The Summer Internship season is round the corner and it is important that you have all the tools and skills to ace your Summer Internships. In the first part of our “Ace Your Summer Internship” series with
Hari Subramanian (Former Senior HR Business Partner At Amazon India, XLRI Co' 2011), we look at 5 things one needs to keep in mind before starting their Summer Internship.
1) Research your organization and industry: Understand how your summer internship organization makes revenue, what is their business model, who are their customers/clients, who are their key competitors, what are the industry opportunities and challenges, what is the organization’s growth rate, who are the key leaders in top management. Go through their website, investor relations pages (in the case of listed organizations), recent news articles. Do a SWOT analysis of the industry. Analyse industry reports. Note down questions you have on any of these areas. Some of them could be asked during induction.
How does this help? Thorough research of your organization and industry helps you build context and develop perspective around your summer project, which in turn helps you in preparing your project plan.
2) Develop various functional skill sets required for your project: Most projects involve a combination of primary and secondary research followed by analysis. Depending on your functional specialization and past projects given by the organization (in case your project details have not yet been shared), list down the top skillsets needed to execute the project and build your skills through academic courses and certifications. For example, most marketing projects will have a strong element of consumer research. Therefore, it is important to have sound knowledge of market research methods, sampling techniques, analytical tools, social media engagement metrics Generally, your academic curriculum covers these in your first year. In cases, where this doesn’t happen, it is best to do certifications/online courses in some of these areas.
How does this help? Working on these skillsets in advance helps you save a lot of time during your actual internship and this saved time can be utilized to do more project work like additional data collection, data analysis etc. Think of it as an opportunity cost.
3) Build your Network: Start reaching out on Linkedin and other social platforms with key people related to your project. Check if there are alums who are in the same organization or have worked there. Reach out to them to get an understanding of the organization’s culture, current business priorities, kind of projects, skill sets required etc.
How does this help? During the course of your project, if you get stuck and want some informal feedback/help/perspective, these people may be able to mentor you and help you work your way out.
4) Strengthen your Presentation skills: This is an extremely important skill set in order to ace your summer internship. Practice creating visually appealing PowerPoint slides through your group projects, case study contests etc. Practice delivery of these slides. Volunteer to present more during your term 3 academic project groups, case study contest groups etc. Try using the “story-telling method” of presentation delivery. Deliberate practice is the best way to master your presentation skills.
How does this help? Like it or not, presenting your work well will be the differentiator between two projects of equally high-quality work. Preparing for this well in advance will go a long way in building your confidence in this important aspect.
5) Asking the right questions: In most projects, the solutions to solving challenging and complex problems start by asking the right questions. Develop this habit of asking the right questions during your academic term projects by using techniques like 5 -why, fishbone, root-cause-analysis to help you develop this area. For your project, you could start with questions like “why is my project important to the organization? What problem/challenge/opportunity is it trying to address? What value/perspective will an intern add to this project?”
How does this help? Asking the right questions is an important skill-set which will help you go a long way not only in your internship, but throughout your corporate career. This is extremely critical as you will find a lot of times where things are not going as per project plan due to uncontrollable factors, external dynamics etc. and the only way to keep moving forward is by asking the right questions.
Working on these 5 important areas will help you ace your summer internship. In the next parts of our “Ace your Summer Internship Series”, we will talk about mid-project reviews and how to get a PPO. All the best for your Summer Internship.
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.
The
Round Zero of Summer Saga S09 is now live! In this round, you just need to put up your interview experience in detail. There will be three more small rounds during your internship period.
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 is soon to release his first book “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)