I’m Shubh Verma, a final-year undergraduate student at the Department of Economics. I am from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. I am the current Department General Secretary for Economics. During my third-year summers, I worked as a Product Management Intern at Bosch Global Software Technologies.
Why Product Management?
I got to know about product management from a few seniors, and as someone aspiring to be an entrepreneur, I felt that the role is roughly analogous to a “Founder” role in a startup. Because very few companies offer internships in Product Management through the PT cell, external applications are the most viable option.
About the Apping Process?
The process of apping could be really frustrating especially if you do not receive responses initially, I had sent 100s of Linkedin requests to various Startup founders and HRs. At first you get no response after one mail/message, and following up is really important and significantly improves your response rate. Here, you have to do things smartly and selectively focus on companies where there might be an opportunity (you can get an idea about this through Linkedin/friends). You can also try Startup Incubators like Y-combinator as they have a lot of startups listed with contact details (Especially for 2nd-year Students). Also, there are emerging VCs who hire interns from IITs like Titan/Equanimity/100x, etc and could be great places to work for an internship. For PM specifically you can target Product Based companies and Emerging Unicorns and Soonicorns(about to become Unicorns)
Could you describe the selection/ interview process?
Around the sixth semester endsems, I was trying to “sort” upcoming summers by approaching people on LinkedIn and came across this internship. (Affectionately known as Apping). I was primarily seeking Product Management roles (I’ll explain why later), and fortunately, Bosch was looking to employ a PM intern in that team.
I received a response from the Department Head after mailing them my résumé, with the following step being a phone interview the next day. The call began with a brief introduction and a few questions regarding the projects listed on my resume; to my surprise, they were particularly attracted by the prospect of an Economics Degree from IIT Bombay combined with an Entrepreneurship Minor. The call lasted about 20 minutes, and in the end, he made an offer.
Could you brief us about the work allotted to you?
I was a part of the ERD (Engineering, Research, and Development) team, and my work focused on an Annotation tool for Autonomous Driving Systems called MARS. I had been assigned to be responsible for the tool’s revamp, where a product deployment plan with upgrades to the present version was anticipated.
What was the process of shifting to a new city like?
Before beginning the internship, each incoming intern must go through a three-week-long onboarding procedure involving numerous departments. My process was only completed after I arrived (which caused the effective joining date to be delayed by a couple of days). The office was in Bangalore, and the experience of moving to a new city was tiring yet enlightening for me; I had to find a PG nearby through No Broker, and there was a homesick feeling during the first few days (being somebody who had always stayed up North didn’t help).
How was the Work Experience?
The first week of my internship coincided with a cultural week at our department, so the mood in the office was light. Subsequently, we picked up the pace, which became hectic during the penultimate week. There are no set working hours, so you can work whenever you want as long as you finish before the next presentation. I was assigned a mentor who was working on the same project as me, and there were daily standup meetings with the mentor to provide progress updates with input from their side. Meetings with other team members working on similar projects happened 3-4 times every week.
Challenges
Working in a non-tech role in a tech company was one of the major challenges here, as there were only a few seniors in a management/strategy role. Apart from myself and my manager (who was also the team leader), everyone else on the team was involved in Data Science/ML/Software roles.
Words of Advice:
It is always advisable to put forth great effort when building your resume prior to the start of the internship season; this is something I regret not doing, as it resulted in a poor resume and thus fewer opportunities. This experience will benefit you even during the placement resume submission and External Applications, so make an effort. In terms of apping, all it takes is one positive response, so don’t give up even if you’re initially ignored; just keep approaching more and more people so that your chances of getting selected increase!
