Summer internships give the first taste of intense competition in a B-school. The shortlists and the interviews could all get very intimidating but I was extremely fortunate to have been selected by HCCBPL, the biggest bottling partner of Coca Cola India and the biggest member of the Bottling Investment Group. A few months passed by, the first year was over and it was time for the Internship. I was very excited because it was a huge opportunity and I was supposed to work in Hyderabad, a city I always wanted to explore and stay in. It felt like everything was just so perfect.
“So, how was the Civil War movie?” asked my friend who was interning in Hyderabad. “Expensive, and I am not talking about its production values” I replied, and my friend’s response before hanging up was “It’s Delhi, you should have expected it”. I thought to myself “this isn’t the only thing that has proved my expectations wrong”. I went back to my apartment and slipped off on the bed to relax. But you know the mind- when the body says ‘relax’, the mind says ‘let me go take a walk down the memory lane’.
In January, when I managed to crack through the internship process, I had a doubt. Where exactly will I be interning? It didn’t make much difference to me after my location was confirmed to be Jharsuguda. When you have spent the better half of your life in a capital city, it is indeed obvious to be apprehensive about living in a remote place like Jharsuguda. While most of my friends had already joined in their respective companies by April 4th, I was luxuriating myself with home food, contemplating occasionally about how would a street food junkie like me, survive in a far-flung place like Jharsuguda.
Summer Internship in my opinion is the most crucial part of an MBA programme as we get to apply our concepts in real world scenarios which are usually very ambiguous in nature with no clear cut solutions. I was both excited and apprehensive about my internship after getting loads of gyaan sessions from seniors. I flew from Mumbai to Delhi and at the airport itself I got a taste of scorching heat which would follow for the entire season with temperature shooting over 500C, sufficient to char you for life. My stint at Airtel started with a weeklong induction by CXOs where we were exposed to various businesses and the challenges that Airtel faces across Asia and Africa. I am a sucker for these sessions so I absorbed all the information and it helped me to understand Airtel DNA and where the organization was headed towards. After the induction, I was extremely lucky to be assigned a strategically important project which was stressed on by the COO in his induction speech. I knew if I could solve it I would be noticed by one of the most elite business head of India. But the problem was that I could not make head or tail of it. So I dedicated an entire week in understanding what exactly was required of me and what was the best way to approach it. Once my mentor and I were on the same page, I burned candle at the both ends to analyse the data. By the end of the month I was beginning to crack the project and derive meaningful insights. My mentor and I shared these with our Global Sourcing Head who seemed to be pleased by the progress. Since then, I have moved on to find ways to best utilize my findings and implement suggestions. This has proved to be extremely tedious as getting time from already busy people is extremely tough. But I am still hanging on and hopefully will be able to implement a portion of my work with still couple of weeks of internship left. Overall, I am extremely satisfied that I worked my heart out. I had loads to learn and improve myself professionally. I met some incredible people both employees as well as interns. My consolidated gyaan for future Interns will be to “be like sponge and soak up all that you can from these 8 weeks”. Keep track of what, why and how you are doing by documenting your every thought. Be ready to learn at exponential rate and give respect where it’s due while talking to seniors. Keep these pointers with you and you should do fine. All the Best for your Internship. ---------- About the Author: I am currently pursuing PGDIM from NITIE. I did my graduation from IITK. Besides work I love to travel around, meet new people and live life to the fullest.
“Research, and lots of research is a must to garner the know-how of any task at hand”, told my mentor. Extensive participation in multitudes of case studies, competitions, group and individual projects that spanned across varied domains, in the past, equipped me with technicalities that go into research, thereby helping palliate the otherwise growing anxiety that may have arose. I therefore began the first of my two research earmarked weeks on a psychological high note. Mid-way through the week, idiosyncrasies of my research requirements foxed me on the approach I had taken as I weren’t sure if all the data I was accumulating would really help me progress to achieve my end objective. And so I was in two-minds - whether to seek advice from the mentor despite having defined research expectations, or to continue with what I were doing. Between the two, the former option sound compelling for I thought that it could help me take a stock of things and have a review as to whether I was on the right track. I therefore set-up a review meeting with my mentor. Over the discourse I realized that I chose correct channels of research, however, with a much complicating approach. All through the discussion my mentor shot questions at me which actually helped me bridge the not-so apparent, but important, missing links to arrive at comprehensive findings. Also went in through the discussions certain agreements and disagreements over ideas, but in a constructive manner. In the end, I saw myself having arrived at a comprehensive approach with a rather better understanding. With over a week of time spent on the research task now, I see that had I not chosen to initiate a dialogue then, I would have actually made things intricate for myself. ------- Manish Ghosal Link to my previous article in the series: http://insideiim.com/a-first-of-its-kind/
Internship- The image this word brings to people's mind is a college kid, sitting in an office from 8 am to 1 am doing all the work the organizations thinks is too unimportant for their managers. In this image, the kid desperately tries to impress (and flatter) his/her (not-at-all-easy-to-impress) manager.
Like many others, I was super excited when I was offered Sales and Marketing internship with HUL. It is a dream internship for many on campus and the excitement only increased as HRs rolled out tasks to connect us with interns from other B schools. No sooner than this happened, we were active on the facebook and whatsapp groups knowing each other.
