Every year during internship selection process in B-Schools, students make beeline to grab the best internship offers to prepare themselves for their dream careers.Internships are the first building block in shaping a long term career. Internship provides you the benefits of both conceptual learnings as well as practical experience.
The prime objective of an internship is to prepare students for the actual working environment of a full-time job once they graduate. The kind of work exposure you get during an internship therefore matters a lot.
Internships are great opportunities to dive into your dream job by gaining relevant knowledge and job skills. How much you gain from it depends upon your own initiative to drive learning during the internship period. However, quality of internship assignment offered also has a critical role in shaping up that learning experience.
So how can you make use of your internship experience to open avenues for your dream career once you graduate?
Here are 5 ways:
What is the first step you undertake when you have an internship assignment?
Striving towards your future career is a lot like learning to swim in rough sea. But those who don’t let the initial challenges scare them sail through. It is worth a plunge to take as it is going to be the foundation stone for your professional life ahead.
During internship period it is essential that you keep a note of what new you have learned. This will help in retaining new knowledge and skills.
Getting feedback is important
A good summer internship project must have a well-defined structure for giving and receiving periodical feedbacks. This should be supplemented by a few meetings between your faculty mentor and internship supervisor/industry mentor to monitor progress and suggest corrective actions for improvement. This formal feedback is going to be a vital part of the entire learning experience.
Think of adding some value to the internship organization
As you go through your internship, do devote some time in thinking whether your work has been able to add some significant value to the working of that company or not. It makes sense to set aside some time for self-audit and reflection for setting internship goals. This can be a good way to focus your efforts on specific learning objectives.
Discussion enhances clarity
Understand the key deliverables of your project assignment fully. If not defined then ask for one. Get some clarity on the scope of work by speaking with your concerned industry guide. Explain that you would love to get some more experience and would be really interested to discuss opportunities that can benefit the organization. Remember, no one can decipher your potential interest in something more clearly unless you tell them.
Build contacts and nurture them for future growth
Before anyone tells you that “your network is your net worth”, try to interact with people and build professional connections. This could also be a strategic way to maintain visibility within the organization so that people know about your work.
It can pay good dividends to keep in touch with the contacts you have made for building knowledge and increasing recruitment prospects after course completion.Give yourself a timeframe for further follow ups with your connections to discuss any possibility of career growth.
As you work hard through the internship days, you will build lasting relationships with people and make friends along the way.
Maintain a professional demeanor throughout the internship
While working for a company, your professional and personal demeanor matter as much as your skills or qualifications count.It is therefore important to keep delivering and also be seen to be doing so right until the end of the project assignment. Grab those opportunities which can help you enhance your outreach and build personal brand image.
Who knows, your good work may finally lead you to a pre-placement offer at the end of your internship period.
Internship @ ISBR
The Placement Cell at ISBR Business School works closely with students on one to one basis to provide best internship experiences. Its main objective is to prepare students with hands on corporate exposure before final placements.ISBR believes that for the students pursuing MBA / PGDM, the payoff of an internship exposure is that they can integrate classroom learning with real life work environment. As such, the internship process allows them to gain invaluable professional experience.Considering the critical importance of internship for enhancing students’ employability, the Placement Cell at IBR organized an Internship Fair on 24th-25th May 2017 for its MBA and PGDM students of the current batch.Some of the best and the most promising companies from the industry were roped in to participate in the summer internship recruitment Fair.
In total, 35 companies from different sectors came for the on-campus interview while 15 companies conducted off-campus internship recruitment. The companies invited for the on-campus fair included ICICI Prudential, HyperCity, Go Niyo, Decathlon, 3M, Follow Class, Easy M2M, Wholesale Box, Wings Within, RIGO, Venus Technologies, Narayana Healthcare, Mentees Capital, Lodestar, Doodle Interiors, Lexa India, Svastera Healthcare etc. Skype interviews were also conducted by some companies such as UrsDay, Birla Sun Life, Startaap, Reliance Retail, etc.
Similarly, an international internship workshop was also organized at the Institute campus on Wednesday, 21st June 2017 to guide students on the importance of internships for closely understand the functioning of a company. Prof. Ananth Rao, Dean, Dubai Business School, University of Dubai was the chief guest of the workshop. Prof. Rao appreciated the fact that Indian students are the brightest and hardworking and they therefore stand a good chance to get placed during the international internship process.