To all the internship aspirants out there who didn't get placed in the first few companies they tried. In fact, I was among the last few students who got placed for their summer internship. I am currently a second-year student of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Bangalore, pursuing my Post graduation Diploma in Management.
So my journey in NMIMS started around a year ago, and like most of the MBA students, I was really worried about my marks, my extracurricular activities, my current affairs knowledge, my technical knowledge. Since I already had a bachelor's degree in finance, I aspired to get my internship into a good finance company, but unlike my many other batchmates, I did not have work experience, neither was I a CA, CFA, CMA aspirant at that point of time. Companies really do get fascinated by the number of degree a candidate holds and the work experience that candidate had. I had none.
For me, the toughest part was to clear the Group Discussion Rounds, how do I Ancut my fellow batchmate and speak in between? I could never do that, due to which I used to get eliminated in the first round of the placement process. The news that some companies had their first round as aptitude test instead of GDs used to fill my heart with immense joy. I did clear the tests with good performance but then could not make it through PI. It was really difficult for me.
Later, I got through SREI Equipment Finance Ltd., where I worked in a fund management project in the treasury department of the company. During those 2 months, my mentor being an MBA himself just had one aim, to teach me something new everyday so that I can perform well in my final placements. Being an NBFC, SREI taught me a lot about the various guidelines that were passed by RBI for NBFCs, the restrictions and the advantages they had. I had many sub-mentors, each of them used to give my projects and helped me throughout. There were days when I had to keep re-doing the same work again and again for weeks, because the top management were not clear, but my mentor was always there with us, throughout every step, guiding us and making sure that we didn't over burden ourselves.
I learnt many practical application of many concepts that I had learnt in college. When my company issued NCDs, I was given the responsibility to keep a track of its sales as compared to that of the competitors it had in the industry. I called various banks, learnt how to assimilate data from the sanction letters, learnt various terms that I had no idea about, made case studies on various financial events that affected the NBFCs. Read about the RBI guidelines and made the changes required in the past reports of the company. but most importantly I learnt how to be patient and sit straight for 10 hours and work.