It all started with my one typical question, which became my identity in my college, “As a fresher what is my scope in the respective field”. As a fresher, who directly joined one of the premium B-Schools after his engineering, I always wondered what and how is the corporate world like? What kind of grooming does one go through? Is there any gap between the theoretical knowledge imparted and the real life situation?
It November 2011, when we had our summer placement process, everyone in my family was insisting on “finance”, friends were running after consulting, but somewhere inside I had a strong feeling, “Marketing is my perfect match”. After a wait of two days when the big consults and big banks were done with their selection I got into one of pan India (company which has network in all states of India) telecom company. I was lost in my vivid imaginations of working in their corporate office at Gurgaon, the ecstasy of receiving my first salary, how to spend it, how would be Gurgaon, how life will be in those two months, what will be my work, etc.
Four of us were selected from IIMB. I was given work in consumer service and delivery department and was supposed to measure customer experience at various transaction touch points. Initially, it sounded very big and some huge kind of job. But effectively I was supposed to observe things happening with customer at very basic level i.e. market.
Because of opening date of our college we were asked to join 2 days earlier than other interns. So we reached office early morning at 8:30 am. As expected the ambiance of office was super awesome. A corporate office of the company it had eye catching interiors, quotes of famous people on every wall, fully AC (I know it’s common but still it was one of the exciting factors for first impression), people roaming around in formals, very busy in work, talking about numbers, marketing, sales, etc. Despite being informed by them that “we have planned two days for you guys”, we ended up looking at each other’s faces and talking about all random things for whole 2 days.
Finally when other interns arrived our orientation started and we received a warm welcome with some nice goodies. During the orientation we were being loaded by lots of information. Some of them were obvious, some of them were shocking and some of them changed our belief regarding Telecom companies.
So now we were assigned our project mentors and we started working on our projects. Gradually it turns to be very different than what I was expecting from my project. As always I had ear how will I do my project, from where I have to start, how to proceed, how I have to deal with people. But all these questions were answer in the first meeting with my mentor. He, being well experienced person in this industry, explained me everything how things work, what his expectation from our project are and how to go ahead with the project. Though this meeting was indeed informatory but frankly I didn’t get much idea about my project. I was hesitating to approach my mentor for some small things but after 2nd meeting my hesitation was gone. I was able to approach him easily. I was expecting that I might have to travel a lot, prepare a questionnaire, find many and different type of customers, get responses, do some sort of regressions (which I hate to do) and come up with few recommendations. But all I have to do was to visit maximum Company stores (CoCo – isn’t it funny name??!!), retailers and call centers (yes I also expected this to be what we usually see in Bollywood movies like Jannat but secret will be reveled latter) and sit there and just observed what is happening to our customer and note each and every small thing (according to my mentor “baby step observation”).
This was indeed a different experience. Because it gave me lots of insight about how things work at office or things work in the market. For example
· There were days when we had no work may be because of un availability of resources or any other reasons we just have to sit and do nothing (by nothing I mean something meaningful) and just play FIFA or everyone’s favorite Facebook.
· There were days when I have to visit various CoCos in the market; I got there at 8 a.m. in the morning and return at 10 p.m. in the night.
· People give you so much respect as they know you are from Corporate Office. People elder to me called me “sir”, they took good care. I know it’s very common but it was indeed a memorable thing for me.
· There were days when you really get bored of office food and you use 25% discount of Dominos and enjoy with you other interns.
· People drink lots of coffee in office (because this is the only free thing available)
· I thought people in office are always busy and loaded with lots of work but when you actually visit them in their cubic or in their office they are actually having fun and talking about all things happening around the world (so basically they are not that busy)
· On Fridays no one is ever late to leave office.
· People are very sweet, gentle, kind and friendly with you, but at the end you are always on your own. This was one of the greatest take away for me.
· I thought people generally like their bosses but mostly people do not like their bosses but still they love to chat with him and appreciate him for everything. Because they follow this two rules
1. Boss is always right
2. If He is not, see rule no. 1
· On 1st of every month everyone checks status about their salary first.
Talking about my project, I had chance to visit many company stores and interact with many company executives. I came to know what their views about company’s customers are. Sometime they also shared their expectation from company and where does this company stand with respect to its competitor. I had a chance to visit many retailers and heard their perspective about company. Finally I visited 3 call centers too. Visit to call center was probably the most interesting thing in my internship. Watching many call center executives talking to customers, how calls are managed, how they are trained. Above all now I know how much bollywood films exaggerate compare to reality.
Apart from these things there were some of unique experiences like on the very first day when we asked about PPO policy, reply was “we’ll let you know in two weeks”. Question being asked on the last day of internship, reply was same. Even today if we raise this query reply is same. Now this really brings a doubt in my head of “what is the definition of TWO WEEKS?” one more example was we were being told that we would receive over stipend after 15 days of our internship, but that came after 51 days and that too some amount less. (Which is still I am fighting for...).
If we look on over all scenarios from company’s perspective they can actually get good employee at low cost. But at the same time as a summer intern you also have fair amount of time to judge the company, its culture, its people and lot more. Mostly summer intern are treated as temporary employee who anyway will be there only for 2 months and can be treated whichever you want. But I think this is not true because now a day every student is in touch with many other students of not only his college but other premium colleges also, who are going to be future manager. Summer internship is a signaling medium for companies to spread their brand and their culture among the campus crowd.
