Being a distant part of the dynamic Internshala team
The Internshala Student Partner program is evolving with time and is ameliorating each year. I happened to be a part of the fourth version of the program namely “ISP4”. Intrinsically, it is a “campus ambassador” like program at first sight but it diverges from the rest in terms of what it strives to achieve for the student partners and the student community at large. Apart from the program, the vision of Internshala is to cater to the demanding need to connect entrepreneurs and consortium with the student community for the students to gain experience in the form of internships which they can cherish. The same vision evinces in all the tasks in the program as we aid someone land an internship.
As far as the selection is concerned, you need to excogitate a business article on promoting Internshala and outshine a recorded telephonic interview. Most of the readers might be interested in how to apply; let me tell you that the procedure is pretty straightforward and includes filling up an online form. The rest of the steps will follow as you surpass each stage.
Two students are nominated from each campus and the competition can become fierce if there are a lot of applicants. In my case, I was not aware of my fellow applicants so all was left to my imagination. At least, I can say there were a passable number of applicants. So I was a member of a 2 member team or to put in better words, I was a part of the entire Internshala team of around 400 members and you can feel this. I have received a bunch of rewards from Internshala but the experience gained by being a distant part of such a dynamic team was even more refreshing.
The tasks revolved around the basic purpose of aggrandizing their brand and were more concerned with providing the eminent candidates with the information and resources to unleash their inner intelligence and land the internship they deserve. One of the intensive activities was known as the “Poster Activity” in which we had to place 10 posters around the “hotspots” on the campus. They used to send in the poster in electronic form and we had to print it; they bore the printing cost. Now, all the posters were same. You might think that you can print one poster, use it in 10 different places, take pictures, and forward it to them. They outwitted you by sending the same poster in 10 different colours. On further thinking, you may say you will pluck the colour parameter which they used as a sincerity measure by sending black and white pictures. Believe me, I did not try this and I will advise you to do the task with full enthusiasm as the feeling of helping our fellow competitors provides more satisfaction than anything else.
At this time, students were aware of the procedure for applying for internships and to keep an eye on new arising internships. The issue at this stage was that students knew how to apply but were ignorant of how to convert their application into an internship. To resolve this deadlock came the second task where we had to promote another product of Internshala – Virtual Training Centre (VTC as they used to refer it). The purpose was to convince candidates into taking the course which will help them attain the proper skills to convert an opportunity into success. At this stage, I interacted with several candidates, both within and outside the campus, and was able to persuade their thought process for their benefit. Every ISP was provided a code which if used by the candidates, would bring small incentives for the ISP and the candidates would get a 10% discount. The enrolment through our code was the only way of tracking our performance and this, in fact, lowered the number of successful turnovers I achieved. Nevertheless, I was entitled to a pretty decent number of enrolments when compared to other performers. In case, you want to see how the code looks like then here is my code: ISP4333ADI.
We were given the opportunity to attend two webinars during the duration of the program. One elucidated the concept and purpose of Internshala and its expectations from the program. The second webinar was a crash course on social media marketing and that concluded well. This was followed by a task of sending mass emails and social media notifications through their portal so that they could keep a track of our performance. Another activity was to achieve maximum unique clicks on a particular link and this task provided great insights on the reach and involvement of our posts.
As a reward for my activities, I was given the opportunity to pursue a VTC course which gave me more insight into what I was leading my fellow competitors into. I must say you will not be disappointed by VTC as it is developing and has an extensive support team for the course content. Weekly activities were also organized by Internshala where we had to quote a caption for the provided picture and the winner used to get extra credits and prizes. This was solely for the welfare of the student partners and maintaining a healthy environment.
It was also planned that extensive support would be provided by the Internshala team to help the student partners organize conferences in the campus to spread the news of Internshala association and initiative. As things move very fast in a dynamic organization like Internshala, it was unfortunate that the event never took place in the way it was intended to be but still the small scale event I organized in the campus was satisfying.
Eventually, the program concluded officially on 15th January 2016 and I was promoted to be a part of the extended ISP team. The entire team was cooperative during the program and it will provide you a zestful experience provided you do the intended task in the right way and with the right purpose of impacting the student community in a positive way. It is a volunteer activity and you may give it a shot if you want to guide others in achieving greatness and at the same time to experience what it is like to promote a dynamic organization remotely. One may always find me at LinkedIn and ask me anything related to life in general.
About the author: Aditya is a Computer Science student of IIEST, Shibpur. He joined the extended team of Internshala in August 2015 and was also one of the top performers in Internshala Student Partner 4.0.
Editor’s note: The last date for applying to Internshala Student Partner is 10th March; you can apply here.
