Her path to success

I got into an engineering college that I hadn’t set my eyes on and wasn’t too happy about it. I wanted to get out of college happy but didn’t know how. After the first year, I came to know about internships and how they were the medium to gain practical knowledge.

I was interested in the field of writing and marketing, so I prepared my profile keeping those interests in mind and started applying. Soon, I was hired at an ecommerce company for a two-month internship. I had to compete with other students and make a name for the tech brand in my circles, and I won the first prize all over India in their contest. My journey had just begun. Next, I interned with a social media company. I worked on building a new product from scratch. From coining names to promoting it on social media, I monitored everything and put my heart into it.

Gaining knowledge

Then, I took a break to concentrate on my studies. I learnt the basics of coding in college which helped in developing my analytical skills. During this brief hiatus, I got a call from a digital marketing solutions company for a content writing role. They were working on a mobile application for new mothers and pregnant women. My work involved writing articles to help those women deal with the new addition to their family. I got a handsome stipend and really liked the work I was doing.

I was later selected by a company for the profile of Data Interpretation and Infographic creation. During the selection process, I was asked various questions based on current affairs and statistics as most of my work involved around news items and data analysis. This was my first full-time internship, and I used to work on the daily news items to create content for specific age groups. By the time this internship ended, I could see a lot of change in myself. From being a dissatisfied fresher, I had become the person who had done most internships in my class.

In my next semester, I was selected for the Android Development profile by an IT development company. I was asked to share the links of the applications that I had worked on and further questions were asked regarding the problems I faced while building them and how I overcame them. Some technical questions were also asked to check my coding abilities and analytical skills.

When I was finally hired for the full-time internship, I created various applications that catered to different markets and clients. I also learnt what working with a team actually meant! Later, I got to know about the technical internships at Airport Authority of India (AAI). The selection was on the basis of resume and thanks to a number of previous internships and projects, I was shortlisted and after a technical interview, I was hired! I got a chance to work with some of the finest engineers at AAI’s Safdarjung Centre while making an Android application for their inventory.

Hand in hand

As the placement season was going to begin, I was all set to grab both tech and non-tech jobs. I got a job offer and people thought it was my first experience with interviews, but they did not know that all those internship interviews and work experience had prepared me well. Thus, my placement interview went smooth and mostly focused on the internships that I had done.

Post that, I went on to intern with four other organisations. Most of these internships were virtual and I rarely had to visit the office. Many of them also overlapped so that I could make the most of my time. In short, I never sat idle.

Most people believe that studies in college and internships can’t go side by side. However, 12 internships and three years later I’ve created my own path to success. I believed that I could do whatever I wanted, so I did. I ensured that I  maintained the required attendance criteria and made sure I attended all the labs.

If we actually stop wasting all the interstitial time between one major thing and the other, we will have time to do everything. I never neglected my studies because internships are meant to complement them, not undermine. In the end, everything boils down to management and putting that extra effort to get what we
really dream of.

Many factors have helped me reach where I am today. I’ve seen my own share of failures, but I’ve always learnt from them. I’ve understood that you hold the key to your success. Whatever I do, wherever I go, I’ll never stop learning.

(The author is pursuing her BTech from Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering, Delhi)