Despite everything summer internship was an incredible experience for me with regards to the exposure imparted. Now I have answers to all the doubts which had crowded my mind, I can now be at the sending end of providing such information to my juniors.
At the end I would like to say just one thing “I really miss those two months.”
It November 2011, when we had our summer placement process, everyone in my family was insisting on “finance”, friends were running after consulting, but somewhere inside I had a strong feeling, “Marketing is my perfect match”. After a wait of two days when the big consults and big banks were done with their selection I got into one of pan India (company which has network in all states of India) telecom company. I was lost in my vivid imaginations of working in their corporate office at Gurgaon, the ecstasy of receiving my first salary, how to spend it, how would be Gurgaon, how life will be in those two months, what will be my work, etc.
Four of us were selected from IIMB. I was given work in consumer service and delivery department and was supposed to measure customer experience at various transaction touch points. Initially, it sounded very big and some huge kind of job. But effectively I was supposed to observe things happening with customer at very basic level i.e. market.
Because of opening date of our college we were asked to join 2 days earlier than other interns. So we reached office early morning at 8:30 am. As expected the ambiance of office was super awesome. A corporate office of the company it had eye catching interiors, quotes of famous people on every wall, fully AC (I know it’s common but still it was one of the exciting factors for first impression), people roaming around in formals, very busy in work, talking about numbers, marketing, sales, etc. Despite being informed by them that “we have planned two days for you guys”, we ended up looking at each other’s faces and talking about all random things for whole 2 days.
Finally when other interns arrived our orientation started and we received a warm welcome with some nice goodies. During the orientation we were being loaded by lots of information. Some of them were obvious, some of them were shocking and some of them changed our belief regarding Telecom companies.
So now we were assigned our project mentors and we started working on our projects. Gradually it turns to be very different than what I was expecting from my project. As always I had ear how will I do my project, from where I have to start, how to proceed, how I have to deal with people. But all these questions were answer in the first meeting with my mentor. He, being well experienced person in this industry, explained me everything how things work, what his expectation from our project are and how to go ahead with the project. Though this meeting was indeed informatory but frankly I didn’t get much idea about my project. I was hesitating to approach my mentor for some small things but after 2nd meeting my hesitation was gone. I was able to approach him easily. I was expecting that I might have to travel a lot, prepare a questionnaire, find many and different type of customers, get responses, do some sort of regressions (which I hate to do) and come up with few recommendations. But all I have to do was to visit maximum Company stores (CoCo – isn’t it funny name??!!), retailers and call centers (yes I also expected this to be what we usually see in Bollywood movies like Jannat but secret will be reveled latter) and sit there and just observed what is happening to our customer and note each and every small thing (according to my mentor “baby step observation”).
This was indeed a different experience. Because it gave me lots of insight about how things work at office or things work in the market. For example
· There were days when we had no work may be because of un availability of resources or any other reasons we just have to sit and do nothing (by nothing I mean something meaningful) and just play FIFA or everyone’s favorite Facebook.
· There were days when I have to visit various CoCos in the market; I got there at 8 a.m. in the morning and return at 10 p.m. in the night.
· People give you so much respect as they know you are from Corporate Office. People elder to me called me “sir”, they took good care. I know it’s very common but it was indeed a memorable thing for me.
· There were days when you really get bored of office food and you use 25% discount of Dominos and enjoy with you other interns.
· People drink lots of coffee in office (because this is the only free thing available)
· I thought people in office are always busy and loaded with lots of work but when you actually visit them in their cubic or in their office they are actually having fun and talking about all things happening around the world (so basically they are not that busy)
· On Fridays no one is ever late to leave office.
· People are very sweet, gentle, kind and friendly with you, but at the end you are always on your own. This was one of the greatest take away for me.
· I thought people generally like their bosses but mostly people do not like their bosses but still they love to chat with him and appreciate him for everything. Because they follow this two rules
1. Boss is always right
2. If He is not, see rule no. 1
· On 1st of every month everyone checks status about their salary first.
Talking about my project, I had chance to visit many company stores and interact with many company executives. I came to know what their views about company’s customers are. Sometime they also shared their expectation from company and where does this company stand with respect to its competitor. I had a chance to visit many retailers and heard their perspective about company. Finally I visited 3 call centers too. Visit to call center was probably the most interesting thing in my internship. Watching many call center executives talking to customers, how calls are managed, how they are trained. Above all now I know how much bollywood films exaggerate compare to reality.
Apart from these things there were some of unique experiences like on the very first day when we asked about PPO policy, reply was “we’ll let you know in two weeks”. Question being asked on the last day of internship, reply was same. Even today if we raise this query reply is same. Now this really brings a doubt in my head of “what is the definition of TWO WEEKS?” one more example was we were being told that we would receive over stipend after 15 days of our internship, but that came after 51 days and that too some amount less. (Which is still I am fighting for...).
If we look on over all scenarios from company’s perspective they can actually get good employee at low cost. But at the same time as a summer intern you also have fair amount of time to judge the company, its culture, its people and lot more. Mostly summer intern are treated as temporary employee who anyway will be there only for 2 months and can be treated whichever you want. But I think this is not true because now a day every student is in touch with many other students of not only his college but other premium colleges also, who are going to be future manager. Summer internship is a signaling medium for companies to spread their brand and their culture among the campus crowd.
Despite everything summer internship was an incredible experience for me with regards to the exposure imparted. Now I have answers to all the doubts which had crowded my mind, I can now be at the sending end of providing such information to my juniors.
At the end I would like to say just one thing “I really miss those two months.”