Student’s Speak: Internship is crucial event for both students and corporate houses

Internship is the first real experience for any student in the real-world business environment and also key to talent acquisition plans of major corporate houses. Subhrajit shares his own internship with Kotak Mahindra Group and the various learnings he received from it.

Summer internship is an essential component of MBA and it is quite crucial both from the perspective of the participants as well as the corporates. For many organisations, it is an important, if not the only, route to talent acquisition and for most of the participants, it is their first experience with a business entity. Let’s explore what goes into this process from the perspective of a participant in the flagship MBA course of IIM Rohtak.

The process starts right in the first trimester with the senior batch grooming the junior batch about the various aspects of the summer placement process. It usually begins with polishing the CV. It is one of the most critical elements of the entire process as it is the first piece of information a recruiter is made privy to. It often plays a crucial role in initially getting shortlisted by any recruiter or organization. Simultaneously, the different student-run bodies organize mock group discussions & interviews to polish the soft skills of the participants and make them suitable for getting the internship they desire.

For me, this part was relatively easy as I already had a good three years of experience and had significant achievements in the past to put on the CV. The only task was to polish it further to make it more palatable. The organizations usually start coming in between late August and early September; the exact time varies every year. This process usually lasts a week where the most desirable companies with the most popular/ desirable roles get the slots in the initial days so that they can recruit the crème de la crème of the batch.

Internship experience with Kotak Mahindra Group

My internship placement week started with quite a few shortlists in the top companies, including Kotak Mahindra Group, which offered a role-based out of Mumbai and included working with the group marketing team. This team manages the marketing function for all the group companies, including Kotak Mahindra Bank, Kotak Securities, General Insurance, etc. The team was headed by the CMO of the group and was internally referred to as CMO’s office.

The process for Kotak started early on Day 0 and went on until the evening. The participants were shortlisted based on the post indicated on their CVs, after which a group discussion was conducted, followed by a round of personal interviews with the Vice-president of the marketing division. The interview questions hovered mainly around the application of concepts we were taught in the first term, along with an in-depth discussion of the CV. The interviews went well and I was offered the internship along with three other participants from the batch.

The internship started on April 01, 2019, right after the completion of the third term. We were given temporary accommodation for 15 days, which was approx. 1.3 km from the office at BKC and post that we were provided with permanent accommodation for the rest of the period in an apartment in the posh residential area of Bandra (East).

On the very first day, we were introduced to the team by our mentor, who was the chief manager in the bank, followed by an interaction with the CMO. By the end of the day, we were given our projects and were told that we would get to work on multiple on-going projects with a primary focus on one or two projects. We were also informed about what was expected of us and on what parameters our performance will be evaluated in the end.

I was assigned two primary projects, one was to optimize the marketing spends on television advertising while the other was to analyze the effectiveness of sales promotions in the banking industry in general and Kotak Mahindra in particular. The first project involved understanding the complex world of television advertising and media planning through discussions with the AVP who managed this function for the group and a host of meetings with one of the top media planning firms of the world, who were the official planner for Kotak Mahindra.

The second project had elements of marketing research and marketing decision-making concerning the fourth and most visible ‘P’ of marketing - promotions.  The projects were reasonably complicated for someone who had no idea of how this world worked. It was quite common, in the initial days, to feel completely lost in the process and working long hours to understand the basics.

We were given additional projects on digital marketing and creating a KPI based statistical model to set up new branches in a metropolitan. Our mentors guided us regularly and we had weekly meetings to update the status on each project and decide the way forward. The final week was reserved for presentations. The first presentation was with the mentors where we were given feedbacks for the upcoming presentations. The last leg of the presentation was scheduled with the CXOs, starting with the CMO, the Presidents of different verticals and ending with a discussion with the Joint Director of Kotak Mahindra.

To sum it up, it was a very enriching experience for me to work directly with the stalwarts of the organization and become conversant with the complexities of the real world of marketing, which is my focus area in the MBA. Kotak, as an organization is extraordinarily employee friendly with flexible timings, a lot of team lunches and excellent benefits along the way. It was an essential part of the course and to get appreciated for it by the senior management was the best part of it and significantly boosted my confidence as a professional.

About the Author:

Shubrajit Saha is a second-year management student, pursuing PGP programme from IIM Rohtak. Subhrajit has prior experience in working with various corporate houses.