A journey of thousand miles, begin with a small step! The summer internship was the first step for me for a long journey ahead.
I was hired for my 2 months internship in Strategyk Consilium Private Limited. I was getting rejected from many companies. Therefore, I applied for this company just by seeing the job description and not even looked at the company’s profile. When I started to prepare for the interview, I read the company profile and to my astonishment the company started one month later than my joining in MBA Course i.e. June. I was thinking that if I have applied in the right company or not. We had pre placement talk and I was pretty impressed by the services company was offering. Strategyk is a Management Consulting firm offering some unique services that rarely other companies are offering.
I had my interview and while going for it i made my mind that I will be who I am and will see if our values match or not. The interview lasted for 30 minutes wherein I observed that there was a match between my values and the CEO’s values (CEO, Mr. Vikram took my interview). I was sure that I will crack this as our values and vision matched. Two days later, I received a mail stating that I am hired for internship in Strategyk. I was happy at that moment but a bit worried thinking if I have taken a good decision or not, happier emotions being more than worrying. Our Internship had to start from next April i.e. after 4.5 months. In beginning of December, we (the 2 hired interns) were invited to an open house workshop on Innovation and Creativity organised by Strategyk at TAJ Hotel. I got happy that it’s so nice on the companies part that they invited us to have more exposure about company and its services. The workshop was great and it made me realise that I have made good decision to join this company.
Now, Let me share how was my experience and what were my learnings.
The two months passed as if they were two days, because we really had a great time working at Strategyk. Being a startup we got to work in various domains other than marketing. We made a module of Design Thinking on our own. All the graphic designing was done my me, so i improved on my designing skills too. My LinkedIn network grew from 350 to odd 1250+ in 2 months. Our project was to design and deploy an open house workshop to be held in May end. Therefore, we had to do sales too due to which I gained confidence in talking to senior managers. I arranged five corporate meetings for Strategyk at Lifestyle International, Wells Fargo, SAP Labs, Britannia and Mylan Laboratories. It was a great experience attending those meetings as being a fresher I got an excellent exposure in terms of how companies work, what set of parameters company follow to hire a vendor and what are the challenges some of the companies are facing.
Working 2 months with Strategyk and Mr. Vikram (CEO) as my mentor, I learned that he is a person who value your values. He is not conserved in his thoughts that only top colleges’ students are good. He is always ready to give opportunity to person who has hunger to learn, who is ready to have the sense of ownership and a pinch of humour is a must as he is a very jolly person and we used to laugh really hard on his jokes and his funny stories. Observing this helped me understand that to be hired by Strategyk, it does not matter you are from which college and what your background is because he is ready to mentor the new joinees. If you are true to yourself during the interview and if you prove that you have the hunger to learn and grow, you will be in.
Concisely, my first year of MBA helped me apply some of the concepts in real and 1st year brushed my mind. It helped me think differently, effectively and quickly. Your mind becomes smart when you study the concepts and then apply them in real world.
Lastly, few words for an excellent mentor and person, Mr. Vikram, He is a living example of a great leader, a great person and a fun loving person. He never stopped me to implement my own ideas or to share my own perspective. He always welcomed my ideas and implemented them. He worked with us and worked like a team. He never made me feel that I am your CEO and you work for me. His mentorship established a sense of ownership in me and I worked as I was working for my own company. This sense of ownership helped me give my best performance. In addition, to keep us motivated he used to take us out for lunch every Saturday.
It was a wonderful experience working with Strategyk Consilium. Two months or Two Days.
~Lakshya Mongia