Internship Program @ TNBS

 Profiles Offered:

1.       Graphic designer

2.       Content Management

3.       Marketing

Procedure for selection:

·         You are required to submit your CV + previous work which you might have done in domain you are applying.

·         This is work from home voluntary internship.

For Content Management Profile:

·         Mail an article on “The most memorable day of my life/ My most memorable event” along with your CV. Short listing would be done based upon this.

·         The shortlisted candidates would undergo a final round of either Telephonic/Skype interview.

·         If you are an active blogger, do send us link to your blog.

For Graphic Design Profile:

·         Prior knowledge of either Coral Draw/Photoshop/Illustrator.

·         Attach your previous work along with your CV.

For Marketing Profile:

·         Resume

·         Kindly suggest an approach for the following case:

ABC Pvt. Ltd is a company that aims at delivering quality Ethical hacking workshops for college students. It is their first workshop for which they are targeting students in Delhi and NCR region. With an inability to invest capital in promotions, suggest a way to ABC Pvt. Ltd to market its offerings so as to cater atleast 500 students for the workshop.

Work Profile for Content Management Interns

·          Based upon your area of interest you would write articles on General Awareness.

·         The number of articles would be limited to 2 or 3 per week.

Work Profile for Graphic Designers

·         Making TNBS promotional posters & designs for motivational posters.

·         Facebook Cover Image & Facebook Avatar

·         In case you have good knowledge of Adobe After Effects, you can make promotional videos.

Work Profile for Marketing Profile:

·         Developing various marketing strategies and working on cases related to marketing.

Motivating Interns: Go for Gold!

Introduction to our Medal System: Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be awarded to you on a weekly basis judged solely by your quality work.

In case any of them achieves a minimum of 5 Gold medals out of total 8 that would be awarded in total internship time of 2 months, you will be given a chance to work permanently with the TNBS team.

Each and every student will be provided certificate stating the duration and kind of work done by them.

How to apply:

Send your Resume and other work at admin@thenextbigstep.in by 26 August, 2012.

Subject of the mail should be: TNBS Internship_Profile (you are applying to)

For e.g., TNBS Internship_Content Management

For any other query, you can drop us an email at admin@thenextbigstep.in with Subject as ‘Query’.  

How to compensate for your low grades?

My last article scared many students to the extent that my mail box was flooded with mails asking me to write the next article asap. I am writing this article as a reply to all those queries. I will try to cover as many things as possible; in case, something is left out then do ask by commenting under this post.

Until my fourth semester result, I was also worried about my percentage. How to improve it? Situation has stooped to such level that my aim was to get just 70% anyhow (in any one semester and not cumulative). But it happened and I scored pretty well in my fourth semester exams. And since then I have always scored more than 70% in college exam. I will share few things which I used to do.

First of all, look at the previous year question papers because most of the time syllabus is same and topics are very limited from which questions can be asked. Go through as many previous year papers as possible and prepare all the questions and topics asked in them as major chunk of your exam will be similar to it (considering that no experiment has been done with your batch).

Secondly, no need to read the entire book again and again. Just go through it once, understand it and mark the important topics and revise them.

Third, keep an eye on the topics which teachers (or professors) teach in class. Those are the most important topics and they will definitely be asked in the exams.

Fourth, try to find out the sources of questions asked in the previous years. Generally, questions are asked from the exercise portion of standard books. In case, this happens with you then go through the important exercise questions and their solution (It would be best if you solve those questions on your own but that would be pretty ideal situation for many students).

Now, let us say that you have tried all the above mentioned activities but still you are not able to achieve good score (value of good score varies from person to person) then you need to work as per your goal. Find out what you want to do in your life or what are your career aspirations?

Let me explain this point by taking few examples. Suppose you want to go for GMAT or GRE after your graduation then you need to work on your profile. You need to have healthy profile which shows dedication towards your long term goals. If you want to go in to Education sector five or seven years down the line, then you need to work a little in this sector and this should be reflected in your profile.

If you want to go for GATE or MTech., then you need to have strong knowledge of your core subjects.

If you want to go for Indian Administrative services then you need to work on general knowledge and reading habit. You have to read and learn more than your capability.  So these are the few examples I have taken to explain how you can improve or compensate for your marks.

P.S.: All the above mentioned activities were done by me and were beneficial to me. It may or may not help you. Moreover, while following the above mentioned tips do not forget to develop a strong base of your core subjects.

Click to read : How much marks matter in your career?

How to prepare for Deloitte?

