My Summer Internship experience at Aditya Birla Group was a brilliant mix of indispensable learnings and unique experiences. It would be appropriate to say that Aditya Birla Group Leadership Programs (ABGLP) literally open up all the doors to the World of Opportunities. I was lucky enough to get through the day-long selection process that ABG does on very few prestigious campuses across the co untry.
Aditya Birla Group runs extensive assessment centres on campuses for the selection of interns under the Group Internship Program (GIP). The seasoned experts from the Group judge the shortlisted participants during their performance in the assessment centres and the selected few go through two rounds of interviews, one technical and one behavioural. ABGLP ensures that they select the crème de la crème from campuses. The aim is to build visionary leaders, keeping in mind the competencies of the futuristic leaders required to compete and win in the VUCA world.
ABG recruited around 70 interns across premier campuses for the #SummerOf2017 and I had this wonderful opportunity to intern with the most enthusiastic and energetic team of ABG; the Young Talent Management Team a.k.a YTM. YTM ensures that the leaders hired for ABG Leadership Programs get the right opportunities at the right time, to develop and grow as effective and powerful leaders. Managing the talent of Millennials is of extreme importance and YTM ensures that they get all the resources and opportunities to make the impact that is expected.
My projects with ABG were under the domain of Leadership Learning and had two main deliverables. I had to design the Young Executive Council (YEC) for the Group, for ABGLPs who have 6-9 years of experience in the group. I also had to design a Leadership Exchange Program (LEP) for the ABGLPs with an experience of 5-8 years in the group. These involved interviewing a lot of experts in the industry, a lot of benchmarking and a lot of primary literature review. My Manager at ABG, Ms. Pooja Aggarwal, Head YTM, was an extremely dynamic personality. She ensured that apart from these two projects, I also gave innovative ideas for Employer Branding, for Millennial Management, and for the Talent Management practices of the group as a whole.
My key learnings from the #SummerOf2017 were as follows:
1. Summers across any organisation is an intellectually provoking period. It provokes you to think deeper and sharper since the expectations are great. And these great expectations from Manager/Team/Peers is what transforms you as a performer. It’s a great opportunity to try various lenses for your approach to delivery. It is imperative to read more and more and keep yourself up to date.
2. It is important to not focus too much on a PPO or a PPI. Learning as well as Performance is all that matters. If these remain your utmost concern throughout the two month period, then Bingo, you are not very far from a PPO/PPI.
3. A lot of us do not actually understand the importance of building relationships during Summers. It’s a time when you meet some really influential and knowledgeable people across the industry. It is always a great idea to listen to someone who has had brilliant experiences since that adds to the bag of passive learnings. And yes, making friends definitely adds to your network across B-Schools.
#SummerOf2017 was definitely a ‘Crucible’ experience for me since it transformed me as an HR professional. A beautiful mix of opportunities, friendships, experiences as well as learnings. I got the opportunity to meet some very brilliant minds and got to make a difference to the Group. So thankful!