I was an intern at Ascent Health & Wellness Solutions Pvt. Ltd. for my summer internship this year. It was an enriching experience to be a part of Ascent for those two months. Despite being a virtual internship & my first hands-on experience with the corporate, the learnings were awesome. I achieved the milestones of the project only because of proper guidance of my mentor. I will always be grateful towards him, for handling and guiding a fresher like me, towards practical implementation of concepts of procurement domain in the pharma industry.
Key Learnings and Takeaways From The Internship
My project was divided into two parts. The first part was completing spend analysis & preparing strategies for cost optimization for the packaging materials. The internship offered me deep insights about spend analysis and spend cube formation. It left me so surprised that a minute change in the spend cube can provide savings in our total spend of organisation. The other half was about finding new opportunities in the market for the procurement of these packaging materials. The next challenge was to search for such pilot projects which can be implemented in Ascent.
Learning from the 1st year of MBA?
For me, the 1st year of MBA was a year of learning and SCMHRD was a training centre. Being a fresher the B School work culture taught me the importance of having clarity about your strengths and daily targets to meet. 'Learning from your mistakes and also from the mistakes of others' has helped me evolve as a person and be ready for corporate culture. Being consistent and patient being in the first year was very crucial for me. The management programme provides a lot of opportunities to all of us, but choosing the right one at the right time plays an important role.
Preparation Strategy and Tips To Crack The Interview of Desired Company
Building a strong CV while going for summers is important, but being fully aware of whatever we have in our CV is more important. The strategy which I followed to crack the interview of Ascent was, finding alignment between our CV pointers with the company profile and the roles offered by them. Preparing for the possible HR questions based on my personality and strengths was also important. During that instant of time in interviews, having clarity about ourselves helps a lot. Also going through the profiles of companies and their industry is a must before going for any placement process. Being serious during the mock rounds before summers is a good platform for making improvements and learning for our mistakes.
Advice for Juniors
As per my experience, I would say it is going to be the best time of your life, especially the 1st semester. So take each day as an opportunity to learn. Give your 100% each day in whatever you are doing. As there will be a good mixer of all sorts of people career-wise as well the cultures. So it's a great platform for peer learning process. And last but not the least enjoy this time as much as you can. All the best !!!