It’s the season when thousands of interns are winding up their summer assignments. Internships have now become a regular summer programme in most corporate workplaces – but how useful are they? Are any handy skills picked up? Do they translate into jobs? Or do they just end up as a waste of time all round?

Talking to a number of students, a mixed picture emerges. Many grumble about the lack of stipends, poor mentorship and meaningless work. They say they were treated as outsiders and not really familiarised with everyone at the office. A couple who interned at startups mutter about exploitation, how they generate ideas but get no recognition. However, several students from Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College said they learnt a lot, were paid generously, and even got job offers from the companies where they interned. Some others said the summer stint was useful as it helped them figure out where their aptitude lay.

Talk to companies, and again, it’s a mixed bag. Some complain about the lack of application among interns, that their only motivation is a certificate that would help for higher education or future jobs. Some choose their interns with care. Suchi Mukherjee, founder and CEO, LimeRoad, says, “At LimeRoad, candidates who come for internships are interviewed thoroughly as we aim to understand their expectations and aspirations. We also check whether candidates are suitable for the role and whether or not they have the can-do attitude we are looking for.”

Not all companies invest this kind of effort, though.

A maturing business “Internships in India are not treated as professionally as they are abroad,” says Hardeep Singh Puri, founder of MakeIntern.com, a platform that places interns with companies, both physically and virtually. Three years ago, Puri spotted a gap in the space after being approached by a friend’s brother who was trying to get an internship with a company. As he points out, there was a lot of ad hocism in the way students tried to get internships – often they would go through their parents’ friends to get placed. Several companies took on interns as a favour, reluctantly, and had no mechanism to screen them.

Internshala, one of the largest intern placement platforms connecting companies with freshers, was also born to address this gap. Today, there are quite a few such outfits in India including one called Let’s Intern.

Acquiring structure Also, several companies are beginning to put in place structured programmes for interns. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, for instance, takes internship quite seriously with placement drives at engineering and B-school campuses, and mentors assigned to interns. “We hire about 200 interns every year through on-campus placement drives that we run at various engineering and MBA institutes,” says Jagjit Singh, Chief People Officer, PwC India. A high percentage of the interns get absorbed within PwC as well. “The conversion ratio for interns ranges from 50 per cent to 70 per cent,” says Singh, adding that this year it plans to increase the intake of interns by another 50 per cent.

Staffing firm Adecco has regular internship programmes on a need-to-need basis. “These interns are assigned tasks and have specific roles to fill. We advocate internships to tackle the skills gap we currently face in the market. Internships help young graduates benefit from hands-on learning and adapt to the corporate world,” says Anviti Sangwan, HR Director, Adecco Group India

In 2016 and 2015, Sangwan says, Adecco provided 10,557 internships around the world with the help of 151 client companies. Typically, an internship at Adecco or its partner companies lasts 1-3 months. The group does not advertise for internships, sourcing talent from colleges, or through detailed social media and communication campaigns.

Adecco also runs a unique internship programme called ‘CEO for one month’. Through this, one candidate lands the opportunity to intern as the CEO for one month working directly under the mentorship of the India office’s CEO. This year, Mohit Mahajan, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi got this plum internship. Mahajan had to set his goals at the start of it and was actively involved in varied internal projects.

MakeIntern’s Puri sums it up when he says that while the concept of internship is not yet as mature as in the west, things are changing. It is up to the student and the company to make the best of the internship opportunity.

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