Summer Internship: Is it really required?…
Does a mutual value addition actually happen or is the internship period just a wastage of time???

By Arindam Lahiri

Arun, a student at a prestigious management institute, was having a well-deserved nimbu-paani break in these hot summer months of May and June. At the end of the 7th week of his summer internship at one of the FMCG organization, a sought-after MNC, he was wondering what has been his value addition; he had just one more week to go. At the end of his first year program , he had taken up this assignment to do a test-marketing project on one of the new products being launched by this corporation. After a short-briefing session for the first couple of days at the glitzy corporate headquarters at Mumbai to understand the product benefits and features, he has been out on the road interviewing people from the target audience to understand their response to the concept of this new product. The first few days were exciting - traveling by train across the city and meeting people from different backgrounds. For Arun, the experience was amazing, given that he has spent most of his life in a small town in UP. At the end of the first week, after the initial euphoria was over, the daily routine of a 12-hr day with loads of traveling in the hot and humid weather started taking its toll. The charm of meeting new people also subsided – people’s response also started following a single pattern. Then, Arun realized that the value-add was diminishing fast and he was feeling low that the learning has so far been close to 10% of his expectation (1 week out of 7 weeks). He was wondering – is it worth putting in so much effort for such a low learning output?

This is a “real story” and the following question has been asked by a lot of Aruns over the past few decades – does summer internship really contribute substantially to the learning process of a business management graduate?

There are arguments on both sides and both views can be logical. Before we delve into this, let us take a look at the process of management education. During the first year of the usual 2-year MBA program , a student is exposed to various functions of an organization. This prepares the student for the foundations of management theory. However, management education is hardly academic in nature – it has a strong focus on applying the same in real life situation and this transition is difficult.

My own view is that the summer internship provides you with the best opportunity to attempt at making this transition. And most students fail while making this transition, as this is the first time that most of them are attempting such a transition. Yes, even for the students having pre-program work experience – since it is the first time that they will attempt to put management theory (which most of them are not aware of, except for undergraduate management students) into practice.

It is this failure that raises a question mark over the entire practice of summer internship. And most students do not fail only once at this summer internship. They fail a number of times subsequently in their first job as well. This also raises another issue about a large percentage of management graduates leaving their first job within the first 12 months – we will not get into this here.

Learning through failure is an important pedagogical tool. A summer internship allows a student to get frustrated and underscores the challenge of applying management theories in practice. Such an exposure, if absorbed internally in a constructive manner, can be one of the most important learnings for a student. The student, with the guidance from experienced faculty members, must analyze the challenges of application and failure points. Understanding the constraints and parameters within which various theoretical constructs are applied is important. And without repeated practice, this is difficult to achieve.

However, one word of caution at this point is that one must be careful about internships where the student is completely left on his own and is not challenged to deliver. In such a case, opportunities to fail are minimal. Though the internship experience may be comfortable, the learning may be incomplete.

Using the opportunity of summer internship to understand how organizations work, especially how people in the organizations behave, is a must learn for all management students. It also helps the students to establish some useful networking relations. At the same time, it also allows the students to gain self-confidence by comparing their own efforts with other existing employees in the organization. It helps a student to identify his/her strength and weakness for effective working in the organization as well.

A summer internship may add more value to people who have worked for less than 2 years with an organization. The challenges in most cases, result from expectation mismatch of the student and the organization. The core objective is that the need for summer internship is of the student and not necessarily a need of the organization. The onus is on the student to make the most out of this opportunity.

A summer internship has been a life-changing experience for a large number of students (and these students are not necessarily the students with pre-placement offers from organizations). It impacts the choice of organization, functions and the pace of career growth of an individual.

— The writer is the director IWSB, Greater Noida