The basic process of company recruitment consists of three stages:1.     Written test
2.     Group case study
3.     Interview
Written test primarily consists of aptitude and verbal. Quantitative aptitude is quite easy and will be like slicing a piece of butter with a hot knife. Verbal section consists of three vocabulary based questions, Para-jumbles and a small RC. In all, there will be ten questions in English and this section was the deciding factor. I am talking this with respect to the 2011 test paper.Now, for those who cleared the first round, comes the second stage which is group case study. In this round, groups of 6 to 7 students are made and given a particular problem or case and time of 15-20 minutes. Now you have to work in a group (Mind it: work in a group) and provide a comprehensive solution to the problem. This round tests your so-called personality traits, namely team spirit, leadership skills, ability of work as a team and help team members. In this stage, you have to be an individual as well as represent your group.Interviewis mainly HR. stress is laid on activities mentioned in your CV, and few puzzles are also asked. I would suggest you to prepare standard HR interview questions as well as these are asked inevitably in all interviews.For case studies, you can study any case study like Vault’s guide.All the above suggestions/points are based on 2011 campus recruitment procedure of the company.

To read, interview experiences of students who got selected in Deloitte, click here.

Click here to download placement paper of Deloitte.

What is LPO: Legal Process Outsourcing?

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is one of the value added BPO services or the practice of a law firm or corporate legal department obtaining legal support services from an overseas law firm or legal support services company(low wage market), so that it turns out to be more economical. Countries like United States of America, Europe, UK, Germany, Australia outsource to cheaper destinations like India, Philippines etc.

The services given in LPO are:

·         contract drafting,

·         contract review and monitoring,

·         document review for due diligence,

·         patent drafting,

·         legal coding,

·         corporate secretarial services,

·         legal memo development,

·         transcription,

·         document management,

·         litigation support ,

·         data entry,

·         trade mark and copyright registration,

·        Simple filings and legal research.

·         Outsourcing is said to help firms to perform well in their core competencies and mitigate shortage of skill or expertise in the areas where they want to outsource. Outsourcing can offer greater budget flexibility and control. Law firms across the globe can greatly benefit from off- shoring legal services to India. Along with the low labor cost, India possesses a large, highly-qualified labor pool.
India also boasts one of the largest pools of English-speaking graduates in the world. Also, India's legal system is grounded in British common law which makes India a ready market.

The demerits of outsourcing include:
risk of leakage,

·         reduction of client confidentiality and privacy ,

·         Security concerns,

·         Cutback in the domestic legal jobs in the US and UK ,

·        Initial cost of training the respective Indian lawyers to maintain quality and Malpractice / Practice law without license.

What is Investment Banking?

Investment Banking is a specific division of banking which aids in arrangement of capital for other companies. Investment banking is a field of banking that relates to the acquisition of funds for a company. Investment banking also offers aids in the form of "advice" which a company might require in its dealings and transactions that is the issue and placement of the company stocks. In addition to it, it also acts as agents or underwriters (underwriting the securities by buying all the available shares at a set price and then reselling them to the public. Or the banks may act as agents for the issuer and take a commission on the securities they sell.) for companies.


They also help to facilitate mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations and broker trades for both institutions and private investors and provide services such as market making, trading ofderivatives, fixed income instruments, foreign exchange,and commodities.Thus they act as an intermediary between an issuer of securities and investors. Unlike commercial banks and retail banks, investment banks do not take deposits. 


There are two main lines of business in investment banking.One line of trading facilitates transactions, market-making, thus providing the Trading securities for cash and acting as underwriters and doing research and thus helping in the promotion of securities. This line is often referred to as the "sell side". The other line deals with pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, and the investing public (who consume the products and services of the sell-side in order to maximize their return on investment) .This side is referred to as the "buy side". Many firms have buy and sell side components.Through investment banking, an institution generates funds in two different ways. They may draw on public funds through the capital market by selling stock in their company, and they may also seek out venture capital or private equity in exchange for a stake in their company.


The processes that investment banks take to help companies raise money are :
1)Lending their expertise to a company and help it by giving a valuable advise about the best place to raise either debt or the stocks and capital.
2)Preparing all the necessary documents to accurately present the value proposition for funding and to protect both the company and the investor from any misunderstandings. 
3) Ensuring that all government rules and regulations have been followed in the raising of any capital.

What is KPO: Knowledge Process outsourcing?

A form of outsourcing in which knowledge- and information- intellectual, analytical related work is done by people with a pay scales much higher than the BPO sector (business sector) generally in a different geographical location.

To handle the problem of a shortage of skilled professionals and to have the opportunity to hire skilled workers earning lower wages in another location for a lower cost of the resources, Companies resort to knowledge process outsourcing. Examples of KPO functions are intellectual property or patent research, R&D in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, data mining, database creation, and a range of analytical services such as equity research, competitive intelligence, industry reports and financial modeling.