Summer internships give the first taste of intense competition in a B-school. The shortlists and the interviews could all get very intimidating but I was extremely fortunate to have been selected by HCCBPL, the biggest bottling partner of Coca Cola India and the biggest member of the Bottling Investment Group. A few months passed by, the first year was over and it was time for the Internship. I was very excited because it was a huge opportunity and I was supposed to work in Hyderabad, a city I always wanted to explore and stay in. It felt like everything was just so perfect.
“So, how was the Civil War movie?” asked my friend who was interning in Hyderabad. “Expensive, and I am not talking about its production values” I replied, and my friend’s response before hanging up was “It’s Delhi, you should have expected it”. I thought to myself “this isn’t the only thing that has proved my expectations wrong”. I went back to my apartment and slipped off on the bed to relax. But you know the mind- when the body says ‘relax’, the mind says ‘let me go take a walk down the memory lane’.
In January, when I managed to crack through the internship process, I had a doubt. Where exactly will I be interning? It didn’t make much difference to me after my location was confirmed to be Jharsuguda. When you have spent the better half of your life in a capital city, it is indeed obvious to be apprehensive about living in a remote place like Jharsuguda. While most of my friends had already joined in their respective companies by April 4th, I was luxuriating myself with home food, contemplating occasionally about how would a street food junkie like me, survive in a far-flung place like Jharsuguda.
Summer Internship in my opinion is the most crucial part of an MBA programme as we get to apply our concepts in real world scenarios which are usually very ambiguous in nature with no clear cut solutions. I was both excited and apprehensive about my internship after getting loads of gyaan sessions from seniors. I flew from Mumbai to Delhi and at the airport itself I got a taste of scorching heat which would follow for the entire season with temperature shooting over 500C, sufficient to char you for life. My stint at Airtel started with a weeklong induction by CXOs where we were exposed to various businesses and the challenges that Airtel faces across Asia and Africa. I am a sucker for these sessions so I absorbed all the information and it helped me to understand Airtel DNA and where the organization was headed towards. After the induction, I was extremely lucky to be assigned a strategically important project which was stressed on by the COO in his induction speech. I knew if I could solve it I would be noticed by one of the most elite business head of India. But the problem was that I could not make head or tail of it. So I dedicated an entire week in understanding what exactly was required of me and what was the best way to approach it. Once my mentor and I were on the same page, I burned candle at the both ends to analyse the data. By the end of the month I was beginning to crack the project and derive meaningful insights. My mentor and I shared these with our Global Sourcing Head who seemed to be pleased by the progress. Since then, I have moved on to find ways to best utilize my findings and implement suggestions. This has proved to be extremely tedious as getting time from already busy people is extremely tough. But I am still hanging on and hopefully will be able to implement a portion of my work with still couple of weeks of internship left. Overall, I am extremely satisfied that I worked my heart out. I had loads to learn and improve myself professionally. I met some incredible people both employees as well as interns. My consolidated gyaan for future Interns will be to “be like sponge and soak up all that you can from these 8 weeks”. Keep track of what, why and how you are doing by documenting your every thought. Be ready to learn at exponential rate and give respect where it’s due while talking to seniors. Keep these pointers with you and you should do fine. All the Best for your Internship. ---------- About the Author: I am currently pursuing PGDIM from NITIE. I did my graduation from IITK. Besides work I love to travel around, meet new people and live life to the fullest.
“Research, and lots of research is a must to garner the know-how of any task at hand”, told my mentor. Extensive participation in multitudes of case studies, competitions, group and individual projects that spanned across varied domains, in the past, equipped me with technicalities that go into research, thereby helping palliate the otherwise growing anxiety that may have arose. I therefore began the first of my two research earmarked weeks on a psychological high note. Mid-way through the week, idiosyncrasies of my research requirements foxed me on the approach I had taken as I weren’t sure if all the data I was accumulating would really help me progress to achieve my end objective. And so I was in two-minds - whether to seek advice from the mentor despite having defined research expectations, or to continue with what I were doing. Between the two, the former option sound compelling for I thought that it could help me take a stock of things and have a review as to whether I was on the right track. I therefore set-up a review meeting with my mentor. Over the discourse I realized that I chose correct channels of research, however, with a much complicating approach. All through the discussion my mentor shot questions at me which actually helped me bridge the not-so apparent, but important, missing links to arrive at comprehensive findings. Also went in through the discussions certain agreements and disagreements over ideas, but in a constructive manner. In the end, I saw myself having arrived at a comprehensive approach with a rather better understanding. With over a week of time spent on the research task now, I see that had I not chosen to initiate a dialogue then, I would have actually made things intricate for myself. ------- Manish Ghosal Link to my previous article in the series: http://insideiim.com/a-first-of-its-kind/
Internship- The image this word brings to people's mind is a college kid, sitting in an office from 8 am to 1 am doing all the work the organizations thinks is too unimportant for their managers. In this image, the kid desperately tries to impress (and flatter) his/her (not-at-all-easy-to-impress) manager.
Like many others, I was super excited when I was offered Sales and Marketing internship with HUL. It is a dream internship for many on campus and the excitement only increased as HRs rolled out tasks to connect us with interns from other B schools. No sooner than this happened, we were active on the facebook and whatsapp groups knowing each other.
