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Hello! My name is Aditya Patel and I am a senior in the chemical engineering department! This article is about my 3rd-year summer internship as a Product Analyst at NoBroker.
That time of college life…
The ever-dreaded: INTERNSHIP SEASON. Heard in the corridors:
“How’s your intern prep going?”
“Did you get your resume reviewed?”
“Dude, you have your interview tomorrow!”
“Yaar, intern lagegi na apni?”
From resume making to getting shortlisted to finally getting selected, the journey is not the same for everyone. Some have their summer plans ready by Day 1, while some wait for months. With shortlists, interview schedules, and tons of ‘Congratulations!’ arriving on the bookmarked Internship Blog every week, the process becomes overwhelming for a lot of us. But worry not people, it’s just another step towards preparing ourselves for what’s ahead after college, and I am sure each one you can nail it! All you need to remember is to have faith in yourself and things will fall into place!
Offline Internship: Someone find me a home :’)
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work in an offline internship! My internship was in Bangalore and when all of it started when I realized, “Shit, we need a place to live!” Four of my wingies also had their internships in Bangalore, so we rented a 2 BHK for the period of our internship, and let me tell you, house hunting is not easy in Bangalore :((
Apart from that, Bangalore, for a city, is amazing! The weather is awesome (yes, for the 1000th time), plus you can always plan a weekend getaway to Mysore or Pondicherry. The city also has nice nightlife to offer, so you don’t miss insti too much. As for the food, finding good North Indian food could be a challenge sometimes, but that’s mostly manageable. However, getting around Bangalore might be very difficult. My flat was only 5 kilometers from the office, but we (me & my flatmates) had grown accustomed to getting stuck in traffic.
Finalizing a place to live along with managing food & laundry arrangements took us almost 3-4 days, but we were finally ready for our internships!
Starting with my workplace, I believe the NoBroker office is fantastic! The office has a very vibrant atmosphere with literally a “jhoola” in the middle of the office. People do not have fixed cubicles; it’s like you can sit wherever you wish to. They have a garden area too where one could always get coffee/snacks to freshen up!
I had my office hours from 10 AM to 7 PM. In college, we are typically not used to having a fixed schedule, and I took my time to settle properly. At the start, it felt like school all over again xD but soon we got used to everything and it was all good.
About Projects
My internship started with a fun assignment given by one of the VPs. The assignment’s focus was to get acquainted with the company’s product. It involved talking to people from different verticals to understand the scope of the vertical and the ongoing projects.
Later, each intern was assigned a mentor who he/she was supposed to work with for the rest of the internship. My mentor was a PM in the home store vertical of NoBroker. I worked majorly on two home store projects with him, one of which revolved around analyzing the sales funnel for a particular service and the other was to work on reducing the operations cost for one of NoBroker’s services.
Projects in product typically start with a competitive analysis and so did mine. Customer interviews were another important part of the projects that I had. It might come as a surprise but my role did not require any coding skills as such; most of it was focused on critical thinking and identifying THE problem. Additionally, I had the opportunity to get acquainted with prototyping tools like Figma while working on a minor project alongside my primary ones.
In conclusion, I believe the internship did justice to what I was looking for. By the end, I had some idea of how “corporate” life goes and a decent understanding of the profile I was working in.
Company Culture
I found everyone at NoBroker to be incredibly friendly, and I absolutely loved the culture here! We had “Fun Fridays” every week, where the company would plan activities/games for us, giving us a chance to engage with people apart from our project team. The TT table in the office had become our (me & my co-interns) go-to place after lunch or snacks.
As for my co-interns, there were six people in my profile: students from IIT Bombay, KGP & Roorkee. I realized that working alongside people from different backgrounds not only broadens your perspective but helps you understand how you as an individual can add value to your team. From discussions on projects to planning trips to office gossip, I definitely had a great time with my co-interns too!
All the Best!
So, that concludes my internship experience. I think everyone has their own set of unique stories from their internships and I am sure you guys will too. In the end, I would like to say- hope for the best and be prepared for the worst but more importantly, remember to believe in yourself!
Feel free to reach out to me in case of any queries or doubts you may have :)