India has a lot to offer to the KPO companies.
The ideal KPO requires a worker with domain specialization, computer skills & English proficiency. With the Indian way of education which lays great emphasis on higher education & specialization, a talent pool with specialized knowledge in any field is readily available. This skilled and trained manpower is accessible at very low cost as well.

Some examples of global KPOs having laid their roots in India for having a cheap base are: McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Reuters, IMS Health, Harris Interactive, Ipsos, Maritz, AC Nielsen, TN0S and the WPP group. 

Two major Indian KPOs are The Smart Cube and EVALUESERVE,

There is tremendous potential in the KPO space. Only companies that have a strong pedigree, domain expertise, clear focus on the high-end space, a proactive solution orientation and a collaborative mindset will emerge as the winners. KPO is fast growing and is estimated to grow by 26% in the next 10 years.

How much marks matter in your career?

Now this is one of the most important and commonest (this word exists- check your dictionary) problem students face during their college life. I can understand their anxiety for this thing because once I used to have same kind of anxiety. Now let me come straight to the point. No more beating around the bush.

I will start this article with a small hypothetical situation (indeed, it is hypothetical for the time being).

Let us say you are an interviewer (Ohh. WOW!! I wish if there is any way of making it possible now). You interview two candidates. Both of them have similar kind of profile. Both stand on the same ground in terms of interview, communication skills and everything expect marks. Now you have to choose anyone of them. 

Whom will you choose?

I guess the answer is pretty clear to you. So in these kinds of situations marks matter and this generally occurs in technical companies. This is just one instance where marks provide you an upper hand over others.

Now let me come to second instance. Many companies have minimum percentage criteria i.e. they allow only those students to sit for placements who have marks more than cut off percentage (this depends entirely on the company’s policy). So, you can lag behind in such a scenario because if you have lesser marks than the cut off criteria then you won’t be allowed to sit for placements (Now this is the time when you will shower your senior with your blessings (and so called kind words) because he said marks don’t matter in placements).

Now the other instance where marks provide you the desired edge is in the case of PSUs. Although they have stopped recruiting directly from campuses but still they give value to marks. In campus recruitment, they used to select top rankers from each department and call them for interview and then make the final selection.

You will realize the value of marks when you apply for higher studies, be it in India or Abroad. Now every college has started giving importance to graduation marks and few colleges give lot of importance to college marks. Sometimes having good marks can make all the difference. If I talk about Indian scenario in particular, 79.9% will weigh far less than 80.1%. So, here also having good marks provide you an advantage over others.

Now let me come to internships. I would say that marks are not that much important in your internship because most of the time you go for internships through your contacts in the corporate world. In that kind of scenario companies provide you internship because you were referred by some senior employee of that company. If you are going for internship through college, then again marks matter. In this case situation is similar to placements.

I would suggest you people to work hard on your academics because you will find lot of seniors who will say marks don’t have any value in placements. Don’t listen to such advice (I could have used harsh words here but anyways…). Marks will always benefit you. I am not giving any particular number and considering above that as good marks and below that as bad marks. Good and bad depends entirely on the context in which they are talked. So just study and try to score as much as you can and believe me it is not at all difficult to score above 70% in college.

I would conclude by summing up in one line, “Having good marks will not harm you even if they don’t benefit you. Having low marks will never benefit you even if they don’t harm you”.

Now, I think that this article is bit aggressive and students reading it might get worried (those don’t have good percentage) but you need not. I will come up with the next article in which I will share few tips (which were used by me) to score better and what else you can do to compensate for your grades.

P.S.: These are my personal views and can differ from you. 

How Professors select Interns?

This is the last part of How to apply for internship to colleges and Universities Series?

I think you will like this post as its nothing conceptual or anything to learn about. Just ease yourself and read through this conversation I had with a professor when I got a chance to stay with him during a workshop. There is nothing to like or dislike with this post. Just a dialogue! Read and Enjoy

I would mention just the important lines that may sound interesting to you.

Me: Sir, I am just curious to know, how do you select interns from the number of application/emails you receive daily?

Prof: Look, We all know that you guys don’t know anything about Management, be it marketing, finance, or for that matter anything related to your subject of application.

Me: Yeah Sir, that’s true as we don’t get much exposure to these subjects at the UG level.

Prof: We understand that, and that’s why, remember that don’t flaunt about your management knowledge in your application. If you have any achievement, that’s perfectly fine, but never mention things like, I am a student with keen interest in management and have special corner for the various frameworks in management like porter’s 5 forces, 4 C’s etc.

