Students’ Speak: Summer Internships exposes students to corporate environment

By:Aayushi Pandey

Summer internships play a very crucial role for management students to gain hands-on experience in corporate environment and adds a lot of weight to the CV. Aayushi Pandey in this article points out how summer internships, virtual internships and live projects can boost your CV and profile for final placements.

Internships are an integral part of a management student’s life. As per the AICTE guidelines, Summer Internships are one of the important evaluative criteria for the award of final degree of management course. During the two-year management course, students towards the end of their first year need to undergo a Summer Training Program of minimum 6-8 weeks duration. This internship is very important, especially for freshers because it gives them a glimpse of what they are going to face at the end of two years of their course, after entering into corporate sphere. The internship gives students the platform to understand the practical implication of the things taught in the classroom. Through internships, students are free to explore different interest areas and are better equipped to make an informed career decision.

Companies visit the campus for Summer Internships in the same manner as they do for the final placements. Not all companies offer stipends, but at this stage the overall experience have more weightage than stipend. Some companies assign projects to the students on their own or sometimes students are free to choose their project topic and then work accordingly in the company.

Students can choose project topics in different domains as per their interest such as Marketing, Finance, HR, Strategy, Research, Operations, Management of Banks, etc. Students are free to use quantitative or qualitative technique for their projects and at the end of their internship present their report to the company. When the students return to the college after the internship, they again need to give a presentation of what they have done during the internship and the concerned faculty evaluates them accordingly.

Apart from Summer Internships, students are also encouraged to take virtual internships, live projects, etc. during the two years of their course. These help students gain practical knowledge, domain experience and industry insights. Students can take advantage of sites such as Internshala, LinkedIn, etc. to secure good virtual internships and add more weight to their CV.

The internships, irrespective of their nature and work profile, exposes them to corporate set-ups and allows them to learn managing themselves in such an environment. Students learn how to behave, dress & groom themselves as per the office culture, follow ethics & code of conduct as per company norms, respect the deadlines, work as a team player and understand the prevalent reporting practices in organizations. All these things positively influence the students’ CVs and gives them an edge over other candidates. It is advised to the students to take such internships and projects very seriously as they can be the differentiating factor during the final placements.

In our college, placement cell tries to arrange live projects and virtual internships for students, so they can build their CV.  Sometimes the students also secure projects on their own merits from various organizations and corporates.

About the Author:

Aayushi Pandey is a BCom graduate from DAV PG College, Dehradun. She is currently pursuing PGDM from IMI, Bhubaneswar. Her hobbies include reading fictional stories & writing while her areas of interest are Research, Strategy & Human Resource