“Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." George Bernard Shaw, an Irish dramatist has rightly said that everyone should create their own life more than finding it.
I, Radhika Goel, being a student, have always tried to create my life and chances to achieve a successful life. The course and the pattern of MBA study have always helped me to develop my personality with analytical power and business ideas. All the knowledge that I have gathered has helped me to plan to go one step further by joining as an intern in Bluedart. I am thankful to them for giving me a chance to develop my personal skills through a three-month internship program.
Bluedart is one of the fastest growing logistics companies in India and the world. It has been giving its best service for over 35,000 locations in India. It also has a big network in over 22 countries in the world. My internet study, ability to analyse any topic and my communication skill that I learned while doing my MBA have helped me to crack the interview in the very first chance.
After joining the company, on the very first day, as usual, I found everything new - new place, new colleagues and others. But, Anu Arora, the Senior Executive of the Customer Service of Bluedart, Jasola, Delhi Branch, helped me to explore and grow my skills.
The internship began with a holistic approach, with an introduction to the gamut of consumer products that saw active participation from Bluedart. Before the interview, I had gone through the company’s website and came to know about how it works, what kind of products and business the company is dealing with, what is the current market situation of the company etc. I have also done an internet study, as well as my course in college on logistics, how it works and how it is planned and executed. Mrs Anu Arora helped me a lot by letting me know the company’s rules, culture, and management processes.
As an intern, I came to know how time management is important for every person to grow in life. I used to observe the executives at the beginning. At first, I took calls to understand customers, what their complaints were, since the project handed over to me was analysing the root cause of repeat calls at BlueDart center and how the service could get better.
In the initial days, it was mostly observations. I used to observe and analyse the operations mostly from calling, for instance, why the customers call, how the calls and deliveries are made, why customers call more than twice for a particular shipment, etc. Though I had joined in Jasola Branch, which is the customer service branch, I went to Dwarka Operation Centre and The Delhi Cantt. Operation Centre.
I had just been learning and analysing how customers call, but to understand better, I had to go to work with the operations team. I came to know how deliveries are made and how the processing centres manage the whole system. This process taught me why time management is important in our life to get success. BlueDart taught me why time management and spontaneity is important. If any shipment gets delivered late to any customer, that delay can lead to the loss of a client to the company. Just like that, if we do delay in our study or any work, we can miss the opportunity to get success, as we all know - chances never come twice in life.
It has also taught me that submission of work in corporates is like not like the submissions of projects in colleges. A delayed submission may lead you to lose your job or leave a bad impression. So, it gave me insights as to why it is very important to manage time and to meet the deadlines. In this case, the habit of submitting the projects to college within the deadlines helped me a lot in meeting the deadlines at my office.
It was a great experience working as an intern with Bluedart. I came to a conclusion after working for the past few weeks that, as a logistics manager, one must develop the ability to make accurate predictions of the company. It allows one to act faster, predict risks that may arise, and develop plans for problems that may or may not come. As they manage over thousands of parcels every day, it's true that without proper thinking and planning it's just impossible to manage the whole thing.
This short internship experience taught me that one must have proper time management skill, writing and presentation skills, stronger and faster decision making ability, adaptability and most importantly, the ability to do teamwork to get the job and get success in the corporate world in this era of globalization.
I'd like to give all the credit as to what I have learned and to the person I'm today after my internship to my supervisor and my mentor Mrs. Anu. Her experience in the company of 8 years certainly made a huge difference. From small details like what to wear to how the reporting structure in an organization works she had without judgement helped me at each and every step.
To my juniors, the one thing I'd suggest is that shortcuts never help, it's the hard work that pays off.
