-Mustafa Burhani(2021)
Hello everyone, this is Mustafa Burhani, a fourth-year undergraduate in Chemical Engineering Department, IIT Bombay, pursuing minors in Electrical Engineering. I am currently a summer intern in the Femcare division of P&G.
Intern Season
The beginning of the third year can be very overwhelming with companies coming in to hire you for their internship program. It is the first time for most of us to get into the real world, work for companies, learn, and experience the corporate world. Surges of anxiety are common in this season(Which is completely fine, it is the next step towards personality development).
I remember I was pretty uninformed about the upcoming intern season during my second year summers. With the advent of the pandemic, I was confused about how the intern season would be, so I didn’t focus on it at first, just worked on my POR( Institute Dramatics Secretary) and a SURP project under professor Amber Jain. Around the 9th of July, I was asked by a junior(Yes, you heard that right, a junior), “How is your intern prep & resume making coming along? You have your submissions around 23rd of July(Don't remember the exact date).” I started to panic and got gravely anxious. I began to feel low & regretted not being proactive. I started reaching out to some of my seniors, seeking advice & empathy. I was assured that I have enough time and can still make a good resume. I dived into the process, researched several companies, reviewed resumes of past year interns & also of placement peeps. It soon got balanced, and I successfully created a decent resume.
Talking about my previous experiences, I have been involved in managerial roles for a long time. Therefore I had a little inclination to explore it more. But I even signed up IAFs for coding companies(with no coding experience apart from CS 101 XD) and terribly failed at them. Then came Day1 non-tech companies like Strategy&, Deutsche Bank, P&G, HUL, etc.
I signed up for them all, gave all their tests. Finally, I got a shortlist in P&G. I was elated for the moment, but within minutes the shortlist was taken down. I got pretty tensed and waited for them to re-upload the shortlist. To my surprise, after two days, they re-uploaded the shortlist with lesser selections, and I was one of them. It was around 10 PM, and after being happy for like a minute or so, I realized I have an interview the very next day at 2 PM. After several minutes of panicking, I called some of my seniors, asked for guidance and how to plan the next 16 hours left. They sat with me, helped me prepare an HR Document. After the HR document was completed (5 in the morning), I took a nap for 3 hours, woke up, and prepared my resume(Going through each and every point and trying to explain them in a concise and detailed way). After hours of preparing, I gave my interview, got selected for the second round & finally gave the second round. Now it was time to wait for the results, which were announced within 4-5 days, and after getting selected, my happiness was unending.
Start of the Internship:
It is a work-from-home internship. I do feel sad that this couldn't be an offline experience, but the company has tried its best to provide us with a wonderful experience.
The past few months took a serious toll on my family, and I was not even sure that I might be able to work, but everything turned out to be better, and I started my internship. The first week was getting to know the company, fellow interns, guide & the problem statement of my project.
Currently, I am working to create a digital platform that will be used across plants for managing projects. It is a little unconventional project for the product supply role, but this is the best we can get in such times. The first month I understood a different process and authored a solution on paper that was supposed to be executed in the coming month. After getting the solution approved and reviewed, currently I am developing the application.
P&G Culture
The best thing about P&G is, they don't hire their employees on the basis of their technical skills. Instead, they hire them on the basis of their personalities & they believe technical skills are something which can be developed eventually. People here are very sweet and always ready to help. It is a very good learning experience so far.
I have learned a lot of things like communication skills, presentation skills, task management, different processes within P&G, and most importantly I have learned how to develop an application (with no strong programming background) (still learning though :P) in my past few weeks while working for P&G.
Gyaan Ki Baatein-
Remember one thing, you all are precious and amazing. Just take a step back and look around at your friends in other colleges; you might realize you are doing a lot at this early stage. Of course, this is not going to be easy, but crazy is what you signed up for, and trust me, you will find yourself as a completely different person at the end of this.
I am not a “machau” student, I have decent CPI, I had no previous internships, I had a simple sa project and some PORs, yet I ended up getting a Day 1 intern, by believing in the things that I have done in the past, and making the best out of them (The place that you are standing right now, is an outcome of the fantastic things that you have done in the past, you might not remember them exactly right away, but sit and think about how awesome and wonderful you are, it will help you a lot in the coming times). I am not patronizing myself here; I just want you to know that if I being an average(maybe below average) student can do it, you definitely can. Just don't stop believing in yourself.
Come on, this is life, you might get rejections, you might have to sign in for most of the companies until you land an intern, just trust me, don’t STOP TRYING, and you will realize what a legendary task you have done when you finally get where you wanted to be. I really respect those of my peers, who had to wait for months to land an internship. Because while I was done with my internship and stopped caring about the selection, those guys were consistently applying for companies, giving tests, preparing for them day and night all whilst managing their college and personal lives. Those guys turned out to be so mature & skilled at the end, that it's just amazing.
Just don’t stop trying, each and every step that you take while trying to land an internship will make you a better person.
All the very best guys, you all are gems and will make us seniors proud :)
Any problem you face at any point, feel free to reach out to me, I will try my best to help you out!
Peace