Internshala Student Partner (ISP) Program – The Past & The Future

Internshala founder & CEO, Sarvesh Agrawal writes about genesis of Internshala Student Partner Program and what you can expect from this program as an ISP

After starting Internshala in 2011, I resisted the idea of launching a campus ambassador program for a really really long time. Back then almost every other company had launched a Campus Ambassador program and every other student I spoke to told me that Internshala should have one too. But we kept it on hold for 2 reasons –

1. Internshala was built by a team of interns who all had a great internship experience and were provided with lot of responsibilities and mentoring during their internship. We wanted a similar experience for our campus ambassadors too which would not be possible, given the large number of students, unless we had a dedicated team running the program.

2. We also did not have a well defined engagement plan (what would these campus ambassadors do throughout the semester) as we did not have many activities/products/services to offer to students back then.

At the start of 2014, things changed. We had Shekhar joining the team specifically to set up this program and in addition to main internship platform, we also had Internshala Resume Service and Internshala VTC trainings to offer to students around which we can build a more definite semester long engagement plan. And thus launched Internshala Student Partner 1.0 in February 2014.

Our vision is to grow ISP program into India’s most admired and most loved student ambassador program so much so that your friends feel jealous when you are selected and they are not. More importantly, we want every ISP who is selected under this program to come out of it as a much better professional than he/she was at the time of entering the program – a league of extra ordinary college students in true sense!

Are we there yet? Probably not, but we are on the right track. The learnings we had from ISP 1.0 have been incorporated into ISP 2.0 and we would continue to make improvements as we grow and learn more.

Now that you have been selected, what is expected from you?

I expect that other than learning fundamentals of business & marketing by promoting Internshala in your college (and I hope you all do a good job of it), you become a true brand ambassador of Internshala Core Values. These values put together define Intershala’s personality and I hope they reflect in your day to day conduct too.

In addition, I hope you avail your rights as extended Internshala team and feel free to reach out to any one in Internshala in-office team for any career related help you may need at any point. Internshala team has some of the most intelligent, smartest and friendliest people you would ever come across and all of us will always welcome the opportunity to have a friendly chat with you.

Welcome aboard and good luck!