PROFILE : OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT INTERN (Work from home)
COMPANY : Apollo 24/7
SELECTION PROCEDURE
The first few weeks had passed and I was without an internship, which made me a bit dejected. However I recovered that feeling and by late September, had started mailing universities, corporates and HR managers. I talked to a lot of seniors which helped me in choosing the companies to mail, and also contacted HRs on my LinkedIn. I had an offer from Delhivery but just as lockdown started, we received an email from Apollo247 through IITD Notices. They offered internships for two roles: Product and Operations Manager. The selection process included a 2 hr case study competition followed by a telephonic interview (Working at Enactus helped me here) After that, 6 students from IITD were finalized.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Apollo 24/7 was working on an online consultation platform connecting Apollo Doctors to patients for the past 3-4 years. Until now they were in the Testing phase and we're piloting their product in selected Apollo hospitals at Chennai. The lockdown period saw a huge rise in online consultation and so Apollo 24/7 decided to grab this opportunity to scale their product pan India. Our job was to connect with doctors and introduce them to the platform, and then improve that based on their feedback.
INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE
For the first month, I was supposed to build and train an extensive SPOC (Single Point of Contact) network to enhance coordination with admin teams of 7 hospitals across Chennai & Mumbai. After that we developed an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to scale this to other cities, and later on developed Marketing Strategies to incentivize doctors, thereby increasing the scope of online consultation on the platform.
The initial training period of SPOCs and doctors for the platform was very hectic and I worked around 8-9 hours per day. After settling in and becoming more familiar with the system I could manage with 4-5 hours per day. But towards the last part, we used to have 1-2 hour meetings per day and then work for 4-5 hours on marketing programs. Weekends were no different from weekdays. We answered directly to the COO and some other top level employees, who were supportive and approachable.
TAKEAWAYS
I personally had a very good experience working because it was sort of an extension of what I used to love working at Enactus, IITD. The way of working in such a well structured organization showed me the potential of collaborative work. The feeling that my work impacted people’s lives in some way during these unprecedented times was very satisfying. The client facing nature of the job was in itself a huge learning experience as it improved my people handling skills.
WORD OF ADVICE
Seeing people around you get a really good internship on the 1st week itself while you are empty handed, is disheartening sometimes. My advice would be to not lose faith in yourself. Identify and improve your core-competencies and apply to profiles that you like. In the end we should remember the primary motivation of getting an internship is to have a good learning experience. Second phase, Off campus, LinkedIn - there’s an internship for everyone in the end.