The Summer Internship season has kicked off and it is important that you have all the tools and hacks to ace your Summer Internships. In the third part of our “Ace Your Summer Internship” series with
Hari Subramanian (Former Senior HR Business Partner At Amazon India, XLRI Co' 2011, Author of
“Hilarious MBA Memoirs"), we look at how to prepare for mid-project review presentations and strengthen your chances of getting a PPO.
1) Allocate 30% time for feedback/inputs/Q&A: If you have a 30-minute slot, ensure you have at least 10 minutes for feedback/inputs from your guide and Q&A. Do not consume the entire time slot just for presentation. Use the 70-30-time rule for presentation and Q&A. At least 30% of your allotted time should be used for feedback/inputs/Q&A. Manage your content and time accordingly. Time your presentation to see if you are following this thumb rule.
2) Begin with a status check: At the beginning of your mid-project review presentation, re-state your project objective, major milestones for your project and provide a status-check on milestones completed and milestones pending. This ensures you are setting the right expectations upfront and time is not wasted on these questions while you present.
3) Summarize your research methodology: Give a basic snapshot of the extent of research conducted including number of stakeholders interviewed, methodology, links to questionnaires etc, along with status of pending research work if any.
4) Capture attention with a story/anecdote from your research: Stories/anecdotes are a great way of capturing the attention of your audience so try to begin with a sharp anecdote/story which you encountered during your message and bring out the key message. You could start with something like this “I wanted to share a very interesting anecdote when I visited the village XYZ as part of my market research. Here, I was speaking to a 45-year-old farmer and I was intrigued by his purchase behavior….”
5) Summarize your key insights: Using the anecdote as a hook
, provide a crisp summary of the key insights which you have generated. It is important to focus on the big insights and devote appropriate time to them rather than spending equal time on each and every insight.
6) Next Steps with timelines: Provide your broad-level action plan for the next 30 days and how you plan to achieve all the pending milestones.
7) Seek inputs/feedback: Have a filler slide titled “feedback/inputs” and note down all the inputs received.
8) Keep all Backup data handy: Ensure your main presentation is not more than 15 slides and keep everything else in backup after the “Thank You” slide so that you can refer to them when asked.
Time management is extremely critical. The purpose of a mid-project review is to not only showcase your work but also to get as much input from your guide so that you understand their perspective, which is essential to shape your final project outcome.
Mid-project reviews are a great way to get a pulse check and do course correction wherever required. In the next part of our “Ace your Summer Internship” Series, we will look at final presentations. All the best for your summer internships.
Presenting Summer Saga S09 - Are You The Best Summer Intern From The Class Of 2023?
InsideIIM presents the 9th Season of Summer Saga where you can share your bizarre, enriching, a-little-difficult-yet-fun experiences with everyone and win prizes for the same. Your internship journey needs to be accounted for, and here's your opportunity to share your internship experience with your peers, other b-school students, campus recruiters from different firms, InsideIIM users, and most importantly, your juniors.
Stay tuned for the announcements on the timeline, prize money and judges :)
About The Author
Hari Subramanian is an XLRI 2011 alumnus, with 10+ years of experience in business and HR roles, in diverse organizations like Mahindra & Amazon. He is currently based out of the U.K and the author of “Hilarious MBA Memoirs”.
The book "Hilarious MBA Memoirs" is a funny, self-deprecating, autobiographical satire on the life of an XLRI MBA grad through childhood, college, and corporate days. The book chronicles funny incidents throughout the protagonist's life right from the rote learning methodology in childhood, to the struggle in his MBA days (making a CV, fish-market group discussions, case study contests fumbled, social media related anecdotes, summer internship fiasco, date nights gone wrong, etc).