Internship – How to approach your Internship-I

Internship is part of the MBA curriculum wherein you are required in work in an Organization to get hands-on exposure so it supplements what you study in your program. In this posting, I want to write how MBAs (any students in general) should approach their Internship. 

# Internship is not a vacation. Be prepared to pull up your sleeves and get your hands dirty

I personally believe that any internship should be a win-win situation and it has to add value to the interns in terms of specific learning and enhance their CV value so it helps when they look out for a job opportunity later. That's my school of thought based on which I engage the interns.

MBA interns are supposed to be little matured and come with good amount of learning orientation to learn from their internship. We had one MBA student who wanted to do her full-time internship for a month. She continued for 2 days and on the 3rd day,  she has posted a comment on the company's FB page stating that the internship is very tiring and hectic. It got liked and commented by few that goes like OMG / do take care of yourself etc.,

So I am sure you would want to know what happened in just two days. Let us check it out.

On the first day, we gave her a brief orientation and inducted her in to the team. On the 2nd day, she was briefed on document verification for ISO audit which we wanted her to do.  This is not a complex or tedious job.  She has not even started the work yet.

Here you have a MBA student who has come for full time internship training (8.30 hours) and finding the job as hectic that she did not even start. The job that could have given an exposure to ISO. On top of that, she is commenting on company's FB page. What do you think of her? It’s more than obvious and I don’t have to comment.

# Internship is a blessing in disguise: 

In one of the Organizations wherein I worked, I was implementing HR automation system. One of the challenges that was there in the implementation was getting data and information converted from physical documents into electronic format or soft copy.  With very less time left to start this activity, I’ve got two MBA Interns who came from a college that was quite unknown to any corporate.  Their communication was just average which they compensated with their tremendous amount of commitment and hard work.  Seeing their commitment, I engaged them in the entire implementation cycle and took personal care to train them well. There were times, they used to stay late to complete the given task or they would have been part of some training or discussion.

When I had the right opportunity after 6 months, I hired one of them. Believe me, I hired him without any interview since it was not really required.  I've seen him working in real- time basis. I've seen his attitude and commitment level in real-time work environment and I needed no other information to take the hiring decision. 

The other Intern got an opportunity to work in a major IT firm. His role was into HRMS and he got this opportunity primarily based on his experience in HR automation that he gained during his internship.

What you cannot probably prove in 30 minutes interview, you can prove it in your internship.  The commitment and hard work that put in during the internship is like sowing a seed today and you are bound to get the results / reap the benefits tomorrow for sure.

In my career, I’ve hired many interns when they performed well during their internship and I’ve also decided to not hire many interns even when there were opportunities because they did not take up the internship seriously.

So make the best use of Internship.

Do stay connected for the next posting on How to approach your Internship 

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