I had a wonderful opportunity to attend Sankalp, an employability workshop conducted by FIIB as a part of its Management fest. During one of the sessions at Sankalp, Prof. Jones (our marketing area faculty) talked about how to manage corporate internship challenges. The session gave answers to many questions that I have been debating upon since we were encouraged to start thinking about Corporate Internships.

Through this blog, I want to document some of my key learnings. As all of us are aware that Corporate Internships are meaningful programs that add relevant knowledge, skills and values to us, the MBA students in many significant ways. During the 2-year MBA program at FIIB, we are expected to undertake a Corporate Internship Program (CIP). This programs adds remarkable contributions to our career as it helps us to-

• Get first-hand experience about life at a corporate environment
• Assess personal skills and performance
• Understand how to depend on ourselves for getting things done
• Learn first-hand how to face a problem
• Have a clear understanding about ourselves

Corporate Internships are the testing grounds that provide excellent opportunities to learn and add value to our career graphs. But this journey is paved with several obstacles that we need to face and overcome on our own. These problems should be handled smartly. A few tips on how these challenges should be dealt with are listed below:

Managing the Boss: As interns, we must remember that we are at the office to learn and a boss who seems harsh also knows more than us. Let their strict nature be a reason for you to learn discipline and grow as a perfectionist.

Managing our work: There may not be sufficient work assigned to us at the beginning of an internship. We need to do our personal research and offer to do something useful for the organization. Asking our seniors for guidance on the same may be a good idea. We must remember that it is important to keep calm and focus at the long term goals of the internship program. Try and get your hands on as much work as possible so that you can learn and grow at exponential rate.

Working Ethics: Even if the internship is for a temporary period of time, it is important to prove our real worth. We should be full of enthusiasm and it should be reflected at every step we take; and we should not hesitate to put in extra hours of work if required. Let the question ‘we are not getting paid for it’ never stand in the way of proving excellence. We must believe in less talk and more action.

Attitude matters: How we behave with our colleagues and clients, how we handle work pressure- depends largely on our attitude. No work is hard; it is having the right attitude that is hard. Behaving professionally and taking responsibilities are the signs of a good employee.

Handling internship challenges is not difficult. Identifying the problems and fixing them largely depends on us. After all, it is a journey of learning- just a step ahead to our future.

Disclaimer: The article has been written by Poornima Malhan, 1st year student of Fortune Institute of International Business and does not reflect the views of the Institution