Banking + Coding – 2 interests in 1 package: My internship at Intellect
About the Author: Shruti Mulagund, a student at M S Ramaiah Institute Of Technology, Bangalore, shares how she finally managed to get an internship and tells us about her venture at Intellect.
Late night studies, group discussions, going through online tutorials, approaching seniors and lecturers for suggestions – this is what happens when several reputed companies start visiting a campus for placements. Till November 2015, I had already failed to get placed in several companies either because of the required cutoff marks, or the CGPA, or my inability to clear the technical round. Attending classes regularly, covering up the syllabus missed while attending the placements, preparing for internal and external exams while facing such crisis was extremely hectic. At the same time, I was even more frustrated to see my classmates getting placed.
On 1st December 2015, Intellect Design Arena Ltd. visited our campus for recruitment. By then, I had lost all hopes for placements; disappointed, I had decided not to attend any recruitment drives. I was then forced by my friend to give that company a try. I reached the venue just in time for the online test which was the only round conducted by Intellect in the campus recruitment process. The online test consisted of questions from programming, database (to be precise, questions were asked regarding C++, Java, J2EE, PL/SQL, and scripting languages), numerical reasoning, and verbal reasoning (arithmetic aptitude, verbal ability, logical reasoning, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, and current affairs). Fortunately, I was among the two girls who had cleared the online test. On the same day, I was given an offer letter to join as the Stipendiary General Trainee (SGT) at Intellect. Without contemplating, I accepted the offer to join the internship from 20th Jan 2016.
The first thing that I liked about Intellect when I started interning was its original, innovative ideas and its inspiring definitions of Design Thinking (Design for Digital). Being a product-based company, Intellect’s digital projects encompass all types of banking projects. Besides pursuing a master degree, I used to appear for bank exams as I always found it to be an interesting field. Hence, working for a banking company was extremely delightful for me. I was mapped to Currency Management System project when I joined as an intern. As I started exploring more about CMS, I collected a lot of information regarding the creation and destruction of currency, currency circulation by the Reserve Bank of various countries, the difference between various types of notes (soiled, mutilated, fit and unfit notes, etc.). In the beginning, I was working for Reserve Bank of Lesotho. I created my user manual with all the collected and available information which was helpful for our team. Though picturing all these scenarios using object oriented modeling design was tough, it was interesting.
The no-bossy, no-pressure work culture at Benzene (our team of 6) provided me with the comfort zone to learn and work more. I was never restricted to work solely on one project and ample of opportunities were provided to explore new technologies. I worked on softwares like Java, Canvas, Hub, etc. We were trained for several sessions in order to use these softwares in the product development. Our seniors helped us by sharing their domain knowledge in all the possible sessions. Besides work, there were a lot of activities to indulge ourselves in, to free our minds off the work load.
The interesting part about this internship was that it was a performance based full-time conversion offer, and unlike other companies, the technical and the HR rounds of the recruitment were conducted after the completion of the internship. In the technical round, I was asked to explain about the project I had done during the internship and answer the basic questions about Java. Then, I was asked to explain about my contribution to the project which I was easily able to explain as I had explored a lot about my project, both theoretically and technically. Last, but not the least, the most relaxing round was the HR round. It was all about expressing my opinions on the company’s work culture and the work time flexibility.
Internship at Intellect made me confident, self-reliant, independent, and most importantly a positive thinker. I used to feel that coding was such a tedious job but this internship proved it wrong. I believe that ‘Believing in ourselves, and giving our 100% to the endeavors assigned to us will take us to the right place’. Today, I am happily working as a full-time consultant associate at Intellect on a RBI project.
Excited by Shruti’s journey? Check out these programming internships and unleash the coder in you.
Editor’s note – If you also have an interesting story to share, you can now participate in Your Internship Story Contest 2017 and win cash prizes and goodies worth INR 1 Lac!
