Internship with Internshala– Swapnil Surve from VJTI Mumbai
Swapnil Surve interned with Internshala, and neither us nor the amazing cash prizes, but our promise of giving away the (most cherished) Internshala T-shirt this year squeezed him to pen down his awesome experience of interning with Internshala. Not to boast of or something, but he’s pretty serious about his T-shirt.
MY INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE WITH INTERNSHALA
So, this is the second time I’m writing something of this ‘Internship Experience’ sort. Being a proud ‘Daily Winner’ (hoping that counts) of the same ‘Your Internship Story’ contest held by Internshala last year, this year’s attempt of mine is hardly aimed at getting myself published in the Internshala blog. This time, it’s more about getting my hands on that treasured Internshala T-shirt that the CEO of Internshala has promised me in return for this article. Yes, you guessed it right, Things Just Got Serious.
DISCLAIMER: As I’m going to write about my internship experience working with Internshala itself, this might just look a bit like some promotion of Internshala. But well, what the heck! It’s totally worth it!
To give you a basic idea about the work I did, I was an Entrepreneurship Intern at Internshala working from home. Interesting term, isn’t it? Well, that’s what caught my attention thanks to my rather wannabe fascination for the ‘Entrepreneur’ term.
How I got this internship? In a way, I was rejected initially when I applied as there were no open positions left. But, I asked Sarvesh Sir to keep me in the loop in the future if there would be any. Meanwhile, I couldn’t find anything great and feasible enough for me as I was kind of looking for this internship as a way to do something productive instead of being lazy and wasted in my last semester of engineering.
Luckily, I made it a point to send him a follow-up mail after 3 weeks or so asking about that internship position. And my efforts paid off! He interviewed me over the phone and gave me a couple of assessment assignments and even asked me about a faking news FB page that I had started centred around my college. Soon, I got a mail which was my first full-fledged offer letter by a firm. Awesome example of how follow up can get you an internship like a boss.
Want to know about the kind of work I did? My responsibilities were mainly editorial and marketing-based. I would try to write interesting and not-so-boring career-based articles for their blog. Here is where I learnt about blogging and WordPress. The best part about this is that it inculcated in me the priceless habit-cum-hobby of writing. Now, I’ve actually started my own blog thanks to the Internshala experience!
I was also given a major responsibility of setting up a marketing channel for Internshala via the power of TnP offices of colleges all over India. Now, this is where things got interesting. I got to use this seriously mind-blowing tool called Google Analytics where you could actually closely track all the traffic coming on the website. Want to know exactly how well a particular marketing campaign is working for your newly launched website? Google Analytics can totally be that consultant for you!
Besides, there’s nothing like that feeling of directly helping enthusiastic yet anxious students all over India with getting them internships. Plus, not to brag or anything, it was pretty awesome (though embarrassing as well) when some of the highly-respected TnP office in-charge professors would erroneously refer to me as ‘Sir’ over the phone. :P
Another incredible experience in this stint of mine was when I got the chance to conduct a session all by myself as Internshala’s Mumbai representative in an engineering college. In this seminar, I got to teach students about getting an internship – unforgettable experience, this one was.
Also, this internship helped me improve my knowledge about resume writing to a great extent thanks to Internshala’s awesome ‘Resume Writing’ services. I am now confident enough to even proof-read lots of my juniors’ resumes.
Though I did have to compromise sometimes on some college friends’ plans because of work, it was, nevertheless, always worth it. Besides, the salary earned helped me fund all my final semester exploits and outings. So, no regrets there.
Internshala’s work culture also seemed pretty fun. There was this networking game called ‘Pehchaan Kaun’ where I was given the contact numbers of people working for Internshala and was told to call them and ask their names and what work they did in this start-up. Here, I got to interact with some of my colleagues sitting in far corners of the country and got ragged to an extent as well. Somehow, I still wish I was a full-time intern working from their office then.
Last but not the least, I got to know Sarvesh Sir which is probably the best takeaway for me from the time spent working for this amazing firm. I mean how lucky I was to get to work with and report directly to the CEO! I used to keep bugging him about random advice and try to understand how a business works from this ever-friendly entrepreneur.
I treasure the feedback he gave me for my work at the end of the internship. I still take efforts to make sure I’m working on what he said while I currently transition from college life to professional life. I aspire to meet him in person one day and have a nice long chat and learn more about entrepreneurship from the boss himself.
At the end of it, even after almost 5 months of leaving this amazing company, there is still this pride in being associated with Internshala. I really hope it turns into one of those successful multi-million dollar companies one day. Then, I shall shamelessly take credit for having contributed to its success once upon a time :P
