A dedicated internship season was conceptualised by the Placement Unit (PU) last year, with the idea that if a few hundred students got Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs), the pressure on the PU during placement seasons would decrease. It would also provide an excellent opportunity for pre-final–year students to interact with companies and understand how the placement season functions.

Organisationally, the PU did not have a specific person assigned for internships until last year. The task was handled by the same team which handled placements, and was treated as a less important job with respect to placements. However, the PU now has a dedicated post of Internship Coordinator. The current post-holder, Sarthak Nandan, spoke to the English Press Club about the internship season.

Working

The PU approaches companies particularly for internships. The companies then send student eligibility criteria to the PU. Once on campus, they conduct aptitude tests, group discussions, and interviews for the final selection. Sarthak informed us that the PU reached out to a wide variety of companies this time, so that they could cover the interests of as many students as possible.

The companies that visit during the internship season, based on sector and stipend offered, are allotted various cycles – Day 0, Day 1, Day 2, and so on. Within each of these, students can create a preference list of the companies. If a person secures an internship in a certain company, they can still take internship tests of companies that are higher on their preference list within the same day. However, they are not permitted to apply to companies in the upcoming days. Sarthak mentioned that some “exclusive” companies also visit outside these cycles.

Placement Season and Internship Season–a comparison.

The entire student body sitting for placements is divided into two separate cycles held in different semesters. On the other hand, all the students are registered in a single internship season.

Sitting for placements is a choice and a student may opt out of the process. However, all pre-final–year students must sit for internship tests. This results in a significantly larger pool of people during internship season, with around 1200 students applying together (of which just under a thousand are first degree students). This is almost four times the number of students that sit for placements in a single cycle. Thus, the competition is also fiercer.  

Sarthak also pointed out that by final year, most students know what they want to do in the future while students sitting for internships are often unsure and require more guidance.

Another important difference is that there is no “dream criteria” in internships. In placements, even after getting placed, you can try in another company if their package is 1.75 times the current one. However, once you secure an internship, you are completely out of the process.

On this year’s placement season

This was the first time the internship process had been structured into a proper season. In previous years, the process had been disorganised. Last year, the placement unit, had a couple of “Day” cycles. This time, they had multiple Days as well as some exclusive companies, coming outside these cycles.

Last year 18 companies had come to campus. The number has ballooned to more than 30 companies this year. The number of students getting internships has also gone up. Last year, around one hundred students were offered internships. At the time of writing, 133 students had been offered internships in this year’s season, which is still not over. It will go on till December as the PU does not plan on conducting one next semester.

‘While this number may seem small compared to the approximately 1200 students registered for internship season, these statistics can be deceptive,’ said Sarthak. As many students wish to sit for placements in the second semester, after completing PS-II in the first, they don’t attempt to get internship offers. He said that while it is difficult to estimate the percentage success, his estimate would be that around 70-75% students desiring internships, got offered one. Despite managing to get more students offers this year, Sarthak believes his real achievement was getting a wide variety of companies on campus, catering to the needs to students aiming for different sectors, be it core, IT or research.

This year, CS students were offered the largest number of internships, three times more than all other branches combined. The next highest were offered to EEE students. This was due to the large number of IT companies which come to campus – more than two-thirds of the total number of companies.

In terms of the number of internships offered, Samsung Bangalore offered internships to 22, while their Noida office offered 17. DE Shaw and Uber, companies which offered the highest stipend, took four and two students respectively. Google took only a single student in their software division, and nobody in their hardware division. JP Morgan, Chase & Co., and Goldman Sachs took sizeable numbers in their IT divisions.

Some organisations have not finished their recruitment processes yet. Some organisations who are yet to announce results are Standard Chartered (Finance & Banking), Mircoland, KPIT Technologies, Jindal Steel Works, Ecozen, and National Central University, Taiwan (Research Internship).

Miscellaneous

A cursory glance at the statistics over the past few years should reveal a clear disparity between various branches in terms of placements and internships. The number of Computer Science Engineering students offered internships outnumbers most other branches. When asked about this, Sarthak replied that the number of IT companies is large because picking up the skills required for a two-month IT internship does not require too long. On the other hand, core internships, viz, Chemical, Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing, often require background knowledge and a longer time input. Companies are thus reluctant to provide two-month internships, especially in branches like Civil Engineering. A lot of students from these branches, hence, choose to try for internships in Research or Analytics instead.

Sarthak noted that one of the key issues faced this time was that students were not well-informed. In future years, he hopes that the establishment of groups like the consulting club will help inform students. He also remarked that people were unsure of what sector to choose, and that better dissemination of information would lead to a higher number of students getting internships.

Data Analysis

Notes about statistics

1. The branch-wise division includes both single degree and dual degree students
2. The number of internships offered by a company may change with time as internship season has not ended yet.
3. Some companies offer internships in more than one sector. In the graph listing companies on the basis of sectors, these companies have been counted more than once. The graph is indicative of the coverage of sectors and their relative numbers only.