By Vedanta Agarwal |
The feeling of competitiveness is almost palpable in college campuses, and it is particularly more accentuated as you enter the glorious roadways of the North Campus of Delhi University. In such a fierce and enormously competitive environment, what is imperative is to be on your toes, be whip smart and be agile enough to grab every opportunity that might or might not come your way. Considering this rigmarole of very finite placements and ginormous number of aspirants, what seems to be a chief, in fact one of the very few deciding factors in one's placement into their dream venture is INTERNSHIPS. We at Abhyas are working incessantly to link students with the corporate realm by bringing in the most prolific companies to the college campus and prepping up students from each year by giving them an insight on how to become a candidate that has utmost leverage over other potential job seekers. Each year, there are innumerable students from the college who have worked tirelessly by interning, building impressive CVs, taking up diverse courses and undertaking a multitude of activities to enhance their overall job potentiality. Out of a number of these students, each year there a handful of students who are instrumental in realising their ambition to get placed into a stellar corporate firm through constant interning and relentless attempts of impressive CV building.
This year, Arushi Lamba from BCom Honours exemplified this by getting placed into DELLOITTE, one of the most prolific and sought after names in the placement circuit. Behind this extraordinary success are two years of unrelenting hard-work to build a resume that's here to stay. This included internships ranging from bonafide government ones to freelancing.
An internship that added substantial value to Arushi's CV was the Swachch Bharat government summer internship. She describes in vivid detail the amount of commitment this internship demanded.
'Each candidate was allocated a village,where we had to complete as many as a hundred hours', she recalls.
There were a plethora of issues that were to be taken care of, ranging from sanitary issues, malnutrition, conditions of PMCs to adult education and conditions of women heath and awareness. The internship involved understanding the situation of from a more intricate perspective, going beyond peripheral conditions and understanding the root cause of the very problem of rampant filth despite the governments initiative. It further required statistical analysis, personal interactions with village heads and working out affirmative solutions to the problem.
'It gave me the capacity to look at situations from a more holistic perspective, honed my critical and analytical skills, made me strengthen the core values required in the social service sector, instilled empathy in me and further helped me in the betterment of my organisational skills', she adds.
A very pivotal point to note here is that though this internship is apparently unrelated to the corporate sector that she aspires to pursue, an internship always engenders in the candidate, the discipline to complete hours, meet deadlines and work for an employer, it further adds extremely significant brownie points to any resume. Hence, any internship whether government or corporate,whether related or unrelated to one's field of interest and intention is intrinsically,invariably and inevitably beneficial for a CV.
Apart from this internship and other acts of freelancing which included content writing and graphic designing, there were many other elements that contributed to her placement in such an aspirational corporate firm.
'I have always been very driven and ambitious,this helped me give my hundred percent in every field. My academics have always been a strong point,having good grades in my 10th and 12th really gave me an edge over others.Apart from this, I have always been vehement to work on my extra curricular profile', she elucidates.
Arushi has been an active member of her department,working at every juncture st which she could. A trained singer, Arushi performed at many events in the DU circuit, representing the music society of the college, she also went on to become the President of the society. This made her CV diverse and comprehensive, which she says showed her versatility and eclectic areas of mastery to the interviewer, giving her leverage over other candidates.
She further decribes the gruelling selection procedure, which includes four rounds, beginning with a written test round of guesstimates and case studies on the basis of which certain students were shortlisted for the next round which was an orientation round aimed enlightening the candidates on what their job profile is going to be. The third round was a group discussion round which was the ultimate deciding factor in the selection for the personal interview. The personal interview, she says, was based entirely on the CV. She was asked to justify each and every point that she included in her CV.
'Be honest in your CV and try to be in consonance with what you have written, I would further advise you to make your CV as diverse, eclectic, comprehensive, and holistic as you can, try and include pertinent points in each of the four sections, i.e. academic, extra curricular, leadership and internships of the CV.'
Hence, what makes one, an impeccable candidate for a illustrious job opportunity is a diverse CV, inordinate interning experience, certain spec and mental endurance to survive through a debilitating selection process.
This was as an instance of a government internship, however there are innumerable kinds of internships,including corporate and internships in Non Governmental Organisations. Sahaj Kamra from BA programme interned at the Red Cross summer internship. Red Cross is a non governmental organisation that works in the social sector to uplift the marginalised communities in way by facilitating them by organising free medical heath check ups, spreading mental awareness, blood donation camps, and disseminating information by indoctrinating education by combining social service and modern marketing. She worked in the marketing sector, where she was involved in content writing, poster making and overall advertising.
'It really opened me to new perspectives and made me realise that the social service sector can be lucrative and is much more than philanthropy', she opines.
Hence, it's essential to realise that in such a fiercely combative and competitive environment, it's indispensable to understand the significance of internships, parallel courses and gaining experience in diverse fields to build an impressive resume. Therefore, it can be easily said that today Internships are not a secondary choice, it's a veritable pre-requisite!