Summer Internship Experience 2021 - Emeritus - Arunjyoti Saha, IIM Lucknow

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On joining the company as an intern, how has your onboarding experience been like?

Emeritus a start-up established in 2015 as part of Eruditus to foster online quality education among. Overall it is a small organization with around 1000 employees.
My internship is virtual. I along with my other interns, new joiners were welcomed by Company HR, virtually. It consisted of some introductory questions like my hobby, the weirdest thing is ever done, things about me that nobody has heard of, etc. We got to learn about company culture, its vision, and mission. Overall it was a cheerful experience.

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How has your interaction with the team members and colleagues been like? How will you make sure to leave the best impression on your supervisors by the end of the internship?

My team members are all young professionals and it has been easier to communicate with them with an open mind. I am also being able to learn from them about how a manager does his/her work, applies structured thought processes while solving problems and how they are blending their MBA knowledge into their day-to-day work.
1. Whenever I am assigned any work, I try to understand the implications it would have on the company's objectives. If i am unable to comprehend, I ask my colleagues/supervisor. It helps me to do my job with full motivation.
2. I acknowledge my mistakes and try to learn from them so that it doesn't happen again. If any correction is suggested by my supervisor, I acknowledge it and make sure to get it done promptly.
3. I make sure to remain disciplined which enhances my punctuality at work and aids me to complete my job before the deadline.

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Tell us in brief, about the project you are currently working on and how is this project going to help the company? 

Being an ed-tech start-up that is becoming very crowded day by day, my company has asked me not to share the details of the projects I am working on.
But, in a general sense, my work consists of analyzing and interpreting data and information to generate meaningful insights which will help the company take some important decisions regarding the financing of students and M&A. I am predominantly using MS excel to analyze and interpret data.

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Are You The Best Summer Intern Of The Class Of 2022? Share Your Own Internship Experience.

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Give us an overview of how you prepared for your summer placement season.

Frankly speaking, I didn't prepare well for my summer internships. When my friends were busy preparing for summers by taking help from seniors, attaining mock PI and GDs, I was very much focused on academics, especially on newer subjects like Finance and Accounting, Macroeconomics, etc. Now, I understand that I should have balanced my summers preparation with academics. Attending mock PIs, GDs and taking help from seniors from the very beginning is important as-
1. Coming from a very different background (Engineering in my case of me), the shift in mindset (from engineer to manager) requires the guidance of seniors as they had been through the process 1 year ago
2. If your peers are preparing and if you are not, obviously they get a competitive advantage
3. Mock GDs and PIs help you understand beforehand what to do and what not to do at the time of the selection process
4. It is better to focus on some specific verticals (like operations, marketing, etc) of your interest and prepare well for them in a focussed way instead of trying to prepare for everything. To build interest, one can go through course outlines of different subjects to understand if that interests them.

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Based on your internship experience till now, what are some necessary skill sets one must be prepared with before starting an internship? 

1. Good communication skills,
2. Listening skills,
3. Quantitative skills,
4. Proficiency in MS word, excel, PowerPoint
5. Ability to ask questions and pro-activeness
-are important.
Given that companies are accelerating their focus on data day-by-day, it is crucial to have some basic data analysis and interpretation skills. Not only that, a manager should be able to communicate his/her findings with confidence as well. So, excel and PowerPoint are a must in this regard.

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What are some new skills that you have developed while working in the company?

1. Practice makes a person perfect. After 1-2 fumbles in my initial presentations, I have improved significantly in my communication and presentation skills.
2. I have learned from my colleagues how they are putting their structured thought process in solving the problems. For example: breaking a problem into small segments and solving them one by one.
3. I have also learned about vendor negotiation while working on a particular project.

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What are some of the challenges that you have faced in your internship and how have you overcome them?

Though ed-tech is becoming a commonplace industry day by day, there are separate models that each company follows. So, as a person with a process engineering background, I needed to make complete sense of how things work at Emeritus in a very short period of time. Then only I could jump in the projects assigned to me, with full motivation. I made it a priority to understand in depth my company's vision and mission. I did secondary research from websites, asked questions to my mentor but above all, I allocated fixed time to quench this thirst of mine. And, as I dug deeper, it became more interesting thereby motivating me to stay on course.
The second challenge was less of a challenge and more of my apprehensions, about the effectiveness of working from home at a digital setup. But, I trusted technology and kept a strong intent to learn from my mentor, colleagues, for example by asking a quick doubt on MS Teams or via a conference call. This shift in mindset helped me to overcome this challenge with flying colors.

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Tell us about a situation where you were complemented by your Manager for your work. 

My manager gave me a small piece of information about a project (which involved decision-making to choose an organization for a confidential purpose) and asked me to look into it. It is my intrinsic nature to go deep to get things done. I proactively coordinated with subject-matter experts, did online research to learn more about the project, and finally built a case of what decision the company should take. My manager complimented me for this work as he found it to be very rational and an 'intelligent decision'.

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What have been your major learnings during the internship? 

The adage goes like this- "Data is the new oil". And almost every organization is doing something related to data to stay competitive. I being a chemical engineering student ("the old oil"), had limited exposure to 'Data'. So, it was important to learn about how to use data and make sense out of it. My brief stint at Emeritus gave me a lot of exposure in this 'data' front. I 'practically' experienced how the company was using customer data to add value to its education-service offerings.
Secondly, as a budding manager, one can't deny the importance of communication in an organizational context. Regular meetings with my mentor, colleagues, and the manager helped me to brush up on my communication skill and gave structure to my thoughts.

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Tell us about your final presentation of the project to your manager in brief. What was the toughest question asked during the presentation and how did you answer it?

The final presentation was related to an M&A project, where I played a supporting role to my reporting manager. The presentation was about our key findings from lots of data collected using secondary research. In essence, it was a summarization exercise, presented to company's global CFO, followed by some cross-questioning and decisions on the way forward.
Generally, subjective questions appear to be tougher to me because there is no right or wrong answer to it. I encountered one such subjective question related to my opinion. I answered confidently, giving a structure to my thought and substantiating it with facts discovered by me. I felt a positive vibe.

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Some advice that you would like to give to your juniors based on your internship experience.

1. Prioritization: It may happen that multiple projects may be thrown at you simultaneously. It is important to gauge their relative importance and accordingly prioritize
2. Don't say No: It is only a 2-months opportunity to apply your theoretical knowledge in a practical setting. The more you work, the better your exposure. So, learn to work smartly and proactively. Additionally, you get a chance of getting the much-coveted PPO.
3. Communication Skills: A manager has to present his/her work in a crisp way to get buy-ins from relevant stakeholders. So, it is important to sharpen your communication skills. The more you practice, the better it gets.

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What was one of the best moments according to you during your internship?

On the last day of the internship, we had a brief catchup call with our reporting manager. It was more of an informal meeting where we received and gave feedback about our internship experience. I received some constructive feedback about my strengths and where I need to improve more. I also received some career advice which I believe will help me in the long run.

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Final Week Pic!

 

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