Internship at Axis Bank – Richa from Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Richa (second person from the left) is pursuing M.A and shares her experience of the blissful internship days.

Sitting through close to 30 pre-placement talks (all B-school graduates will empathize with that) was indeed boring, and yeah, that’s a euphemism I am using for it. Things become all the more dull and uninteresting when those sectors turn up for pre-placement talks which you are least interested in and you know this will not work out. Specializing in Human Resources, banking, consulting, IT were some such sectors I did not want to venture at this point of time.

My apathy was reflected during the talks these companies held when they came for their summer internship program. One such company was AXIS BANK, my would-be summer internship organization. During my AXIS interview I could barely recall what their senior leaders had discussed during the talks. I did not mind working in this company and the sector because I felt there was a lot that I could learn by venturing into unknown waters. I was myself instead of faking like many other candidates during the interview and cleared the process and made it to AXIS. I had mixed feelings about future. Without concentrating on how good or bad the two months were going to be, I decided to just flow with the time and events which were about to unravel.

One word which will aptly describe my two months (April-May 2015) internship at AXIS is – BLISSFUL. Yeah, so here is what my understanding of blissful is.

I, being a Chemistry Graduate and one who has all through her life studied Science, practically knew nothing about banking, apart from the retail branches of various banks. I was obviously apprehensive about this. I was not sure how will I work at a place where I actually don’t know what the people are doing. After giving it a lot of thought I said to myself, “But you have to do something which you know and you have been studying for past one year, and that’s- HR”.
Believe me all my fears, apprehensions,doubts etc. vanished.

And thus started a BLISSFUL JOURNEY. I will attribute this blissful journey to the following parameters:

• People
• Work
• Friends- fellow interns and culture.

To elaborate on these:

• PEOPLE- AXIS EMPLOYEES: One thing I still fail to understand, even after the two months stint at Axis, is why this organization does not leverage on this factor which can become it’s USP for employer branding. Axis employees are good, humble, down-to-earth and what not. I still remember the day when I had some glitches and trouble with my project and I randomly asked this person sitting next to me to help and he went beyond his capacity to help me with it. Not only him, people across the divisions were like this. People were so good to me that I started doubting their intentions. It was only after I spoke to other fellow interns and our senior Management trainees that I came to know that people here have always been good to everyone.

• WORK: Due to the binding nature of the non-disclosure agreement I had signed on joining AXIS as part of my summer internship program I am bound not to divulge the project details. But, since my work formed an integral part of my internship, it deserves a mention here. The reason I was so glad with my work was because it was a hard earned project. I literally had to toil for close to two weeks to get my goals and project delivery clear as there were some issues with the earlier allotted project. So, when I was given the work of designing a communication deck for cascading of the competencies, I made sure that I was as creative, original and authentic in delivering my work as possible. The best part was that I was lauded and commended for my work. Trust me, being valued and appreciated for something which you have really put your heart in, is indeed BLISSFUL.

• FRIENDS FOREVER: So there were interns from other B-schools across the country who had joined with me and what started with a normal, “Hi, I am ABC from XYZ institute” went on to something which words cannot describe. We were 32 interns from across institutes and enjoyed our summer stint as if “ZINDAGI NAA MILEGI DOBARA”.

• CULTURE: Awesomeness! Yes, that is what the culture was like at Axis. Employees switching from various organizations to this place did share with me how the KRAs (Key Result Areas) were indeed higher in this company but there were few other things which was not in Axis- stress, anxiety and everything tense. Culture was shaped by the employees and it was awesome.

To sum up my two months stint in a few lines:

“My experience at Axis can be aptly summed up in the form of the following mathematical expression: Work + Fun = Happiness@Axis. Be it the kind of project I got to work on or the kind of team I worked with or attending the ANNUAL Branch Heads Meet or getting an opportunity of a selfie with Shikha Sharma :-D, all of this ensured that I had a great time at Axis. These two months at Axis were a bliss for me in the sense that I met the few of the most impactful professional people who are humble to the core, HERE. In a nutshell, Axis gave me more than I could think of.”

If Richa’s experience motivates you, you can check the latest internships in Mumbai and HR internships.

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