As I embarked on my MBA Journey, the first week at college made me realise how leisurely and laidback my life had been thus far. This was despite the fact that I was working in one of the Big 4s and had spent 12- 16 hours every day at the office for months. But MBA was markedly different from anything and everything that I had experienced in life.
With this, it dawned upon me that the MBA was probably the most stressful, hectic and fast-paced course one could get into. And here I was, grappling with assignments and submissions and whatnot.
By the time I settled in the routine and could figure out the direction I was headed in, I found myself in the middle of my Summer Internship Placements. Since I was also a member of the placement committee (and a fully devoted one at that), I would hardly get time to actually prepare for my own placements. But it was about time, and I was left with no choice but to participate as the companies started to come in.
Five candidates were shortlisted from a pool of 200 students based on the resumes, and fortunately, I was one of them.
The day of the placement arrived, and I couldn’t have been less prepared. The first round was a technical interview, packed with questions on guesstimates, basic logical reasoning and problem-solving abilities. It also featured Regression and other statistical concepts which I could, fortunately, answer, owing to the exams which had just gone by.
Two out of five progressed to the HR round. It went on for thirty minutes. When the results came, I was in.
I sat for two companies before I actually made it to Shopclues, but I was extremely happy with it. Firstly, because the e-commerce sector attracted me and the role seemed interesting, and secondly, because the location was Delhi (my preferred location for anything in life).
The internship was to last 9 weeks, and I was extremely excited as I landed in Delhi.
As I entered the Shopclues office on 1
st April, there were 24 other interns joining in with me. They were all from different B- Schools ranging from IIM-L and FMS to IMT Ghaziabad.
Since I was the only one selected from my college, it was a relief to see the co-interns who would make for a good company in the office.
The first day comprised of orientation and lunch from the company’s end. We were then assigned to different teams based on our resumes and prior experience. To my delight, I was put in the Marketing team - it was exactly what I'd wanted from this stint.
I got down to work on the second day and was assigned four mini-projects - all of which dealt with Digital Marketing.
The biggest of the four was called “To calculate the Hourly Spends Trend on Ads via Facebook and Google Ads”. The project needed me to develop a model that could predict the Hourly Spends Trend for ShopClues' Social Media Platforms. It took me three weeks to collate all the data from various sites and actually finishing the model. My model turned out to be much better than my expectations, and the company agreed - I was told it'd be implemented as a part of one of ShopClues' bigger projects. I couldn’t be happier.
The second month had me working on the other three projects. I also ended up developing social media campaigns for the company and was delighted to see the results and responses on them.
It was certainly an interesting experience. In these two months, I realised that I'd come to admire the culture of the company. Flexible timings, Work From Home, team lunches and parties - there was a lot to love and appreciate. Plus, the founders - Radhika Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi were very approachable right from the very first day. All of us had the liberty to walk up to them and discuss new ideas and challenges.
Not to forget, I ended up making some good friends from the bunch of co-interns that I met there. We would regularly sit for KT sessions and it was good to be around people from different backgrounds and geographies.
One of the most important parts of my internship though was my Mentor. Responsible for all of ShopClues' Social Media Marketing, he was a great support to me throughout my internship. Our daily sessions involved him telling me about the requirements, and challenging me to come up with original ideas and solutions. He also helped me hone my Excel skills, among many other things. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to finish my projects the way I did, had it not been for his support.