Internships as resume-boosters
As an engineering student, you have performed creditably in university exams, created a strong set of skills in programming languages, spent time on interesting hobbies and essentially have composed a strong resume to impress your interviewers. But if you want to go the extra inch to add even more value, you might want to consider doing an internship at a reputed firm as many aspiring students are doing these days.
This is what led Aishwarya and her friends in the final year of their Electronics and Communications engineering course to visit rural BPOs in Hosur over a three-day period recently. “We talked to Santosh Sir (ELCOT managing director Santosh Babu) about doing meaningful internships and he suggested that we look at Fostera (the rural BPO firm he helped set up in Krishnagiri),” she says.
The plan did not really work out as her college authorities thought she and her friends might have to invest too much time to complete the internship. But the students still feel they could benefit from doing an internship somewhere else and are looking at alternatives.
As the Placement Officer at Crescent Engineering College, Mohammed Tajudeen, explains, internships give students an idea of the industry atmosphere. “Companies also prefer students who have done internships in reputed firms because they believe they can start contributing from day one.” Satya Krishnan of Saaki and Argus Consulting agrees that internships can bring that extra zing to an otherwise normal resume. But she feels it does not add too much value to someone with an undergraduate degree.
“For someone in a postgraduate course, it helps to have done an internship in a reputed firm. If you are in a top-tier B-school, for example, your internship helps create focus and it also tells the recruiter that you were good enough to be hired by a big firm in the middle of fierce competition. For someone in an undergraduate course, it is more to tell recruiters that you have taken the initiative and what you do actually is more important than where you do the internship,” she says.
Internships are also a good means for students to get an idea about what they want to do their final-year projects in, Mr. Tajudeen feels.
“Many students feel they can get away with doing only coursework and look at the projects only in the final year. But those who do internships before the final year have a clearer idea of what they want to work on for their projects and also do better projects as a result,” he says.
SHYAM RANGANATHAN
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