Hey everyone!! I am Mitanshi, a third-year undergraduate student in chemical engineering, pursuing a minor in Management. I hail from Jodhpur, and I love dancing, eating, and binge-watching sci-fi TV series. I'm writing this blog about my winter internship journey in the finance-marketing profile at the Indian School of Business. I hope it helps you in some way.
Disclaimer: It wasn't an offline internship XD (False hope=disappointment)
Motivation:
It was during the days when COVID gave us too much time to kill when I was intrigued to delve into the field of finance. I started by reading articles, doing several MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), and then attended the finance boot camp organized by the Finance Club of IIT Bombay. I participated in Manch 4.0 organized by Deutsche Bank, which further gravitated my interest in this field. Along with the technical development in my interest, the fact that I did not want to waste my winters, and the fact that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do a corporate job or an MS later, I finally decided to start with a research internship.
Apping exp:
I had decided to do a research internship, and I started by asking my seniors how and where to start. With the tips I got, I began by writing a cover letter that included my brief introduction, motivation, technical background, and CV, of course. It is essential to keep your emails short and to the point. I found the process of apping a bit tedious and was sometimes too lazy even to continue. But trust me, doing things you find boring always bear fruit XD. After taking days to write my cover letter, I started making a database of the professors I wanted to contact. My main focus was IIMs and ISB. Now coming to how to make a database, the first step is to go to the university's website and, under the faculty section, start reading about the professors and the current areas they are researching. Then I started making a database of the professors and their email-id, research area, and their websites. The databasing process is exhausting, and after making a database of around 30 professors, I started sending out the emails. I had mailed about 27 professors, out of which four replied, and only 2 of them were interested.
Out of those 2, one of the professors was quick to set up an interview, and his RA also sent a few research papers to read before the interview. The interview was mostly about my motivation, a few questions on my resume, and they also explained a lot more about their research topic and what I would learn from it.
Internship Experience:
My internship was a month-long, and yes, just four weeks are not enough, but I did develop some skills from this internship. The research objective was to understand why we have such a less number of female executives and to understand the innovation under a female CMO. If you google it, you'll find that firms like Fresh Del Monte and Fossil Group have 0 women as the high-rank officers while others like Coca-Cola or Colgate-Palmolive have very few female executives.
The key work during the first half was to collect and structure data of the executives using excel for around 70 firms. The second half was more about predicting the effect of female CMO on innovation by extracting Consumer Packaged Goods firms' innovation data for 90+ firms. The major takeaways were that I am an excel pro now and can work without using a mouse lol. I know a lot more about the corporate world, and also the stipend was good, and the professor also sent us new year gifts. Overall the fact that it wasn't an offline intern was disappointing, but the online experience was not too bad.
Gyaan ki Baat:
With the minimal experience, one has in their second year, you can still try to get some exposure as those giving interns don't expect you to know it all. IIMs and ISB professors mostly look for people with good coding and statistical skills from IITs, so if you are not interested in finance or marketing, there are still a lot of opportunities. If you think you can manage your time well, you can also apply for an in-sem internship.
Conclusion:
My experience was good, and I did learn a lot from it. In some way, this research internship actually motivated me to seek a corporate job later as, after all, it was research on the corporate world.
Don't stress yourself too much and try to keep learning and have fun at the same time. Just be persistent, and if you do get an internship, try to build a strong network with other people you are introduced to. Lastly, it's completely okay if you are unsure about what you want to do, be open to opportunities, and explore as much as you can.
Feel free to approach me for any kind of help! Cheers!!