Ananya Burli | ITC

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Hellooooo everyone! I’m Ananya Burli from Bengaluru and I’ll soon be entering my final year (rip :///, aadhi “insti life” toh insti ke baahar hi nikal gayi) of B.Tech. in our department. As you read this, I’m sure you’re ridden with anxiety about the internship season that is dawning on you: frantically sending your resume version 112239823.0 to countless seniors for their reviews, reading company reviews and common interview questions on Glassdoor & making your HR doc by answering those 64 famous questions. Consult! Finance! Quant! Software! Core! Univ! AAAAAAAAA!

The worst part is that everyone undergoes this phase sometime throughout their time in the institute. But the best part? Everyone undergoes this phase throughout their time in the institute. We as a student community find solace in this familiar feeling: we support each other through the best of times and through the worst of times. Remember that this blog entry is meant to help you understand what I went through during my time, and I hope to instil some confidence in you through the course of this 1300-word journey.

The Beginning

It was the end of April 2021, and I was stoked to have finally finished what was personally one of my heaviest semesters. I began working on my 2-page resume in the 2nd week of May 2021 as I knew I would be obsessively running it through numerous iterations on Overleaf (read, you can start in June also, but best to give it some time). I made my 3rd year resumes more or less from scratch since working on the 2nd year draft, as you’ll soon realize, is useless (you’ll end up changing almost everything). I prepared my 1-page resume as a sub-set of my 2-page resume with minimal changes since I was targeting core and FMCG profiles which mostly demanded 2-page core resumes.

As I didn’t want to miss out on any information regarding the internship season and past internship experiences, I attended all the sessions organised by UGAC, DAMP and ChEA (May-June 2021) regarding summer internships (pro tip: this panned out v well for me, please invest time on these sessions and make notes). While they were overwhelming for me, I managed to absorb as much as I could. It was during this time I realized that I should set my priorities straight in the beginning and do a focused preparation for the companies that I wished to intern at: HUL, ITC, P&G, Piramal and DRL. I did do some light preparation of guesstimates and probability on the side, along with some specific preparation for JaneStreet (idk why, I just thought why not?).

My primary preparation involved revising core concepts, preparing answers to common HR questions, doing company research on their websites (their goals, mottos, charitable or sustainability initiatives, basic trivia, etc.), reading a lot of Quora (yes, Quora, even after JEE haha) and Glassdoor reviews of the companies of my interest and finally understanding group discussion (GD) formats of various companies.

Cometh the internship season

The season started around the third week of July when we had resume submission deadlines and even the beginning of the JaneStreet interview rounds. I gave a couple of them but didn’t get beyond that, as I’d expected (no disappointment there). I signed some quant. trading IAFs like Optiver and Goldman Sachs with consequent attendance of their tests, but all in vain here as well, since I was clearly underprepared (indicated in the above section).

My first disappointment found itself with the rejection in the psychometric test round of the Supply Chain profile at P&G. I was devastated but quickly pulled myself together since I couldn’t afford to lose focus. Soon came HUL (Hindustan Unilever Limited), where I made it to the resume shortlist and had to give a (no-audience) HireVue case-study interview. I expected the interview to have gone well, but unfortunately, I had not made it to the shortlist for the following round. Unilever was one of the top companies on my priority list, so this setback was a real blow to my confidence overconfidence. It took me 3-4 days to overcome the consequent dejection, but the support of my parents and friends reassured me.

How I got selected for ITC

Following this period, I began full-fledged scrutiny and study for the upcoming ITC group discussion and interview rounds. ITC put up its IAF on August 7, 2021, with a document containing some educational, parental background and HR questions that had to be filled by us. It published its shortlist for GDs on August 11, 2021. I asked a lot of ex-ITC interns about the problem statements of discussion during the GD: plane-crash scenarios, role-playing different characters, etc. This was followed by two rounds of interviews: roughly 25 and 40 minutes each, with executives of various statures. The experience was interesting, with a mix of a resume walk-through giving special attention to my technical projects as well as HR questions (note: your interviews could be taken by both experts in your core field as well as HR executives who would prefer that you explain your projects in as lucid a manner as possible). I made it a point to elucidate my key projects and achievements in a way that answers 4 questions: What is the problem statement/objective? Why was there to need to work on the same? How did I contribute to the project with a novel approach? What were the final results, and where could they be useful in a practical context?

The first interview was conducted on August 13, 2021 (note: this was also a filtering round) and the second interview took place on August 16, 2021. Remember to prepare for interviews well in advance during the vacation itself: shortlists for them are often released on the same day they are to be organised. The final Day 1 Non-Tech selections were out later at midnight, and I had made it! FINALLY. I’m not gonna lie: it was cathartic.

My two months at ITC (& my two cents)

The dread of internship season had been left behind in 2021, and a new chapter of my life in the summer of 2022 had now found its way to the altar. ITC called us 45 interns from various IITs and NITs to the lavish ITC Windsor hotel (an iconic 5-star heritage hotel at Bengaluru) for a 2-day induction in late May 2022. The hotel experience was fab and they’d truly done a good job impressing us :) We were soon assigned our divisions, guides and problem statements, with most of us being flown to the factory/office locations the next day. I was scheduled to work in the tobacco division at Bengaluru in the capsule production department, specifically on quality aspects. Accommodation and cab services were provided with mostly South Indian (free) food at the factory canteen. During my internship, I spent time understanding the real-time problem at hand, talking to a lot of the people involved in the manufacturing processes (from the shop floor workers to the technologists and scientists), conducting trials and validating hypotheses. I got to learn so much not just from a technical perspective (data analysis, data generation, hypothesis testing, etc.) but also from a managerial eye-lens.

Some key aspects that I picked up during these 8-9 weeks were: core internship jobs are not corporate desk jobs; they involve a lot of roaming around and a lot of interaction on a daily basis (puts your people skills to the test). They’re a great way to test the practical application of core knowledge. Third-year internships are very effective in helping you realise what you like and what you don’t (they shape our immediate career paths).

Overall, I had a pleasant experience at ITC and made a lot of friends too! I acquired a host of techno-managerial skills, spent quality time amidst the lush greens of the campus and will be taking back a plethora of memories.

With this, my blog entry comes to end. I hope you found it valuable and take into account the little tips given by your seniors! Do not fret for you have good things waiting for you :)