Me: Sir, I probably don’t even know about all this.

Prof. But, yeah, students do this. Look I will tell you how we select intern. What you guys do is, copy all the e-mail ids and send it to all the Profs who exist. Even it has happened that my colleague in IIM and I (I should always follow the other person you are referring to, if the reference is in good sense. Follow the reverse for negative sense of message! Grammar Gyan: P) have actually found that you guys send emails to the Profs of the same institute at the same time of the day.

Me: (with signs of embarrassment) Yes, sir, we actually do that.

Prof: We know it, so don’t feel bad about it. All of you do this. So we generally ignore it.  What I personally see is that how personalized the mail is. Does it refer to me as a specific individual or just another “Dear Sir”. Moreover, the content of the email is very important along with CV. I chose you because I found that even you hardly had any experience in this side, but the hard work put in designing the mail was evident. Moreover the time factor is very important. You were lucky that you applied 6 months before. I was about to close my account for that summer intake when you applied.

Me: (Just thinking). Oh. This is how they select. How lucky I am that I got to know this! :P


P.S. : This is based on my experieInce with my Professor of  IIM C. Every professor may have his/her own criteria for selecting students.

Click on the link to read Part 1: How to apply for internship to colleges and Universities?

Click on the link to read Part 2: How to approach professor for internship at colleges and Universities?

How to approach professor for internships to universities and colleges?

Here is the second part of “How to apply for internship Series”. I am sure you guys would have definitely found the first part interesting. I am continuing from where I left in the last post. Click to read How to apply for internships to universities and colleges? Part- 1

Now let’s see, what an ideal intern mail should look like. Your ideas may definitely differ from mine, but the basic requirements and ingredients of the mail will match.

I would recommend that whenever you mail any professor for the intern, always refer him with his surname in the mail. Most of the students mention a “Dear Sir” / “ Respected Sir”/ “ Dear Sir/Madam” in their mails but this is certainly very informal as it clearly underlines the thought that you have sent it to various professors with the same content. (Remember- Respected Sir is considered wrong in English because Sir itself is respectable word and you are making it redundant by doing so)

Suppose the professor’s name is Prof. Rajesh Kapoor ( any resemblance is purely coincidental :P ), so always start with “Dear Prof. Kapoor” or “Respected Prof. Kapoor” You may find it a little uncomfortable to refer him with his surname but in the professional world, it is perfectly fine.

Secondly, when it comes to the main content of the mail, a general trend is to prepare a standard mail which can always be forwarded to any number of professors conveniently. Here I would like to state that this is the biggest mistake a student does in this process. Never prepare a standard content and always try to personalize the mail by mentioning his domain of work along with linking your interests to that field.

I would mention an example to make it clearer. Consider two professors with their domain of work as marketing and finance respectively. Your mail should clearly state his area of marketing or finance and should always be linked to your past work experience with marketing or finance.

I can understand that many of the students would like to know the approach if they do not have any sort of experience in any of the related field. In that case I would mention that you yourself should propose a project or a rough draft of the work you would like to do with the concerned professor. He may not consider your proposed project but would definitely appreciate the efforts.

As far the CV is concerned, obviously you cannot help much with the content of the CV promptly. They have to be procured as your life in your college advances. One very important thing I would mention is that every student should get the CV structured in a professional manner so that at least the professor does not find any informal writing in the entire application process.

I think, I should summarize it by saying that the entire idea is to make the professor feel as if the mail is personally sent to him and should reflect your passion to work under him.

I sincerely believe that if you focus on these small points, you will definitely be able to make it to a good institute of your intern.

In the next mail, I will reveal what an IIM professor has to say on his procedure of selecting interns from the hundreds of such applications he receives every week.

Click on the link to read How Professors select Interns?

How to apply for internships to universities and colleges?

I am writing this post specifically as a reply to the question, many students have asked me in the past, and the same I have asked my seniors in my initial years.  How to apply for internships in a university or a college which does not offer any structural program to apply but definitely you would have seen your friends working there.

Let me start by saying that there is no college or university in India that does not offer an intern, but along with this, I would definitely say that there are very few institutes that offer a structured program for interns intake which seriously leave us with the question, how to go for it?

Well, I would start with a very common line (probably read 100 times) which states that before you go for an intern, just give a good thought about your area of interest. Why am I saying this? The reason is that it might be possible that you end up doing an intern which you can’t finish it let alone writing it in CV.

I would share my personal experience here about a technical intern that I did in my second year. Obviously I was pretty happy as the intern was in one of the esteemed institutes of India but as far as the current scenario is concerned, I would probably be sitting for some non-tech placements and obviously there I will face a tough time if I mention your technical expertise.

