The summer internship is one of the stepping stone for a first-year b-school student into the corporate life after a tryst with the management education for over a year.For the ease of the reader, I have divided my article into a series of most commonly asked questions about the summer saga and tried my best to answer them.What were you looking for in your internship? How many did you apply to before you got shortlisted? Being a student of Institute for Financial Management and Research, inclination towards finance was obvious. After completing my engineering and working for a couple of years, I thought it was time to give my career a new direction and what better than taking up Finance. CRISIL was among the early company that visited for Summer Placements. After gaining inputs from my batchmates and seniors, I had made up my mind that I wanted to get into this company as it was supposed to be one of the prime organisation for Finance. So, I worked hard to get through the selection process and finally made into CRISIL.How did you get selected for your internship? When did you join it?The selection criteria of a company are based on the discretion of the organisation. For CRISIL it was the same, they did not discretely mention their selection criteria. The college placement committee opened applications for the company and send the CV’s of the interested candidates. Among the students who applied, the ones selected by the company were invited to be a part of the further procedure. A total of 5 candidates were selected from IFMR for internship at their Chennai and Mumbai offices. I started my 2-month experience with CRISIL at their Mumbai office on 3rdof April.How was your internship experience?Having some prior work experience at Tata Consultancy Service, with the client being one of the top Analytical firm, it was a little easy to understand the functioning at CRISIL.There were three distinct phases during my internship where my team and I were expected to complete a specific set of work.Beginning – In the initial phase, we were asked to study the industry Database on Oil and Gas industry. My work involved finding and evaluating the important indicators and financial ratios in the database.Middle Period – In this stage I began working with the Lead Analyst to prepare databases for 5industries on the similar lines as that of Oil and Gas industry. This in turn would be used by the company for preparing industry dashboard to provide customised research inputs and conclusions for business planning, monitoring and decision-making.The Last Phase – In the concluding week of my internship, I was asked to analyse on one of the industry and present my views and findings on that. This presentation lasted for 1.5 hours and in which I was showered with a plethora of questions from the panel. From this exercise, what I gained was an inside-out view about that particular industry.What did you learn from your internship experience?After interning at CRISIL for a period of Two months, first and foremost I learned are office skills. Even though I had worked in a Multinational Company before this, but the experience here was completely different, which cannot be penned down but can only be experienced.Apart from that, academically, I garnered a sound understanding of ‘Importance of Financial Ratios and performance indicators in analysing industry trends’, as it was the crux of my internship.From the organisational perspective I gained an insight about the type of work this company was into and how the department I was working with, benefited the corporation.On a personal perspective, I bonded really well with my mentor and other team members as they helped me immensely in understanding the various economic and financial factors to look out for while analysing the industryDo you feel more ‘ready’ for job market?The work done by me at CRISIL, definitely makes me feel ready for the job market. Now I feel confident to work on credit reports since I have a fair idea about the important points and challenges that should be taken into consideration while preparing reports on any industry analysis.
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About the Author:Nitin DeshmukhAn Electronics and Communications Engineer with a belief in the phrase – ‘FOCUS – CAPTURE – DEVELOP’.and a great affection for the quote – “NOT WORKING!!! TAKE ANOTHER SHOT.”Second Year PGDM student at Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR)