In this article, Utkarsh Ram Tripathi, a student of IIM Bodh Gaya who interned at Electura in the Product Management Domain talks about his summer internship experience. Find out about how he prepared for the summer placements, his onboarding process, experiences & what his learnings are during this internship.
Hi, Tell us about how you got selected for this internship? Take us through the moment you realized you had got the internship.
It started from a post on LinkedIn which started about a requirement of a Product Intern for an ed-tech startup. I applied through the process to move ahead into it. Out of the numerous entries they shortlisted 40 people for the 1st round which was a task-based round.
I had recently grown my interest in PM and the task included few frameworks which have to be designed for the Electura app. I held my breath and started understanding the framework and managed to complete the task.
My hard work paid off and I was called upon for the second round which was a technical interview with a PM. The interview covered situational questions and he went from A to z of PM. Inspite of answering all the questions, I thought my performance was not that good.
The interviewer liked the interaction and I was promoted to the final round where I had an interaction with the founder. Everything went well there and I was asked to join in 2 days.
On joining the company as an intern, how has your onboarding experience been like?
On the joining day, we had an induction session where the founders and the session were present. I along with 4 other product Interns were introduced to each other. The founders gave a detailed description of their role in the organization and HR introduced us to our respective teams.
Later we were introduced to the other teammates as well. We were told about the app in detail and other documentation process was completed on the same day.
How has your interaction with the team members and colleagues been like? How will you make sure to leave the best impression on your supervisors by the end of the internship?
So we were divided into three teams and we're working on different features of the product. The interaction was good as we used to spend most of the time working together. We used to help each other with tasks and this helped to improve our understanding in such a short span.
Our supervisor was also very considerate and he arranged few sessions for us to understand the frameworks and approach that has to be used during work. I try to keep him in the loop and update him with all the updates regularly. I am clear with a fact that I am here to learn, if I learned properly I will be definitely able to impress my supervisor. For that, I used to ask out all my doubts and queries. This clarity helped me to improve the quality of work. I am sure this will impress the supervisor as well.
Tell us in brief, about the project you are currently working on and how is this project going to help the company?
As the organization I am working for is new and has been recently started there were few important features missing in the product. So I was assigned the notification feature of the mobile app and website.
I am responsible for designing the phase-wise implementation plan along with the priority of features. I work closely with UX designers and developers to implement my ideas in the product. This will help the product to grow with the required basic feature of notification.
I also performed competitor benchmarking and deconstruction of the app to create the satisfaction matrix. This will help the organization to realize the features we should prioritize and what is required in the market.
Give us an overview of how you prepared for your summer placement season.
I started with my CV as it is the first point of contact with the recruiter. I tried to optimize my CV and CV points in the best possible way. Quantification of my activities helped me to display the impact of the work which I did.
After this, I started working on my LinkedIn profile to keep it up to date. Many times recruiters do go through the LinkedIn profile of the candidates to check the activities. My next step to categorize my priorities of work interest and start looking for opportunities.
I started approaching recruiters hiring for PM interns and at the same time, I started approaching the current trends in the market with respect to PM. All these efforts collectively helped me to grab an interview and later an internship as well.
Based on your internship experience till now, what are some necessary skill sets one must be prepared with before starting an internship?
Team skills, One of the most important skills that I have observed in my internship was interacting with multiple teams to get the job done. One should start working in teams to get the best output here. This can be done while working in the clubs and the committees. This skill helps you to stand out from the bunch of other interns.
Other than this a habit of giving data facts in your suggestions can help you to increase the quality of work.
What are some new skills that you have developed while working in the company?
I have gained experience in preparing wireframes for the new designs. Few tools like Balsamiq and Draw were new and are often used in the industry. I have learned to work on Jira in detail from PM's point of view.
I worked on Product requirement Documents and prepared user journeys along with a priority matrix. I came across several frameworks being used in the industry such as CIRCLES and KANO
What are some of the challenges that you have faced in your internship and how have you overcome them?
I was handling a team of 5 developers and there were multiple incidents when the team had conflicts with respect to the amount of work being assigned to them. I counseled them individually and decided to break the work into small tasks. I kept on taking regular follow-ups to ensure the delivery of tasks on time.
