How an internship ended my struggle to restart my career
About the Author: Nitasha Bhattacharjee is a homemaker who quit her job after her son was born. She talks about her struggle to get back to work and how a virtual internship proved to be the stepping stone in resuming her career.
Nitasha means new dreams every day, and much like my name, I have dreams and aspirations to make it big in life. After graduating in 2004, I got a campus placement at Eli Lilly as a territory manager. Soon after the initial orientation, I realised that I wanted to pursue a career in brand management, so I went on to do an MBA and joined Roche Scientific as a management trainee. Shortly after that, I got married and 4 years down the line, I was blessed with a baby boy. I thought of continuing with my job at first, but I didn’t want to miss my son’s first words and first steps, so I decided to quit work. However, somewhere in my subconscious mind, I was trying to find a way to follow my aspirations. Fast forward 3 years, my son started going to kindergarten but it didn’t give me enough time to take up a full-time job.
My husband and my parents knew how badly I wanted to get back to work, so they helped me set up a business, hoping that I could hire some people and would only need to supervise them a little bit. As it turned out, it consumed much more time and needed undivided attention due to which I could not look after my son. We shut down the business after 3 years, but I didn’t give up. My will found a way soon when I received a WhatsApp message about the internships for women offered by Internshala. The internships came with a work-from-home option which seemed like an easy way of restarting my career.
I visited the website and applied to a content writing internship at Advisors, a healthcare organisation. The selection procedure involved two telephonic interviews which revolved around my previous work experience and how I was planning to manage the work with my household responsibilities. I was ecstatic when they informed me about my selection. My internship entailed studying, analyzing, and summarizing a research paper based on the impact of big data on the healthcare industry. They sent me 4 essays on the same, and I was to submit the report after 5 days, which meant writing 1 article every day along with the daily responsibilities of grocery shopping, cooking, sending my kid to school, taking him for his basketball and skating classes, and helping him with his studies. It seemed like a difficult task at first but gradually, I settled in and started enjoying the work. My employer was quite understanding and helped me manage time whenever there was a delay in submitting assignments.
Halfway through the internship, they offered me a job as a project coordinator at one of their sister organizations. Since my son had school, I could only manage to work as a part-time employee, i.e. from 9.30 to 2.30 on weekdays, and for the whole day on Saturdays. Thank you, Internshala, for providing these opportunities to women who had to quit their jobs due to familial responsibilities.
Inspired by Nitasha’s journey? Do you also wish to re(start) your career? Apply to these internships for women for a transition from a homemaker to a professional.
