Internships are construed to be either of the two extremes, a sneak peak into the corporate life or an explicit experience of the corporate life. The common thread in both cases, is understanding if what we have learnt, are learning and will learn is going to thrive your passion in the field. My internship was for a period of 2 months in the Finance domain at Dell Technologies. Being an engineer switching career paths into the field of Finance, the thought of interning at Dell in a domain unfamiliar was intense. Instead, this opportunity helped in establishing a sense of clarity in me as to which vertical under Finance my career would be oriented in.
I was a part of the Financial Planning and Analysis team. Being given this role, it was overwhelming at the beginning to know I was walking into this knowledge rich field without prior experience. However, the transition into joining the team and contributing to it was extremely smooth. One of the most attractive aspect of interning at Dell, is the chance to work on live business projects and problems. You aren’t an outsider working on a separate project, but you become a part of the team and work alongside them on current business projects and bring your contribution to the table. The learnings from such an environment where you are exposed to live industry problems, eliminates the illusion of a short period internship and brings upon a sense of belonging and perspective to the bigger picture in hand. Another key take away they ensure you get is the ability to take ownership for what you do. Similar to how a chick would need to leave the nest to become independent, we need to leave our student nests to become professionals that can add value in the corporate world. Self-learning and incessant pushes to think outside the box, to believe in generating our own solutions to the problem which lead us to think like business leaders as opposed to spoon feeding us as students, is a remarkable aspect of the internship. You see yourself transform into someone beyond your defined horizon. The learnings are not limited to academia, but without a doubt, has a 360 degree character development beginning from networking to technical skill development and I completed my internship successfully thanks to this.
The preparation for the internship mainly revolved around strengthening my concepts and going beyond the classroom learnings to become familiar with as many concepts as possible. Imbibing knowledge does not have a threshold, but to build a taller building, our foundations need to be set right. In fact, one of the vital pillars of a successful career progression is getting our basics right. Being an engineer, we grew up listening to transistors, circuits and motors but not debits, credits and cash flows. So we might be a little new to this side of the world, but that does not mean we are at a disadvantage in any way. We need to think of ourselves as fresh sponges, ready to soak in as much knowledge as possible by grabbing all opportunities that come our way. The willingness to learn at all times and the ability to think smart is all that is needed to come out with flying colours.
All internships are incomplete without a dash of mentorship in it. I had the honour of having Mr. T R Vijay, Director of Financial Planning and Analysis, as my mentor during this internship. The sheer volume of knowledge and experience he held was an inspiration for me every day, to come to work prepared. Prepared to learn more, prepare to question more, prepared to contribute more, prepared to strive to be a better version of yourself. He never believed in spoon feeding , but to always prompt us to think harder and be creative, he always encouraged the team to be one, to think on our own, to explore more. He worked consciously to break the barrier of hesitance an intern might have while approaching him with any kind of a query or problem. He encouraged me to learn more, to reach out to whoever possible to have my quest for knowledge complete. He also pushed to build my social circle at the work place, an area I previously didn’t focus on. A true mentorship is when your whole work ecosystem is built, ranging from technical to social skills. The internship was what it was because of the opportunities he presented to learn more and contribute more to showcase my potential, and for this I am forever grateful !