Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “
The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for richer and newer experience.”, and that’s exactly how the summer internship of 2019 panned out for me. Voila!
The dawn of my journey with ABG dates back to September 22, 2018, two weeks before the commencement of the summer placement process at IIM Lucknow; call it God’s largesse, it was then that I became a proud recipient of the Aditya Birla Scholarship. This culminated in a Summers PPO, a much-awaited opportunity to experience a General Management role as a part of a prestigious leadership program with one of the most reputed firms.
Though my route for securing this coveted internship turned out to be different from others, a candidate conventionally has to go through the rigmarole of ABG’s selection process which ‘typically’ includes resume shortlisting, a grueling psychometric test, group activities to test leadership skills and team spirit plus a couple of rounds of GD & PI.
I was staffed on a project with
ABG’s Overseas Spinning Business (OSB) in Indonesia, the functional role offered to me being that of
Strategy in a business transformation project. This entailed moving to the captivating city of Jakarta (one of OSB’s manufacturing units in Indonesia is based out of Bekasi, a small metropolitan city on the eastern border of Jakarta).
A string of happy coincidences!
I majored in Textile Technology and coincidentally, I landed a stint with a textile manufacturing plant. It was fascinating to see the two worlds of theory and practicality blend in front of my eyes. Added to this was the fact that I got a flavor of two separate roles in a single internship, working in tandem with ABG and a leading consultancy on the same project, witnessing their intertwined efforts.
In a nutshell, it was fun being a part of this melting pot. Moreover, I love exploring places and the stint location was perfect to ignite the adventuresome me! Scuba diving at Thousand Islands in Jakarta, hiking in Bandung, a visit to Mt. Bromo which is an active cinder cone, feeding animals at Taman Safari and a couple of days in Singapore were some of the highlights on the personal front.
My kitty is replete with takeaways; besides the core learnings (industry and project specific), the most important value addition came in the form of enhancing my soft skills in various forms – interacting with and learning from the CXOs, working with people at different levels in a huge and complex setup plus understanding their perspectives and at the same time making them understand yours, patience in aligning people’s interests, motivations and goals, especially when two different cultures merge at the workplace, and adapting to work in a foreign culture. And the gravity of enhancing people-skills was emphasized upon time and again by the CXOs with whom I had the privilege of interacting frequently during the course of my internship. A special note of thanks to the senior management at OSB for guiding me through the nitty-gritty of the project and for their unwavering support.
I’ve had an exhilarating experience during those two months, tackling challenges along the way, interacting with the natives, learning Bahasa (the local language), exploring the fascinating Java island (being a travelling-and-adventure enthusiast, it was a boon for me!) and dealing with the maddening traffic of Jakarta.
As I flew back, a train of thoughts rushed through my mind.
Figuratively, we all are peripatetic; we travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls. It makes us modest since we realize that no matter how much we know, there is always room to absorb more because it’s just a tiny place that we occupy in the whole world.
ABG offers a repertoire of opportunities and is an excellent firm to work with in the domain of General Management, for anyone who is looking to work in this role and eyeing a multifold exposure. I am bereft of words to thank ABG for not only a marvellous internship experience but also for believing in me and extending a PPO.
Undoubtedly, the past two months were the best of my MBA life.