Chaitanya Sharma, a fourth-year undergraduate student from the Mechanical Engineering Department shares his experiences regarding his 3rd-year intern at Wipro in the FMCG sector.
Selection Procedure
Initially, they shortlisted the resumes of the Top 10 department ranks from the mechanical department and this was followed by an online test, and personal interviews (on Day 2) encompassing Technical and HR rounds. The online test was based mainly on basic reasoning and psychometric questions. My interview went quite well, it was based on basic thermodynamics and fluid mechanics questions followed by general HR questions. I think the courses at the institute prepared me well for the internship. Analytical skills, basic core concepts and ability to learn things fast were the pre-requisites.
I scored the intern in the day, and it sent me right to the seventh sky as this was something positive that had happened in a very dry spell :P. Even though I was very much aware of the boring factory-based work I would have to do for 9 straight weeks, I didn’t care about it much and enjoyed the evening, even leaving my FinMech interview slot and partying all night.
Internship & Work Culture:
It was quite hectic, to be honest. I was selected as a Project Manager and my project was based on the reduction of wastage in a production line. I had to design and install parts for the same in the main production line within 9 weeks. I had to do factory-based work from 9 am to 6 pm for 6 days in a week. The factory was at Tumkur, 71 km via road from the nearest city, Bangalore and understandably, all my co-factory workers were native Kannada speakers.
My factory head used to arrive before me and would go usually go after me and was also kind of disciplined in nature. Most of my problems were due to the language gap between me and the workers. Whenever I had to assign work to them something, I had to use sign language or broken English to make them understand. They were not at all proficient with Hindi, however, some of them were thankfully accustomed to very basic and primitive English. Sometimes, when my factory head was around, he would help me communicate with them, but most of the time I was on my own. Apart from all these difficulties, I still anyhow managed to maintain a good connection with most of the people in the factory which was truly a tremendous learning experience for me.
Over the weekend, I and the other interns there used to party and chill out in Bangalore and return for the project again on Monday. Once, I couldn’t come on Monday due to some over-excessive partying that weekend and had to make up a few stories to compensate for the same in front of my factory head.
Motivation and Takeaways
The intern was quite hectic but I got to learn many crucial things at the end. I got familiar with corporate work culture, how businesses are run, working in a team, improving my ability to work in a non-conducive environment, meeting the hard deadlines, etc. I completed my project in 8 weeks which was supposed to be done in 9 weeks. I’d like to think that they were quite happy with my work. The people there were very supportive and in retrospect was a wholesome experience.
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