Summers Prep for Finance Roles
Here is an INDICATIVE list of what areas to look at while preparing for a finance role in your summer placements.
Here is an INDICATIVE list of what areas to look at while preparing for a finance role in your summer placements.
Whether the summer internship placement season is the most anticipated or most dreaded event of the first year is debatable; but very few will disagree that it is one which is most talked-about! Every year, as the process looms closer, hapless first-years fight to stay afloat in the sea of information that engulfs them. Let me try and list down the key things that one must keep in mind during the preparation phase to sail through.
Before I dive into this let me acknowledge the role played by student-run placement committees over the years and across the spectrum. It is an extremely challenging task and I really admire people who have taken it up. However, as times change it is only natural that new ideas will emerge and systems set in place over a decade ago may need some overhauling.
One of the most important components of a Post Graduate Program in IIMs is the Summer internship – so crucial it is in the grander scheme of things that fresh students are brainwashed into getting paranoid about getting hired by the best brands. Some of the institutes also have a component of evaluation for the summer project, making it a crucial part of their program to work for. So the basic intent of a summer internship is provide students a dry run of being in the role of their choice. By the end of 2 months, the student is in a position to take a call about his experience at work, his compatibility with the profile, company and stream. It also helps a fresh pair of hands get a feel of how things work in an office – outside classroom and how she needs to condition herself in the coming 12 months. For the organization these 2 months serve in unlocking the potential of the candidate. It also helps them get a small organizational problem solved. Therefore ideally it shouldn’t matter where one has interned as long as the experience in fruitful and students have enough to substantiate their CV claims in interviews.
(Update: This article was published in May 2011 based on Karan Maroo's interpretation of placements across campuses. Do note that InsideIIM does not endorse the categorization and it is the personal view of the author which is also subject to change.)