Rachit Jain From MDI Gurgaon Shares His HR Internship Experience At Godrej Consumers Products Limited (GCPL) With Unstop
Rachit Jain was selected in the Godrej LOUD internship program while still a first-year MBA student at MDI Gurgaon. First-year students are not expected to know much about the intricacies of managing things, and that is where the uniqueness of the Godrej LOUD program comes in.
As Rachit puts it, the selection process for the internship mostly tested his ability to satisfyingly answer questions related to things mentioned on the CV. Rachit was also required to explain the rationale behind some of the crucial decisions that he had to take at various junctures of life.
“All this gets supplemented by presentation skills, attitude/behavior, the reflection of efforts put into knowing the company in and out, and alignment with the company values and capability factors. What possibly worked for me: Like every other student, I was very well acquainted with the Godrej Group, its values, why it existed, what it did, and why and how will I fit in,” Rachit said.
The Preparation Process For The Internship
According to Rachit, the recruitment process for the Godrej Consumer Products Limited internship (GCPL) can be broken down into three key stages. Separately preparing for each of the three stages proved extremely crucial for Rachit and allowed him to anticipate in advance what to expect and how to deal with it. Let’s look at the three stages and how Rachit prepared for them.
- CV & Master Document: Rachit prepared different versions of his introduction, strength and weakness, goals, setbacks, achievements, why MBA, why HR, and similar hygiene questions. He worked on them and tried to improve the answers to make them more impactful.
- Company & Alumni: Rachit spoke to his seniors from MDI Gurgaon who have interned at GCPL or are currently working at the firm. It gave him a good idea of the work culture at the firm and the values that define the company goals.
- Mock PIs & Other Resources: He skimmed through the resources, mainly the HR compendium provided by the Placement Prep team at the college. He also practiced PI and GD with assigned mentors at MDI which helped him ace the final interview process.
Experience Of The Overall Interview Process
Even though Rachit was well-prepared for the internship, it was not fixed in his mind that he is going to join GPCL. He applied for the Godrej LOUD internship with the flow, as many of his batchmates were also applying for it. He explains that the interview consisted of two rounds with two different sets of questions in each. Let’s quickly review them first.
- Round 1: The first round of the Godrej LOUD program had asked for documents like CV, the Points Of Responsibilities (POR,) and other extra-curricular activities. Apart from that, Round 1 had five questions on the purposes behind doing the internship, personal values, things that mattered, reflections and learning from the pandemic, and the experiences that shaped their attitude towards things.
- Round 2: The second round of the Godrej LOUD program consisted of two tests. The first was an aptitude test that had questions from VARC, DILR, and QA. The second one was a psychometric / personality assessment test. Around 260 people from more than 15 b-schools managed to make it through to round 2 and were offered PPI.
After the selection and offers were made, there was an exhaustive induction program with multiple rounds. Almost two weeks were devoted to conversations with the group HR head and some purposeful Godrejites who explained to the selected candidates what working in Godrej is all about.
Two separate workshops were also organized - one on self-reflection and the other one on how to have a meaningful career. Finally, a 30 minutes long interview was held with a senior person from Godrej to generate a Career Anchors Report.
Different Projects & The Experience Of Working On Them
As an HR professional, Rachit was tasked with enhancing the productivity of the employees by coming up with newer ways of working. He said that there were a few questions that served as motivation for him as he set out to revamp the culture of working at the organization.
“Which of our current activities contribute to value creation and which don’t? - Can we eliminate non-value-adding activities?- Can we digitise/simplify/automate the value-adding ones? - How do we scale up the culture of collaboration? My Approach and Work By interacting with various stakeholders, I first focused on narrowing down the project scope,” Rachit said.
This process meant that he needed a clear idea of the set of employees for whom he was solving problems, how to measure it, and if there was any model with which the productivity of the employees can be measured.
Also read: How this FMS student bagged a pre-placement offer from L’Oréal India
“Although I could not get an exact answer to what productivity meant, I learned what it did not. We were not looking at productivity from a manufacturing, financial or compensation, and benefits lens. Then, I started with external benchmarking and gained insights by interviewing 20+ experienced HR professionals across consulting, tech, FMCG, banking, e-commerce, etc. learning what their companies were doing on this front,” he said.
However, that search did not lead to much insight as he found that most companies do not have a fixed procedure for measuring productivity. They only focus on how effectively and efficiently important work can be delivered.
“I found it prudent to go through some literature review on the Future of Work and Productivity, for which I indulged in reading a lot of research papers, reports, articles, and some portions of certain books. I also connected with and sought input from my Professors at MDI and other HR experts,” Rachit added.
Through his research, Rachit came up with recommendations for six layers of productivity which could be scaled up to build a multi-pronged strategy to optimize Human Resources.
“In addition to my recommendations, I also crafted two frameworks: one that can help identify the remoteability of processes (and offer better tools and technology) by combining 3 dimensions of remoteability: asynchronous, autonomous, location-independent, and the second one, a potential application for people management which can shift our focus to value creation functions and embed it deep into our goals, metrics, and learning,” he further said.
5 Point Advice For Young People Who Want To Intern With GCPL
When asked if he would advise young people to intern with GCPL, Rachit enthusiastically replied in the affirmative. According to him, at Godrej LOUD, it will be possible for interns to find something bigger that will go beyond salary and gain work experience.
“The people-centric culture, philosophy, and values are at the heart of Godrej. Whatever they do is so purpose-driven and meaningful. The business may take a backseat but values don't - The organization is pretty much flat and thus, leadership access is really good,
“You can find the CHRO, CEO, and the top leadership walking past you daily. This also allows you to speak your mind openly and be instrumental in bringing change (as the leadership intent is genuine). - The company gives you a lot of autonomy, flexibility, and individual creativity/entrepreneurship,” Rachit said.
The five-point guide that Rachit Jain shared for Godrej LOUD aspirants has been summarized below:
- Learn the tactical way of getting around: Your project is not the number 1 priority of everyone and you have to be patient in order to not be labeled as rude.
- Make the annoying stuff go away: Find stuff in the office that everyone hates and try to solve it so that it becomes visible that as an intern you can get things done.
- Look at things from non-tinted glasses: Come up with ideas based on facts and data and make bold proposals that challenge the status quo. As an intern, there will always be the freedom and space to do it.
- Un-defining the boundaries: Interact with other interns from different teams as it is a great learning experience.
- Following the hygiene practices: Narrow down the project scope by regularly interacting with the stakeholders about the deliverables and navigating ambiguity by working with limited information without turning cynical.
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