Summer Internship Experience At EY India

Having worked in HR Consulting before I was willing to take the plunge back in and give it a second shot as interning under the ‘Summer Intern’ tag is more challenging - let’s say herculean even and to prepare for it is even more of a task as one must encompass all avenues. My strategy was a bit different since I’m not a big reader, I evaded newspaper articles and clippings, however, stuck majestically to relevant Podcasts and Videos because I feel when you hear two or more people converse on a topic, you gain insights from an array of different opinions as opposed to reading similarly written articles, this adept with latest and non-conventional trends in your area of expertise will provide you with a solid pedestal. My internship began like any other internship with benchmarking and inculcating best practices, gauging the gaps, and providing solutions. The main part began when I had to create assessment tools - In-Basket Exercises based on a set of different competencies. I went onto create 48 of them, now that may seem like a small number but in fact took me three weeks to cover up because the challenge thrown at me(for which I dug deep into my creativity), was that each caselet had to be created from scratch, each situation innovated from imagination and each answer mapped to numerous behavioural output to confuse the candidate appearing for these assessments. Now not only are you dwelling deep into an expressive mindset but logically understanding how two very similar options can be mapped to completely different behaviours but sound the same with a thin line of difference. It was tedious and exciting. What I learned is that analytical or data-driven work is not the only exhaustive and thankful job, no. Any task given in an internship will always have a catch to it, and if that is tethered down and understood, then it is achievable. Always learn to read between the lines, no project is ever JUST to build a set of caselets or benchmarking, there’s an art to even the simplest sounding conundrums. MBA (1st year) taught us how to be meticulous about the little things and how winding your clock, sticking by it with every minute, displaying punctuality is an essential course of action, and as they say a stitch in time, saves nine; this gets imparted in you with great depth. An MBA is a place where you make solid life long connections, have immense fun, and derive little joys from something as simple as sitting on the backbench and playing tic-tac-toe during those slow mornings! It's that time of your life where you milk each and every student experience the college throws at you. Never forget to frolic with your pals and imbibe all you can from your professors. One advice I’d like to give to the next incoming batch would be simple, just two things:

1. Don’t hassle yourself with being the best, polish your personality, not your arrogance
2. Build relationships with your peers and seniors - this comes handy manifold at the direst of times.

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