Students’ Speak: Hands-on learning is the most important takeaway from Internships and Live Projects

By: Manish Motwani

Internships and working on live projects help bridge the gap between classroom knowledge and enterprise level challenges. Manish Motwani in this article emphasizes on the importance of internships and live projects in acquiring hands-on learning and its impact on your career.

Internship provides students with an in-depth insight into a company, it's work culture and offers a platform for them to work on various projects and enhance their skills. In my engineering branch, i.e. Computer Science and Engineering, internships play a decisive role in shaping the career and provide a much-needed boost to the resume. The coding at the enterprise level is usually done on proprietary platforms and servers, which are quite different from the coding practised at the university level. Moreover, professional coding involves intense screening and cleaner codes. Understanding as to how to implement those codes in a bigger project is also crucial.

Any organization who hires from the engineering domain in my university lets a student undergo a three-month, six-month or sometimes even a yearlong internship before they join the company as full-time employees. This trend is similar across different colleges and institutes in the country and applies to various field or streams. Every job seeker should have a basic understanding of the corporate world and therefore should acquire some internship or part-time work experience.

Working on projects relevant to your subjects during graduation is again very important. The project experience has manifold benefits — acquiring a thorough and in-depth understanding of the subject, lets employers know that you possess strong fundamentals, boosts your CV, gives hands-on experience in using important tools and improves the overall skill-building process.

The type of projects may vary from course to course, but one thing should be kept in mind, whatever you build or create, it should be unique in terms of thesis and research paper or it should solve some real-world problem. In our projects undertaken, we made software similar to Google Lens. It helps understand the writing of the doctor on prescriptions so that anyone can easily understand it. This was made possible using Machine Learning. Similarly, one can make a good product or application relevant to their stream and skill set. In many instances, employers hired candidates based on their projects solely because project building requires a multifaceted skill set and depicts your leadership quality too. You should complete at least two or three good projects to make a strong impression.

For discovering internship opportunities, there are various options apart from the on-campus drives. Many competitions and challenges are organised by various companies where you can participate. For coding enthusiasts, there are several competitions such as:

• Code-Jam - GOOGLE
• Tech Set Go - Microsoft
• Call for Code - IBM

There are coding competitions live on Hacker Earth and Hacker Rank too. Besides, there are opportunities to work in companies or under renowned personalities, from specific domains, that will give vital exposure and aid during placements.

About the Author:

Manish Motwani is a third year Computer Science Student from Lovely Professional University (LPU). He is passionate about counselling students and solving their career related queries. Manish is also a tech enthusiast and loves travelling to new places.