Secondly, the major question that most students ask about is the “contacts” of the professors? Guys, let me tell you that every major university, institute or college has a well managed faculty page with all information made available about every professor working in that institution.

Now let’s come to the major part, how to apply?

Let me first draw some major instances that I have come across till now.

1)      Majority of the students copy all the email ids in their mail and press a “send” to all of them with a single click. (Wow, in 2 minutes, I sent mails to 50 professors).

2)      Second major concern is the cover letter that is required in the mail you send and many students fail to draft it professionally and end up with no affirmative replies from the professors

3)      Other major issue with some students is their CV. I would request every student to get his CV verified, evaluated from your seniors. I can assure you one thing that your selection for an intern actually depends on this point.

Just think about the above mentioned points whereas in the meanwhile, I will prepare the next part of this post where I would discuss the method I chose for my applications along with the right time to apply for bagging a decent intern.

Click on the link to read How to approach professor for internships to universities and colleges?

Click on the link to read How Professors select Interns?

INTERNSHIP- a pastime or an excellent mechanism for growth?

I am writing this post just to convey my experience (mixed with some of my friends’ as well) about how an intern, if valued can do miracles.

A general perception, when a summer vacations come is to do an intern. Irrespective of the interest, passion, goal, a student today wants to do an intern. It is followed by one of the three instances

1)      A student who passionately pursue his interest, work hard in his intern and end up with a PPO (pre placement offer, for those who don’t know ) , a research paper, and sometimes an offer of Phd. Or MS from the same university.

2)      There is second category of students who join an internship only because their friends are doing it, and moreover they assume that their certificate of that intern will do wonders during their placements and there is no harm visiting the firm (place of intern) once in a week. It can be a good outing as well. Moreover, they would be able to brag about it if their firm is good.

3)      These are those students who doesn’t even care to join an intern and works on the fundamental of jugaading (arranging) a certificate. They are least bothered about the company or the kind of work it does. Moreover, it is not difficult to arrange training report from some friend or senior or internet. 

I would consider the second and third type of students as a single lot along with the first type of students as the second lot. Now let’s explore their condition at the time of placements where I would like to specially stress on the fact that, the company in a rare case will do the effort of visiting your expensive folder with well placed certificates. The only paper they may have with them is your CV. This eliminates the highest held purpose of your intern- your certificate. (Reaction of most of the students who belong to second and third category: “Ohh No!!! I just bought a certificate folder worth Rs 300. It all got wasted. If I had known this before hand then I would have bought a cheaper folder and had surprised my tongue with delicious taste of Dominos Pizza”).

Now, when type 1 student encounters a question from the interviewer regarding his intern, the answers seem pretty accurate as the person has actually worked on the topic, but when a similar question is fired on type 2 students, there comes the problem. Obviously as the intern was fake, similarly fake were the answers. Now let me describe a hypothetical situation of interview room when all three kinds of students are sitting in front of panel. Interviewer asks following simple questions about training and within no time he will be able to find truth.

1.       What is the nearest metro station to the company?

2.       What is the name of the HR manager?

3.       Can you explain the route to reach company by car?

4.       Can you tell me few companies located in the vicinity of your company?

5.       What advice would like to give to company in order to improve their service and quality?

Now these five questions are pretty simple but all three candidates will not be able to answer them. First students will be able to answer all the questions. Second candidate will be able to answer first three answers and fourth one only if he had observed the surroundings properly. But the third candidate will not be able to answer single question.

Now I need not describe what will happen after this interview?

You can always say any random answers to these questions but my friend, interviewer is not foolish. He has been taking interviews for so many years and if, by any chance, he happened to know the details about that company then…. (I am laughing imagining your situation). Let me remind you that they have been recruiting students from before the time you were even born.

I would refrain from mentioning my personal instances in this post (will write that if got a good response on this :P ) but would like to mention some of the commendable success stories of some of my friends who really made the most out of their intern.

A friend of mine from IIT was offered a job based on this work in his intern and moreover was referred to one of the universities abroad for his further studies while other was able to publish his works in one of the international journal. There are no intentions to justify anything and I am not taking any stand through this post, but would definitely want to advise my juniors that an intern is something you should opt for only out of your interest else there is no point because you do not gain any knowledge and moreover your certificate will also be useless.

So friends you still have time. Study and work hard in your internship. You will learn so many things which you cannot learn sitting at home and chatting with friends on FaceBook. The scope of internship is not limited only to college exam or placement Interview but it will help you in understanding the corporate world and culture better.

Click on the link to know How to apply for internships to universities and colleges?