Hey peeps, this is Tharun Sidambaram M, fourth year Dual Degree student in Environmental Science and Engineering Department (ESED) (Sidenote: Not to be confused with Energy Science and Engineering Department (DESE) :P). I was a DAMP mentor last year. I am an ardent Formula 1 fan. I have interests in Consulting, Management, Marketing, Human Psychology and World Economics. I read many books on these topics and don’t like fiction (Novel fanatics don’t kill me).
With that out of the way, let me tell you how I got an internship at KPMG via apping. In my second year, I decided to go into core for my job because I love the field of Environmental Science and Engineering (and I suck at coding). So, I was adamant about doing a corporate internship in core during my third-year summer and a research internship during my fourth-year summer. You may ask why that particular order, I wasn’t sure whether they would allow fourth-year students to go for an internship as we would be having our DDP also during that time. So, I wanted to get a taste of corporate life as soon as possible.
I contacted several seniors, asking them how to app and when to start apping, as PT Cell only brings in very few companies for core. I started apping in February first week of the sixth semester. I searched for all the major companies I know which dabbled in things related to Environmental Engineering, like Adani Green Energy, Reliance, Aditya Birla Group, and Godrej. I found people working in the field at the assistant manager or manager level and sent connection requests to them. After they accepted, I sent a small cover letter (around 150 words) with my resume. Initially, I didn’t get many responses, so I considered apping to consulting companies. I only applied to KPMG and PwC. I got several positive responses from many KPMG people, with some asking me to send my resume to their official email IDs. After following up, I landed a couple of interview opportunities with KPMG Gurgaon people.
I had a one-on-one phone call with the first person, where they briefed me about their work and asked me whether I was still interested in doing it. After saying yes, she scheduled a video interview with me and told me what I needed to know about KPMG and their ESG team and be prepared for the interview with her manager. A few days later, I had an interview with her and her manager. It was a very chill HR type of interview where her manager asked me what I wanted to learn out of the internship and what skills I wanted to develop. After the interview, he asked me to contact her on April 2nd week as I wanted an internship from May. I still wasn’t sure whether I would get the internship, so I thought of attending the second one, too. That was a technical interview where the person provided the material and asked me to prepare using them. It was also a chill interview where two people asked me basic critical thinking questions from the provided material. Again, they asked me to contact them on April 2nd week.
So, there I was, still anxious about bagging the internship even though I was 95% sure I would get it. On April 10th, I contacted the person who took the first interview and immediately got an offer letter from HR with the onboarding formalities. Finally, 2.5 months of anxious search came to a sweet end. It was time to go to Gurgaon for my 2-month long internship (with a short pitstop at my home in Chennai).
On the first day, I reached my office a bit later than I would have liked, and after filling out the paperwork, I got my laptop and ID card. My manager was working from home that day, so I left early from office. On the second day, my manager assigned me my first project, preparing a Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission Inventory for an automotive components manufacturing company. My work was mostly on Excel, dabbling in data collection, cleaning, analysis and finally, emissions calculation. It was the closest I could get to working in the Environmental field. The project moved at a snail’s pace, so my manager gave me some small tasks like Policy Mapping for a telecom company for Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) Report (Side note: This was mandated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in 2021 for the top 150 companies by market cap from FY 22-23). In the third week, my manager’s manager allotted me a major project, preparing a GHG Inventory for an edutech and software services company. In contrast, this project was pretty fast-paced as the client gave a tight schedule and cooperated with us, making our job easier.
Besides these two main projects, I was responsible for calculating other companies’ emissions for which data was already available, preparing presentations on the same and writing an ESG report for the previously mentioned auto components company. Most of the days, the work was pretty chill. However, sometimes, I had to work long hours, even on weekends, when a hard deadline was approaching. I learned why they say there’s no work-life balance in consulting. But, I was blessed to have a very chill manager and her superior. They always ask how I am doing and whether everything is fine. They also stressed the importance of work-life balance. I also got involved in office politics in my second project, lol. I learned many skills during the internship, like how each person is different in what they expect and how to create professional decks. It helped me improve my people skills. After all, consulting is a people business. Despite its ups and downs, it was a very good experience, and I got more than I bargained for.
Coming to the logistics of staying in a new city, I didn’t struggle to find a cheap PG. But, at that time, I didn’t know I would experience several problems later. The food was palatable. My parents were in Delhi for their vacation the first couple of weekends, so I roamed with them in Delhi and Agra. After that, almost every weekend, I would go out for sightseeing. It was fun but sometimes tiresome due to Delhi’s sweltering summer heat, but at least it was a better alternative than staying at the PG, being bored. I didn’t even roam Mumbai that much during my 1.5 years at campus xD.
My advice to all those planning to apply for summer internships in corporate is to start around February, not early, but definitely not later than that. Create a small cover letter of sorts to go along with your resume (although no one reads that cover letter, as far as I know). Send connection requests to people working as assistant managers or above in the company where you want the internship, along with a short note. Follow up with them from time to time, and don’t restrict yourself to one or two companies. Apply to as many companies as you can, working in your preferred profile. Be patient, don’t lose hope at any point. The IIT Bombay tag will definitely help you. So take a chill pill and keep hustling towards your dream internship. Best of luck!
