Internships in India

As internship season has started many people have started to apply for internships through various websites. In case you are confused about how to apply, what is needed, how to identify scam internships, why is internship actually needed, should I do an internship, etc this post is for you.

Note: This is mainly for Indian students and whatever has been said here has been my experience along with my friends. Also, this post is for those students who would like to work after college and not for students who are preparing for higher studies or planning to start/join a business.

The first question that comes to mind of students is “Why should I do internships” and for that, I have only one line answer “To have a better understanding and have an opportunity to learn and understand. ” Suppose you applied for an internship at some XYZ job because your some far away relative told you it has huge “scope”. If you intern in that type of job you get to know that is this what I want to make a career or not, if you liked it you get to learn new things otherwise you can search for different things. Now even in the same industry, there are lots of roles. For example, in software, there are front-end, back-end developers, testing people, designers, etc. Therefore you can even decide if I am going in software this is a particular field I am good at and I can do it.

How to get internships?

This is the biggest question among students how to get internships. So mainly in India for engineering, there are 4 types of internships:

1. College campus Internships
2. College internships
3. Off-campus internships
4. Internal college internships

There are also internships presented by other colleges such as IITs for mainly research and in some colleges, internships by internal groups depend from college to college. Each of the internships has some advantages and disadvantages.

College campus internships: So the majority of the colleges have someone called Training and Placement Officer who invites companies to college. The advantage of these companies is that there is a chance of getting PPO (pre-placement offer). The disadvantages of this are ( now this is for most colleges and most companies) is that most of the work you are going to do maybe redundant/ useless and mostly the first preference for companies will be CS/IT students, so in case you are not from this branch the probability decreases a lot.

College internships: Now this may depend from college to college but many colleges have internships that are conducted by professors for research and such. This type of internship is also provided by IITs and other tier 1 colleges for other colleges also and you can apply to them. Just keep in mind that when you apply to them do a bit of research on the professor and is the internship worth it or not. Also, a disadvantage of this is that most such internships are provided to students with high CGPA(or what grading system your college uses)

Off-campus internships: and this is the point I would focus most on. Now basically for applying off-campus, there are sites like Internshala to find an internship, company website, or LinkedIn. I choose to refer to Internshala here as it is the most popular one. Now if you are from tier-II or tier-III college this is the best way you can get an internship and also a good one depending on your skillset.

Internal college internships: which usually include working under a professor. Also in some colleges, there may be prestigious communities that work during the summer making real-life projects or such which are considered internships. Now the thing is of the first kind that is in internships in which you work under a professor either you need to have very good relations with him/her or you need to have very high CGPA (8.5+ min )

First I would like to talk about how to apply to a proper company on Internshala. Now, this is kind of important because there are many fake companies out there who have posted jobs there and there are some genuine ones there too. Now I am not telling that Internshala is a scam, no the idea is great but you should be careful about which company you are applying to. I have only one piece of advice for you: -

1. Research the company:- Does the company have a good-looking website, is the domain name a free service like WordPress or Wixsite or a paid one. It may happen that they are searching for web developers for making their website. Check if they have a LinkedIn account, and check their posts. Go to Glassdoor and Indeed reviews to find out more about the company. You can even use Quora to check the experiences of the people who may have worked there.

Internshala is a good enough website, but the stipends are very low and companies are not that reputable, now if you are from a good college, chances are many reputable companies come to your college for internships with a high stipend and all, but even in those colleges not all get internships, now the 2nd option is through applying through companies website. This is what I would consider the most important option especially for tier 2 and tier 3 colleges.

Now in most companies applying for the job is easy but make no mistake these experiences can seriously impact your self-confidence. The thing to understand is that you are going to compete with students all over India and there are very little chances of getting shortlisted ( It happens though ) and you have to be prepared to receive numerous emails about you getting rejected and this experience can shatter the self-confidence of even the most confident, arrogant of people.

Now, this is something I would say in respect to placements as well internships, always and I say always try to have a campus internship and placement first, don’t miss out on those opportunities cause I can assure you, I have met seniors and all who were too arrogant to accept 6–7 LPA placements and tried applying for off-campus only to find their hopes shattered ( and they were people who were extremely good not only in DSA, system designs and all but had decent projects ).

In the end, I would say internships are just a way for you to get prepared for an upcoming job or a way for you to learn something new or knowing how a company works, even if you do not succeed in getting an internship it is not the end of the world. I have met people who did not get 3rd-year internships, made their own personal projects, and got an extremely good package during placements.