Breaking the stereotypes – One intern at a time
About the Author: Bharat Gupta is the director of Vision Mechatronics, a technology company operating in the niche segment of robotics, renewable energy, and energy storage. He plays a significant role in R&D and design of the products and shares how the company is breaking intern stereotypes.
We seriously felt the gap between industry and academia over our journey from being a bootstrapped company to making establishments in five states in India at present. We decided to give our bit to the nation’s youth by starting internships.
Internshala was our stepping stone when we decided to start our own internship program. We came across an email sent by them and saw their website. The ease of access was excellent. We hired our first batch of students who had just completed Diploma in IT and the results were phenomenal. There was no looking back since then. We have always offered paid internships and will continue doing this.
To encourage our interns to give their best, we have a “WOW intern” phenomenon wherein if an intern performs exceptionally well in a particular month and her manager says “WOW”, her stipend is doubled for that month along with a special feature on our website. I still remember how the “WOW intern” was shared by two very talented boys in the month of July.
Our goal is to develop industry ready people, the entrepreneurs, and not just employees. Even though we have been offering technical internships, but the scope expanded to their managerial and all-round development so that they can blend in the corporate environment in future. We make sure that complete freedom is given to the interns so that they can perform their best. We conduct weekly meetings and review the intern’s progress to enable her to develop his communication skills. Something that we have realized over a period of time in the industry is that fresh entrants in the field of technology are not given live projects under the disguise of being inexperienced. The question one should ponder on is how would a newly graduated engineer gain experience and work on bigger projects if this continues to be the norm? In our attempt to break this stereotype, we have been offering all our interns live projects including site visits and commissioning on the actual live sites so that they can enhance their skills and gain practical knowledge.
To save the environment, our company has gone digital. Thus, the certificate issued to the interns are also digitally-signed certificates with a detailed report of their internship activities and a rating from us so that their future employer can evaluate them better.
Looking to apply this mantra and hire interns for your company? Please post your requirements here.
