Stanislas Barrault
Listen to the interview (approx. 1 hr, 13 min.) or download it.
Graduated in 2013 with a major in Music Business. Principal instrument: drums.
Position: Data Analyst/Consultant at Ekimetrics, a consulting firm that uses very sophisticated modeling and artificial intelligence to predict future sales for large businesses. Stanislas, working with two more senior people, develops these statistical models, checking in with the client, then puts together a large presentation. A typical project takes about 6 months and he’ll be working on 3-6 projects at any given moment.
Overview: Stanislas planned to do business, and initially came to Berklee thinking he’d study music for one year before studying business, but determined that Berklee’s Music Business program would provide adequate business education for him to be prepared for pursuing a graduate degree into a top business school. After graduating, Stanislas did a 5-month internship in New York at MGM, then returned home in early 2014 to Paris, France and spent several months studying extremely hard for the GMAT. Doing well, he was accepted into the Masters of Science in Managment program at ESSEC, considered the #2 business school in France. This 3 year program involved two 6-month internships, and is a bit more robust than a standard MBA.
After graduating, Stanislas was eager to improve his hard/technical skills, and had heard great things about Ekimetrics from family and friends. He spent several months taking MOOC courses to learn more statistics, then his brother, who worked at an affiliated company, passed in his resume while friends who worked them prepared him for interviews. He got the job in January, 2018, despite being one of extremely few people there with a business, rather than an engineering, degree.
You can see Stanislas’s LinkedIn profile here.
Choice Quotes: “Every day I’m out of my comfort zone and learning. I have problems to solve and find ways to solve them. It can be frustrating, but when I’m done solving it it’s very enjoyable. I’m working in a very cool environment where people are relaxed but ultra-smart. ”
“ESSEC is a highly ranked school, so when you have this on your CV you can get nearly any interview you want, though once you’re at the interview you get the same hard questions as everybody else.”
“At Berklee I was doing every day what I loved the most. It was amazing, opened me to a lot of subjects. And that focused practice on music helped me be rigorous, disciplined and able to work autonomously–all of which I have had to be both at grad school and in my job.”
“Our models have r-squared values over 99%, and p-value less than 0.01. That’s why it takes so much time to do–our models have around 100 variables and we’re checking every single variable, making sure we’re unbiased, and so forth.”
“You have to be very proactive about your future and very objective about your situation and what the job market is expecting from you. Pay attention to the real world, and the different industries where you might work. Find your strengths, understand that often it’s not enough and you need to specialize further and differentiate yourself. Ask yourself what you’er going to do after graduation starting in your very first year at Berklee.”
See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.