Bhanushree Tryambak, 2nd year student of Programme Grande Ecole, shares her impressions on her internship search during this special period.
My name is Bhanushree Tryambak, I completed my second year of Programme Grand Ecole. The program is an opportunity for the student to discover their domain of interest. As a student, not only I am gaining knowledge from the courses at GEM but also through professional experience, which is a part of the course curriculum.
I started my internship search as early as December 2019. I was as excited and confused as all other students in the beginning and had questions like, on which platform should I apply? How should I form my CV? and so on. It was more challenging for me as I was looking for 3 months, English speaking Internship. However, all my questions were answered as I met Ms. Alice Bodin at the Career Center. I have been in contact with Ms. Alice Bodin from January and she guided me through the process from correcting my CV to answering interview questions. She was always available, whether it is in person or virtual meetings.
I applied for internships on various platforms like the company's career page, LinkedIn, GEM Career Center, Station F, Welcome to the Jungle. Initially, I started applying on GEM Career Center and LinkedIn. I woke up to at least 4 or 5 rejection emails every day since January. I started networking parallelly on LinkedIn and wrote to people seeking for internship opportunities. The career centre at GEM organized bootcamps for the benefit of students. This was a huge platform which mainly helped students to get 6 months internship.
As we all know, learning every day or updating our skill set is as important as regular course work. Along with the courses at GEM, I started some courses online which added value to my profile. Though Job Teaser and LinkedIn had thousands of roles posted, the job postings would reduce to ten when I applied filters like 3 months duration and English language. This is when Ms. Alice Bodin at Career Center introduced me to two other job portals Station F and Welcome to the Jungle in France. She also insisted to look for GEM alumni who have done 3 months of internships in the past. This helped me to get in touch with some of them who were working for Soft Bank, Schneider Electric, Atos, and so on.
The mantra from everyone was the same, " Keep applying". I applied to over 400 positions and received two interview calls. The first interview was not successful as the company was looking for a candidate available for 6 months. Fortunately, I got through the second one. The company is called Big Bang Factory and it is a US based consulting start-up. I will be a part of the Business Development team. Overall, the internship search is tedious however, it is not impossible. I consider the past five months of search as a learning period. I realized that patience, perseverance, and hard work are the key things to find an internship.
