At the end of my summer internship, I was asked during my final review that how my summer internship experience was. To summarise the whole internship experience, I used three words which majorly impacted my experience. These three words are the
Credo, People & Learning.
As soon as the word Credo strikes ears, the name of
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) comes to mind because of the significance it holds for J&J. I interned in the supply chain domain of J&J. The company has three sectors i.e. Medical devices, Consumer division, and the Pharma division. I was part of the medical devices division.
For smooth joining of the interns, J&J provided an onboarding app which had answers to all the questions of interns like information about the company, what to wear at work, contact of fellow interns etc. The internship started from 2
nd April and during the first week, interns of all domains had to report in head office, Mumbai for induction. The first day itself left our expectations far behind in terms of excitement. In the first session, we were told that why credo is so much important for J&J and each aspect of credo was explained word for word in a lucid manner. During my internship, I came to know that how deep credo is imbibed in J&J’s culture. Even the workers at the shop floor know the importance of their work and value that manufactured products hold for consumers. At the end of the first day, we had a surprise planned. To lighten up the dull faces of interns after day-long introductory sessions about various divisions and departments of J&J, a Zumba session was organized. The high energy session by the Zumba trainer drenched all of us in sweat in an AC room and brought ear to ear smile on everybody’s face.
Just like its consumer-centric products, J&J is also known for its CSR activities. All the interns got the opportunity to work a bit for the society. We were taken to an institution which takes care of specially-abled children. We got the hands-on experience of organic farming and spent quality time with the specially-abled children.
After the induction week, interns were sent to their respective locations. My location was Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. The fun week was over and real work had to be started. The journey from Mumbai to Baddi was full of anxious thoughts. At least in Mumbai, there were fellow interns, but here in Baddi, I was the lone intern in Medical division. But just like a broken glass, all my fears were shattered away on the first day itself in Baddi. The amiable people with a genuine smile on their face, assuring me of all possible assistance during the internship, vanished away the anxiety and brought back the excitement and confidence. My enthusiasm for doing some sincere work for the organization through the projects assigned to me reached another level because of the constant support and guidance provided by my mentor and exciting learning opportunities which the project and the organization provided.
One of the things which motivate me a lot is to see the direct impact of my work. This is what happened when I worked on the assigned projects in J&J. The findings of the project and the work which I did directly impact the day to day working of the plant. Projects provided to me were such that I had to collect information from almost all departments and understand the working of the whole supply chain i.e. from suppliers to consumers. This helped me in getting holistic learning about the end to end supply chain of the organization. Besides, many a time I had to connect with people in other plants and sectors of J&J as well. This increased the scope of my learning. Although I interned in Medical devices plant, I got the opportunity to visit and learn about consumer division as well.
Time to time connect with senior leadership, encouraging interns to build a network, encouraging learning through meaningful project work and making the interns to come out of their comfort zone to do something creative are some of the things in J&J which made my internship a rich source of learning along with fun activities. Just like two months duration of the internship, final review was also full of excitement. We were told to make a video of our internship experience and there were some masterpieces made by interns. We were also told to present our projects in as creative manner as possible to explain it to people in head office. After the presentation, a party was thrown at us and that was one hell of a party.
I still remember the two things which were told to us by the senior leadership in J&J during the initial days i.e. to have such an experience during the internship that you remember it for a lifetime and to make as many friends as possible during these two months. I must say that interning with J&J was one of the best experiences of my life.