Doing Internships The Bajaj Auto Way | Ft. Diptarka Ghosh Hajra

I have always been an automobile fan-boy. When my dad bought his first bike, a Bajaj Platina, naturally I was intrigued. I loved going with my dad to the workshops to get the bike serviced, sitting there, looking around at the Pulsars and Avengers, and be amazed. Even during my undergraduate college placement days, I misread the deadline and couldn't apply for Bajaj Auto. So I can very well say that I share a long history with Bajaj Auto and it has always been kind of a unicorn to me. I wanted to work for them, but never got a chance. So, when the placement committee of IMT Ghaziabad declared that Bajaj Auto was coming to campus for recruitment, it sure felt like Déjà vu. I put in all my efforts to research about the company in the limited time I had (as the recruiters were scheduled to come in 2 days). I asked my seniors, who had interned in the company for tips as well. I am not exaggerating when I say that I couldn't sleep the night before the date of recruitment.

The day:
The Pre-placement talk was scheduled to be at 7:00 AM with the dress code as smart casuals. The talk happened where the company HRs gave us an inside view of how it's like to work for the World's Favorite Indian, and I couldn't help but get even more intrigued seeing all of that. Well, in my defence, I am a fresher, and it was one of my first pre-placement talks, that also, from a company where I have wanted to work since my childhood.

The Interview Process:
The interview process had three rounds. The First round was a group exercise where we were divided into groups and given a situation. To be honest, the only preparation I had for this was from the personality development programs, by the coaching centre, that are done before the B-school interviews happen. I used my knowledge of motorcycles and tried my level best to be a team player. After the round, we went back to our classes. About an hour later the list for the further rounds came and my name was in it.

Delighted, I hurried back to the building where placement processes were being held. The second round was an extensive psychometric test, which was followed by the third and the most important round: the personal interview round. Was I nervous? 101%. I had made it this far, and my internship offer letter was just one interview away, so yes, I was pretty nervous. I entered the interview room, and Mr Mukund Madhav, head of Talent Acquisition at Bajaj Auto Ltd, greeted me with a smile. I realised, with the limited preparation I had, my best bet would be to be myself, and I did. I answered everything that was asked of me, from the patent application that I filed during my undergraduate to my change of interests from Engineering to MBA.

The News:
Fast forward a couple of days and four of us were called to the placement office to inform that we were selected for the Octane Internship program at Bajaj Auto. Believe me when I say this, that very moment, that very day, I was the happiest guy on Earth.

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The Internship Experience

It was the month of March when Bajaj Auto announced that there will be a delay in the starting of our internships, because Pune, the headquarters of Bajaj Auto Ltd. (BAL) was declared a hotspot of COVID - 19. It was then that the fear struck me, the fear of uncertainty, the fear of my internship getting cancelled. Times like those were uncertain where it was impossible to know the trajectory of the pandemic. Even in those times of distress, Bajaj Auto tried it's level best to give the best possible internship experience to its interns, and that spoke volumes about the organisation culture of the company. Finally, as the pandemic was in no mood to recede, after a couple of delaying, the company decided to make the internship a work-from-home online internship with a reduced duration of 6 weeks.

However, the silver lining here, was that I was given a project in one of my favourite business units of Bajaj, The Probiking business unit which handled KTM and Husqvarna! I was to develop a tool to analyse customer feedback. The entire duration of 6 weeks was nothing less than I imaged. Everyone was ready to help whenever I needed it. It was an honour to work under a great mentor, Mr Prashant G. Pingle and an actual friend, philosopher and guide, Mr Rahul V. Havaldar. It's hard not to feel a sense of belonging to the company, where every employee (from blue collars to the white collars) is valued for their contributions to make the company better than what it was yesterday.

Finally, six weeks, countless workshop visits, interacting and working with different people, and two reviews later, my beautiful journey at Bajaj Auto came to an end. It felt like departing from one's own family. Saying goodbyes to all the workshop employees, the ASM, my mentor, guide and even our HR, Medhavi Ma'am, who was nothing less than a lighthouse for whenever we got lost in the sea of confusion and uncertainty.

A few days later, a parcel arrived at my door from Bajaj Auto, with all the goodies that they had planned of giving us at our onboarding in Pune. These little things speak volumes about a company. They say a company is as good as it's employees. No wonder #TheWorldsFavoriteIndian is at the top of the mountain!