lot of resources, including a librarian who can help us obtain research that is being put out by banks. Other than that, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank also publishes reports. A big chunk of the reports that I create, though, are analyses that we run ourselves using Stata or E-Views.
How did you discover the company and what made you decide to start your career here?
Keertana: I was really interested in international macroeconomics and during my senior year I took several of these courses. I knew that I wanted a role that entailed the research components I’ve already spoken about. I also wanted something that would give me the opportunity to interact with mentors but expand out of the academic bubble. In my current role, we interact a lot with clients, banks, and even central bank governors which is an opportunity that drove me to seek out this position. Additionally, I felt well-prepared for the presentation components of the job after participating in the Tanner and Ruhlman Conferences as well as fulfilling presentation requirements in the math and economics majors. I mainly discovered this position through another college’s Handshake as well as research online. Now, I make sure that it’s on the Wellesley Handshake. I hadn’t really known about Franklin Templeton as a company much, though. They do ads for Wimbledon, which I watch, which is how I recognized the name, but I wouldn’t have come across the job posting without Googling the types of things I was interested in.
What background or skills make someone successful in this role?
Keertana: I definitely think that someone who is very confident speaking will do well. My interview was very different from other interviews I had done for consulting and investment banking firms. For my interview, I had to prepare a 15–30 minute presentation for our bosses. Afterward, I felt like I nailed it because I felt so comfortable presenting. I also had a writing assignment and multiple individual interviews with different people on the team, but the presentation component was the most important part. I think someone who feels very comfortable presenting and being in front of the room will do well.
Also, this job is unique. Even though I am working with Ph.D. economists, I am responsible for the countries I cover. The Ph.D. economist does not jump in or interfere with my research process or presentation unless I ask for help. If you are ready to take ownership of your own projects, I think this is a really great position. In a lot of other jobs, you help other people and they take ownership even though you are doing a lot of the work behind the scenes. That is not the case here. They will put you on the spot and ask you questions about every little thing. Every detail can be nitpicked on so that they can understand what is happening in the country and see if this is a good investment decision for us to make and to put in the portfolio. If that is the type of work you are ready to do, then I think this is a really good role for you to be in.
Were there any specific classes that you took that help you? What do you find challenging about the on-boarding process?
Keertana: I have a Math and Economics background, and because of that, I was given a lot of side data analytics projects. For me, what was helpful was definitely Econometrics. I took International Macroeconomics with Professor Joyce, International Finance with Professor Weerapana, and other Development Economics courses with Professor Shastry. Having all this background in the international realm helped me analyze my countries. However, the research associates working with me have a very different background — one majored in Political Science and Arabic, and the other one studied History. Everyone is able to bring his/her own skillset to the position, and the team is good at creating projects that you can contribute to and are passionate about.
What was the onboarding process like?
Keertana: In terms of onboarding, the company hires about 1 new research associate each year, and there wasn’t any extensive training over the summer. There was some online-training involved once I joined, but mostly the firm wants to help the new employee settle in. You have about are 3–4 months before your first presentation, during which I got to know the country I was analyzing, the analysts I was working with, and the rest of the team. We went on a team off-site to Colombia within the first 2 months, too, which is very different from what most of my friends experienced. Overall, the company wants to give you time to settle in and adjust to the new routine of working before hitting you with any deliverables.
What did you do in the previous summers?
Keertana: I did not have any finance experience during these summers. I knew I was going to be a mathematics major by the second semester of my first year, but I wasn’t sure if I want to pursue it long-term in graduate school. My first summer I did a research internship sponsored by the NSF, and I did research with a professor at a university in South Carolina, and later presented that research in a math conference the following year in Seattle. It was an incredible experience and it was all-expenses-paid, but I also realized that I didn’t want to do academic research, so this experience did not really lead me to my current role. But the summer before my senior year, I interned in Washington D.C., at the Federal Communications Commission. They had a small in-house consulting group called the Office of Strategic Planning, which has a team of about 10 people. They take 2 interns every summer. As interns, we assist on any project that the team is working on and the project that summer was on international broadband, so I wound up doing a lot of research on other countries. I also used Stata to come up with different charts and analyses that they needed. I grew more confident in using Stata out of an ECON 203 setting and it definitely taught me that I like these aspects of research and that I liked working in a small team. But I also learned that I did not love working in government because things are slow-paced. I was ready for more work than what was available to me. So, I took aspects of that, such as working in a smaller team, doing research, and applying some of the things I learned in class, and decided I wanted to find that in the private sector. That is what led me to my senior year search and allowed me to find my job.
I also think my team values the kind of perspective that is not like everyone else. They were interested in my background studying abroad, learning other languages, pushing myself to go out of comfort zones, etc., which is what a lot of Wellesley students happen to do.
What do you like to do outside of work?
Keertana: I live in San Francisco, which is a beautiful, incredible city. Outside of work, I love working out and eating — there is a lot of good food in San Francisco! I am from the East Coast, and I feel that the West Coast/San Francisco culture is very much picnicking, or just being outdoors in parks, so I go on many picnics with my friends. I enjoy volunteering — I volunteer with a number of organizations outside of work. There is an amazing work-life balance with my job, which is not true for most finance jobs but this has allowed me to give back to the community and meet other young professionals in the city through volunteering. I also love living in the Bay Area because I can go to the beach or hiking on the weekends. There are a lot of perks to living in this area!
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