Summer internships, typically scheduled for 8 weeks, are seen as being crucial teaching tools to establish links between the first year’s ‘generalist’ management education and the second year’s ‘specialization’ courses.
It’s hard to really know how well a student will take to a specific career field without actually experiencing it -- and a summer internship is one way for students to get real experience. Says Shitiz Modi, an IIFT student doing an internship with Cadbury India, “The best place to learn is on the ground is by getting practical experience. My internship helps me to understand the corporate environment, and is teaching me the practical aspects of work at an FMCG company.”
Adds Vijay Menon, a student of IIM Calcutta, “Internship gives us a real world understanding of the concepts that we learn in our classrooms… It helps us to test ourselves in a field that we are interested in and decide if this is where we want to make a career.”
Summer internship projects are aimed at better understanding of an opportunity or a problem that a corporate is facing. Students are expected to study the problem and submit their recommendations. “Projects at Coke are live problems of critical importance that are being tackled,” says Ankur Thadani, an IIFT student who is interning with Coca Cola in the bottling division. “My project pertains to the sales division and is on drawing out strategies for effective cooler placement. Coolers are Coca Cola's prime sales drivers and they also entail huge capital investment. Thus effective cooler placement is of prime importance and criticality as it has a direct effect on sales and hence revenues.”
Shitiz says that his project at Cadbury India is based on competition benchmarking of route to market and analysis of media spends.
Do summer project performances translate into final placements? Exceptional performances do give students a head start. “Working in a good company for the summers would help in final placements too. There is no job assurance but there are prospects of a pre placement offer,” Shitiz explains.
Ankur adds, “At the end of the internship, Coke has an assessment center, which evaluates our projects as well as our suitability as future employees.”
According to Vijay, “Companies’ pre-placement offer policy offers to people who they think will be a valuable addition to the permanent workforce of the company.”
