The summer in April 2018 was the warmest in years. Amidst sweat and dry wind, there was to be an oasis of hope in General Electric’s (GE) leadership internship program, which was shortly to begin. The ‘Summer Internship’, as I dubbed it, was an experience like never before, contributing immensely to my knowledge and perspective and changing me as a person. From making a new home in a strange city, familiarising with Bangalore’s travelling routes (being visually challenged), coping with challenging projects/tasks, to socialising with new folks and partying on weekends, an initial struggle quickly turned into an intimate and ultimately uplifting experience of two months.
It is often said that Management Education is not an end goal but means to a thriving career. Amongst all, a summer internship is the stepping stone of successful professional career of each management student’s life. By this time, our understanding capability blooms with myriads of experience and learning both on professional and personal fronts.
Darwinist as it may sound, the fierce competition with the most vibrant and best ‘brains’ and then finally securing a seat in one of India’s best management schools is certainly a big triumph. Nevertheless, this jubilant moment couldn’t last long. Soon, summer internship placements began with surmounting pressure and finally my never-say-die attitude and undying positivity led me to get selected in one of the most vibrant and constantly growing 125-year-old startup organisation namely GE i.e. General Electric.
Internship journey
My summer’s journey began with a grand induction held at GE’s John Welch Technology centre (R&D arm of GE) Bangalore on 9
th April, 2018. GE’s Internship Program saw participation from 49 interns from across 9 management institutes. The engaging ice-breaking activities compelled interns to connect, collaborate and to solve the challenges put to them with the best creative innovative solutions.This was no less than encouraging the future stalwarts of Indian industry to think out of the box and push to their understanding beyond set limitations.
Project work
I interned at the GE’s technology centre (JFWTC) at Bangalore with the Organisational Development team. At GE, I worked on two major projects spread across different stages of development.
The first project was about Gig based work model, in times of constant change and stiff competition. To remain competitive, organisations also have to unlock capacity and become externally oriented in a more agile and cost-efficient manner. Leveraging gig workers in business is quite pertinent in Western countries but in the Indian market, it is a relatively unknown phenomenon. Indian companies are hardly aware of these employment models and only very few companies have adopted it and are reaping its business-benefits. The objective of my project was to enable GE in adopting a GIG model which essentially facilitates the organisation to leverage the diverse and high-quality gig workers for their challenging and complex tasks.
I commenced my project work with primary and secondary market research. I believe that the research approach is a great way to kick-start any project.
Being a TISSIAN, research is something that is highly engraved in the blood. Truly, it helped me in understanding the Indian landscape for gig model and exposed me to all the possible challenges that come up in the process of implementation gig employment model at GE’s technology centre in India.
The second project was on diversity and inclusion. Here, I worked on various facets of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ – diversifying workforce-to-employee sensitization-to-workplace accessibility-designing inclusive policies. Being a surging business the organisation is quite zealous to build an inclusive eco-system at workplace that not only hire’s from the diverse segment available but in doing that also caters to everybody’s different needs. One of my major projects involved facilitating the sensitization session for employees to make them realise and recognise prevailing unconscious bias and micro-inequities in their behaviour and actions. Additionally, I worked on designing and strategizing the PWD hiring for GE’s Tech centre.
Key Learnings
As the scope of this project was cross functional, I got the opportunity to work with various teams, business leaders, key stakeholders and get answers to the questions that satisfy the appetite of knowledge.Needless to mention,both my projects helped immensely and pushed the learning curve up professionally as well as personally.
Business Acumen
While doing market research in India and globally, I got an idea and learned about different economies and their diverse labour workforce, internal-and-external governance system, local, global compliances and processes and MNCs’ business rationale behind the decision drivers of practising GIG employment model.
Strategizing Skill
Both projects gave me immense opportunity to get my hands dirty and utilise my strategy management class learnings to the real world. Initially, both of my projects were vague and hazy. So, there was a challenge as well as an opportunity for me to strategize the project end-to-end and take it to the summit of accomplishment.
Knowledge Enhancement and Self Awareness
Both projects were quite new and unexplored. So, it was quite interesting as well as enriching seeing them evolved and discovering new information and facts throughout the period. Being visually impaired, I myself was greatly benefited from the Diversity and Inclusion’ project, as it introduced me to various inclusive policies and practices in the organisation, Inclusive policies and practices of other organizations. This exposure also helped me identify work-place related possible challenges for visually impaired persons and discover alternative solutions to get work done and keep performance intact.
Stakeholder Management and Expectation Mapping
Another most important learning was Stakeholder management and expectation mapping. The Project work compelled me to connect and collaborate with various business heads and get them along on concurrence to adopt the GIG work model.
My biggest takeaway
The Autonomy and accountability over the projects infused the sense of ownership and continuously stimulate me to contribute confidently and enthusiastically. It has been rightly said that “
change is the end result of all learning”.
8 weeks with General Electric (GE) enabled me to add value to the group and taught me perseverance, persuasion, networking and the art of getting things done.
To conclude, despite challenges in last 2 months, each interaction, task and assignment I had were of a unique learning experience. I enjoyed the confection of my project success. I can safely say, the formula of my successful internship is ‘IMMERSION & INSPIRATION...' because the secret to excellence is to get immersed with work that aspires to inspire others!
About the Author
Deepak Jaiswal is a student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and is currently pursuing Human Resources Management and Labour Relations.