My Summer Internship Experience With Marico-By Aditya R, SIBM Pune

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Marico is an Indian multinational consumer goods company that provides consumer products and services in the areas of health, beauty, and wellness. Headquartered in Mumbai, Marico is present in over 25 countries across Asia and Africa. Considering the exposure that one gets through working in Marico, the firm is one of the most sought-after companies for job and internship seekers. Here is Aditya R from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Pune sharing his journey of making it into Marico as a summer intern. 

A well-chalked-out preparation strategy 

Preparing well in advance is crucial for cracking any selection process. As part of the summer placement preparation, our seniors at SIBM Pune did a great job by conducting several mock GDs/ PIs, helping us frame our answers for interviews better, and providing us with a ton of material to make sure we had all the fundamentals covered. Apart from this, since I was interested in Human Resources, I read the basics of HR and kept myself up to date with current affairs as well. 

Overview of the selection process

We initially had a group case discussion round where we were presented with a real-life HR problem and each of us was given an opportunity to present our views on the case and then defend/ elaborate on our stand further with follow-up questions from the panelists. This was followed by a personal interview which very much didn't feel like an interview but more like a candid conversation. Most of the questions were about my personality, behavior, and life decisions, and the interviewers just wanted to get to know me better as a person.

The secret to impressing the interviewer!

I think it's very important to be genuine and not pretend to be someone you're not. I remember there were quite a few questions in the interview where I did not have the perfect answer or I felt my answer wasn't up to expectations, but at the end of the day, I think being incredibly honest with all my responses was what got me through. Coming to the skills that one must possess, I'd say soft skills are incredibly important, and more so than hard skills because how you present yourself, communicate your ideas, share your experiences and tell your story is what impresses the person sitting on the other side more than anything.

Marico’s onboarding experience

The Marico TA team really went out of their way to ensure we had a smooth onboarding. We were kept engaged in the weeks building up to the internship and they planned a fun team-building activity and divided us into mini groups among the interns and which helped us get to know each other better. We were also assigned our buddies before the internship began, and got to connect with them and get to know Marico better. 

Even though the internship had to be moved to a virtual one due to the lockdown, the Marico TA team made sure we didn't face any hiccups and charted out a thorough onboarding plan where we got to know about each function and department in Marico along with role-specific inductions to get to know our function (in my case, HR) better. These really gave us a good understanding of the organization and its functions, and also an opportunity to interact one-on-one with CXOs and function heads.

Transparency, openness, and innovation dictates Marico’s culture

At Marico, every summer project was a live project and an actual business problem that the company was looking to solve. My project required me to interview and interact with a lot of Marico members, and one thing I noticed in common was their openness and willingness to help. While the internship was online, I still got to experience the Marico culture and saw the Marico values on display- transparency, openness, innovation, boundarylessness, and a lot more.

I worked with the talent acquisition team at Marico and my project involved studying the existing talent acquisition practice for managers and leadership hires and coming up with recommendations to improve the function both from a technology and process perspective, and make it best in class. This involved a lot of connections with both internal stakeholders as well as external stakeholders for benchmarking purposes, then analyzing the data collected and coming up with relevant insights. 

With multiple deliverables to work on, I'd say I got a bit overwhelmed on what exactly I needed to prioritize. But after a slow start, I quickly found my feet and learned that prioritizing one's tasks on a daily basis, managing your time effectively, and connecting with all project stakeholders on a frequent basis is essential. And as I progressed in my journey, one of the things I really liked about Marico was that I was constantly given feedback by my guide, super guide, teammates, and others, throughout my project. This really helped me improve on a consistent basis.

My mentors always let me know when I could do something better and were the first ones to give me a pat on the back when things went well. Marico laid so much importance on feedback that out of the 1.5 hours allotted for my mid and final reviews, 20-30 minutes was set aside just for feedback and compliments from the guide, super guide, and team members! What made it even better was being complimented in the presence of the CHRO, Mr. Amit Prakash, someone I really looked up to.

The priceless takeaways

To sum up my experience at Marico, here are some priceless lessons that I learned during my internship at Marico that my juniors might also find helpful. 

• Firstly, it’s alright to fail, as long as you fail fast and learn faster. There were multiple occasions during the internship when things didn’t go according to plan, or an idea failed, but it’s important to take the feedback in the right spirit, learn from it quickly and move on. 
• Stay humble, no matter how high you go. One thing I noticed with everyone in the Marico leadership team was how humble and open they were to new ideas and others’ opinions regardless of their position, and that is something I’ll always remember.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions when in doubt. There's no boundary to what you can experiment with and learn. I was lucky to work at Marico where everyone encourages you to take risks and try out new things.
• Be open to feedback, take it in the right spirit, and improve 
• Brush up on your Excel and PPT skills, the importance of these cannot be stressed enough 
• Lastly, it is normal to feel overwhelmed at times, but talk to your friends, family, peers, and guides anytime you think you need help!

Found Aditya's internship experience interesting? Here are a few more: 

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3. How my dream of a summer internship at TATA Steel Ltd. turned into a reality -Tanusweta Sarkar from IIEST Shibpur
4. All the work that went into bagging an internship at CRISIL -By Nehal Lodha from Institute of Management, Nirma University