My Internship Saga!!!

It was cold outside; naturally it had to be, the month of December was on and it was 7.00 in the morning, yet I was out of my bed; clean shaven, properly combed hair (not that I have much of these left), nicely tucked in shirt with polished black boots on. Guys, I was ready to get in to the action and in fact more than half of my batch mates were in the same state. I was tensed and so were they. The reason for all this hustle and tensed situation was that one of the big 4 was coming to our campus for summer recruitments. Naturally, we all were excited but nobody had even a faintest of any idea as to whose day was it going to be.

 15^th December 2010 was an ordinary day and yet it holds a lot of significance in my journey of life. This was the day when I was recruited for summer internship at KPMG. Being selected for one of the big 4 was a prestigious event for me. After joining the MBA program, the only thing I had wished for was to do my summers in one of the consulting firms. I wanted to see the work culture out there. The dynamism attached to it, the complex issues handled by the managers and a crude question “how can one consult in a business scenario?”; all these made me want more to work in a consulting firm. Also, the fact that I would re-enter the corporate life after a year’s break made me ponder upon the way things might turn up.

 Slowly the time passed by and arrived the date of joining the organization. Frankly speaking, I was quite anxious as to what might be in store for me at Bangalore. An entirely new place, a big organization with no acquaintaces but my college friends and yet I was eagerly waiting for this to happen. I was wondering whether I could fit in that place so soon and that to a brief duration to work for, what would I work on, what all opportunities might I get there. All these thoughts kept me puzzled till the day I actually joined the office i.e. on 4^th April 2011.

KPMG fell nowhere short in any of the parameters I had thought of. It truly is a big organization and the hierarchy is really transparent as in even I, a summer intern could speak my mind freely to the Associate Director with no apprehensions. Apart from this the learning was great; experience of addressing a live business issue, client meetings with senior members there, presenting an issue in a much more prudent manner and not just presenting it as one generally does helped me a lot to understand the corporate work culture. What all un-accounted issues one may face during a project, how to tackle those and many other issues which we study theoretically were part of my tenure here. For instance, we were supposed to have a con-call with an executive from SCM department and had thoroughly prepared the questionnaire and also properly planed the course of this call. But when the call started, the executive, in return started firing questions at us regarding the issues we have identified till now, how we plan to go about it, which all other departments have we spoken to and a whole bunch of such other questions. That meeting was fun, indeed it was.

I also came across the fact that analyzing a process from a bird’s eye view seems an easy job, but to get in to the intricate details and identifying the loopholes is much more intense job than one anticipates it to be. All in all my brief stay at KPMG helped me to really widen my canvas of knowledge; both technical as well as functional and I wouldn’t say altered but brought my thinking process on due course so as to address the issues in a better manner.

After my experience at KPMG, I am certain of one thing and that is one can never thoroughly devise a full-proof plan, neither in personal life nor in professional life. Sooner or later one’s plan tends to hit a roadblock, but then it is not always about adjusting the course as per the plan, sometimes the plan has to be reworked as per the course one has encountered.