Summer Internship in Bangalore – IBM – the internship edge in the professional world
About Author: Sharath, a 1st yr PGDM student at S.D.M. Institute for Management Development interned with IBM, Bangalore in the Information Management and Software Testing profile.
First of all what is internship and what is its main benefit? Internship is a system of on-the-job training for professional careers and also an opportunity for students to have a head start over others in their careers. Companies hire students from reputed colleges to work for them, as it would be inexpensive labor for the company and students can gain more practical knowledge in the field. Internship can also be used to determine whether one has interest in a particular field or not. Sometimes interns with great talent get permanent job offers from the company.
MY EXPERIENCE– I can regard my internship as one of the best and awesome experiences I had during my engineering academia. I joined IBM (Mantri Commercial Complex, Bannerugatta Road, Bangalore) as an intern on April 5th. IBM had rented only the 3rd floor of the building; other floors were occupied by Oracle and Shoppers Stop. On my first day there wasn’t much of meeting colleagues as many of them were on leave. I was working directly under the guidance of Subhash Srikantiah, Deputy General Manager, IBM.com, Global Web Production Services. He came out to swipe for me as I was yet to receive my ID card. He then took me around the office; I was wonder-struck to look at so many computers and the cubicle arrangements, the entire IT environment for the first time. My manager took me to my new cubicle and explained some rules, regulations and policies and sent some forms to fill.
IBM had flexible timings and as I had classes only three days a week during the 8th semester, timings weren’t much of a problem. I was required to learn and work for around 30 hours a week. I was already a day old at IBM. The next day I got to meet all my team mates, some of them with lots of experience in their respective fields. Some of them asked me to tell something interesting about me and my hobbies and later we went to have coffee. At the cafe there were a couple of table tennis tables, where we played for a while and came back to our cubicles. XML expert Brinda was asked to guide me in my work. Three weeks training was provided on XML and related technologies where I got practical knowledge and applied them simultaneously. I also developed the ability to use Altova XML Spy which helps to model, edit, transform and debug XML templates by being part of the Enterprise Content Management Team.
Later, I was put to work on the web pages of IBM.com as a tester on the project which was built on J2EE technology where I obtained an understanding of JavaScript programming and functioning. I also obtained a foothold of the testing life cycle, testing techniques like test execution, detailed defect reporting and test report generation using a tool called Mantis. I still remember the appreciation that I got from my Quality Analyst – Team Lead for finding a bug in one of the web pages for a particular criterion. Actually my internship was for three months but at the end of three months my manager asked me if I would like to work for one month more (until July end) because I had already informed him that I had got placed at Infosys and my training was to start from 2nd August 2010, seeing the opportunity that I can work for one more month made me accept the offer. Also, during the last week of June we had got mails asking us to refer our friends for entry level job openings for Web Designing, Java Programming and Development and Quality Analysis i.e., testing. As some of my friends and classmates were yet to be placed, I referred them and almost 5 of them got offers.
I was part of many presentations, meetings and onsite calls and hence got a glimpse of how the working usually takes place. I would have been part of the Centennial IBM Project as IBM was turning 100 years from its institution. But due to some problems in the take-off of the project it was postponed to August, by then my extended internship period had come to an end. Some of my friends got to work on that project; it would have been like a feather in the cap kind of project in my career, had I got a chance. I had missed it by a whisker. To summarize my experience I can say that it was a wholesome experience, wherein I got to learn a lot with respect to both gaining considerable knowledge and working techniques. I got to meet lots of people with experience and got some valuable inputs. I learnt to manage things better because, even during my final exams and college internals I had to put in some hours of work or come during weekends to make up for the time lost and even with all this, I got a distinction in my final exams.
The head start that I obtained at IBM helped me even during my working days at Infosys with respect to work, project, and punctuality, dressing policies, ethics, following rules and regulation, interaction with team leads and managers and in many other ways. So guys try and get an internship at a reputed company as far as possible so that you can learn better and feel the difference it brings to your career. Presently, I am pursuing my PGDM at SDMIMD, Mysore (2012-2014).
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