As Delhi reels in the heat, with a look towards the sky with the hope of monsoons, for its people, the summers are not yet over. But if you ask any second year B-school student in India, the summers are done and dusted with. So is the case with me, as I finished my internship at Citibank in Banking Operations profile.
A typical night during my summer internship, yeah right not day, would consist of scrambling through heaps of data and excel files to find sourcing opportunity for one of the world's biggest and most reputed Foods company based out of USA. I never experienced working in a start-up before, but now I can very well relate to the experience having to chart out every objective and every strategy to tackle it, on my own. Since, I was tasked to find out the most economical supplier of a particular agricultural commodity with the best possible quality, there were no quantifiable goals set for me by my mentors. "Welcome to the club! Global Sourcing is a really niche function where you will be untangling a labyrinth of filters and sub-filters as to why NOT to choose this supplier or that. If anything survives those filters, you just got your million-dollar supplier!", I remember one of the previous interns telling me, with characteristic solemnness, on phone during my first week of internship. He couldn't have been more correct.
“'Tis skill, not strength, that governs a ship”
It is often said that, only when you have your back against the wall do you come out with your best, or the creative best in this case. I’m Bhuvan Deep Dua and this is an account of the challenges I faced in my internship and how I went about them.
There are things you don’t expect to experience in a short span of 2 months, and when they guide you to explore characteristics you didn’t know you had, you know you couldn’t have asked for more from an internship.
Life is beautiful when you have bagged that coveted summer placement offer. April is about to arrive and you are game for it. You are fairly confident, well versed with business fundamentals, work hard and can communicate well and have great academic credentials. You cant see any hurdles, after all what could possibly go wrong, nothing. Or so you think.