Tell us about a situation where you were complemented by your Manager for your work.
Electura is a classroom management app and has various competitors as well. An intern is expected to take demos of the competitors to understand more about the features they are offering. We also used to do the same.
I took a demo from 2 competitors and documented the demos as well. Not only this, I made a thorough analysis of the extra features the competitors had and provided a priority matrix over the features which can be included in our product. This was appreciated as well applauded by my manager.
What have been your major learnings during the internship?
One of the major learning I had from the internship was the prioritization of tasks. As electura is a growing organization and we had a plethora of ideas to be implemented. It was very important for us a product manager understand and prioritize the tasks. I am sure this quality will help me in the long run as well.
Apart from this, the other major learning was handling teams. As a product manager, we had to coordinate on multiple verticals i.e. UX, Web frontend, Mobile frontend, backend, product team, etc. During this, we developed and improved our interpersonal skills which helped us to manage big teams as well. These learnings are going to amplify our career paths and will help us fetch better opportunities.
Tell us about your final presentation of the project to your manager in brief. What was the toughest question asked during the presentation and how did you answer it?
We presented multiple features that we worked during our internship. We tried to convey the impact that our features brought to the product.
Some advice that you would like to give to your juniors based on your internship experience.
I firmly believe that while exploring opportunities for internships one should always focus on the quality of work being offered irrespective of the brand of the organization. It is often observed that students go blind seeing bigger organizations and in the end, they realize that have wasted the important summer internship experience.
To the juniors, always focus on the quality of work being offered and it would boost your profile.
What was one of the best moments according to you during your internship?
In electura, we were getting feedback from the marketing team regarding the problem being faced by users to log-in/signup. To solve the issue, we introduced the functionality of "Booking a Demo". After the new feature was implemented the sales team reported an increase in qualified leads by 10%. This moment was precious as we made a permanent impact on the organization.
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TIMELINE, PROCESS AND RULES
- You don't need to register on InsideIIM.com or on the Kampus App to take part in Summer Saga Season 8. Simply share your experiences in the Digital Diary. To maintain standardisation, every Digital Diary will have a few questions that you'll need to answer.
- Access all the Digital Diaries forms from here: Digital Diary 1 | Digital Diary 2 | Digital Diary 3 | Digital Diary 4 | Digital Diary 5
- Your overall submission will be evaluated on the following parameters:
-Completeness: This depends on the number of Digital Diaries you have filled.
-Value Addition: This depends on how in-depth your answers have been. The score for this parameter will be given by our Judges.
-Reach: This depends on how many unique people have read your internship experience once we publish the article. We maintain fair play, we will publish all the articles on the same day, so that you can also share the same in your network.
- There is also a title called, ‘Campus With The Most Interesting Interns’ that will be awarded to (a) the campus that submits the maximum number of entries and (b) the campus that submits the best quality entries (based on the score given by our judges). The minimum entries from campus to be considered for this title is 10. So, if you want your campus to win the title then make sure your classmates and other students from your b school share their experiences in this year's Summer Saga Competition.
This competition is broadly divided into four categories. Refer to the table below to know more about prizes in each category.
Prize Money
|
Category
|
|
Banking and Finance
|
Sales, Marketing and General Management
|
Operations
|
HR, Consulting and Others
|
| 1st Prize |
₹ 10,000 |
₹ 10,000 |
₹ 10,000 |
₹ 10,000 |
| Runner Up |
₹ 5,000 |
₹ 5,000 |
₹ 5,000 |
₹ 5,000 |
The 1st Prize winner will also get a one-hour 1-on-1 career guidance session with an industry stalwart, from our panel of mentors in Kounsel.
ABOUT THE JUDGES
Every year, we have Campus Managers from some of the top companies (such as Reliance, HSBC, Flipkart, ABG, HUL, TAS, etc) judging the annual Summer Saga competition. We will release the details of the judges of Summer Saga Season 8 soon!
Check out the previous year's
winners!
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Maybe this will help you reflect and recall these two months as well (which can come in handy when appearing for interviews in the future). InsideIIM is the perfect platform to chronicle your experiences, your highs, your lows and everything in between.
So guys, what are you waiting for? Start writing! You have a voice. You have the experience. Make the best of it!