The teenage years, the more carefree years of a person’s life, are full of big dreams and a ‘will to do what I want’ attitude.
The teenage years, the more carefree years of a person’s life, are full of big dreams and a ‘will to do what I want’ attitude. These formative years are crucial as this is the time when academics and work create a common platform for the career after college. But there’s a small step that needs to be taken, in between the time you finish your junior college and before you embark on your degree college to pursue graduation—internships. It helps you in more ways than you would imagine, as it not only boosts your confidence, but arms you with life skills that are essential for a working professional.
Exploring career aspects
Interning at a company gives an opportunity to work with professionals and in a disciplinary work environment. So if you are interning at one or more places, it helps understand the career path you wish to choose. Or in few cases, helps understand which kind of career not to chose. Vidhi Dujodwala, 17, in her gap year, interned at three different places which helped her understand her career choice. “I interned with an e-commerce startup where I had a nine to five desk job, and didn’t really enjoy it. It’s only when I interned with a media house and worked with journalists that I realised that this is the kind of work I’d like to do in the future.”
So how about taking the internship experience as a trial mode for your career?
Morale boost
A lot of graduates with no prior internship experience usually find it difficult to face the world once they start working. And this is usually accompanied by lack of confidence to articulate one’s opinion at the workplace. Internships do exactly the opposite—it grooms you to be confident and tunes you to gauge how to interact with colleagues.
Neelam Kumar, author and life coach, elucidates, “I highly recommend internships as it gives
the students a glimpse of how it would be to start working and be part of a professional set up. Apart from this, it boosts overall confidence and enhances communications skills.”
Managing time and tasks
When you intern or work part-time and have to juggle it with other activities or academics, it teaches you to plan the day. So in order to finish work on time, meet deadlines, shuffle between meetings or even attend events, internship teaches to manage it in set time and prioritise tasks. 25-year-old engineer Dhaval Shah recollects balancing an internship with his junior college. “I had to manage my time between interning for five hours a day after my college, and had to study and complete projects in whatever time was left. I learnt in the process, how to multi -task, plan my days. It helps even today.”
If you are looking for internships, and don’t know where to start the search, here are few websites that can help. These websites have listings of companies from across India for several of their departments. You can browse through it and apply for internships that suit your interest areas. When it comes to the stipend for the internships, they have their own set of policies and so it varies from company to company.
www.internshala.com
www.twenty19.com
www.letsintern.com
www.alphainterns.com
www.oysterconnect.com
www.hellointern.com
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