My internship at Hexaware Technologies was a well rounded experience that will stay with me forever -By Shrinivas Puli from IIM Calcutta

The onset of the coronavirus has disrupted many traditions for most of us, be it traveling to your favorite getaway for the weekend, catching the latest cinema in theatres, or grabbing that bite at your preferred café. Apart from these, management graduates had to bear the additional loss of a cherished once-in-a-life kind of experience, the summer internships. Here is an anecdote of my internship journey at Hexaware, which was a truly memorable experience.

For the batch of 2021, the internship season started with the blow of rescinded offers due to emergent operational hits firms faced due to the nationwide lockdown in the months of April-May. It later progressed into delayed joining dates, some as late as the end of May. Thankfully, I and my co-interns at Hexaware finished the season without much friction and more importantly, enriching experience to carry forward in our careers.

Of course, I can write prose about the internship experience at Hexaware. But I’d like to break it into functional ‘MUST-HAVES’, students should look for before they choose a recruiter in a scenario where virtual summer internships could possibly be the new norm.

1. Onboarding 

This is probably the most overlooked part of the experience every year. Most trainees skip through the entire onboarding phase and go with the ‘I’ll figure it out later’ attitude. Unfortunately, in the virtual setup, we don’t have that luxury and in some ways, it was for the best. You actually figure a lot out about the organization faster, knowing where to go, who to go to, gets your hands into things a lot faster and there’s always the additional networking you can do. Hexaware did a splendid job at it, not because they showed us around, but because they enabled touch-points with leadership at a very early stage in the internship. This helps a lot in a virtual setup where communication seems to be the only thing that can salvage the next 2 months. Of course, I did have my setup with all the tools and software that I needed, handy with me within a day of the internship commencement.

2. Engagement

The norm usually is to have the trainees catch-up with the teams and bond over some engagements over the weekend. With COVID on the loose, and meetings happening on Teams/Zoom there’s not a lot one can do and banality may soon spoil the moments you wanted to talk about with your peers back on campus. Human Resources has to evangelize engagement strategies in such a time and Hexaware’s people management team and leadership were very proactive in this regard. I had a session with the co-interns where we played a campus favourite at Joka, MAFIA, with the leadership team showing their much lively side. I also had a CATCH UP OVER A FEW every Friday with my team sitting in the UK. We would quiz or just talk about stuff happening in our locations and end the day with an entertaining guitar solo by the company’s Sales Director, Tim Cobly. For the next 2 months, I always looked forward to Fridays. Did I also mention we had a celebrity chef, a renowned DJ, and India’s leading hairstylist, with their personalized corporate sessions for teaching us their craft?

3. Knowledge capital

There is an investment that the firm does in the management internship programs. Obviously there is the monetary aspect to it in the form of hefty stipends but more importantly, it’s the information and learnings you are exposed to. Hexaware facilitated a well-structured learning series for the interns where we interacted and learned from heads of Hexaware’s key business units. It wasn’t a mundane talk about the unit but a more interactive conversation where we talked about challenges they faced due to COVID, roadmaps for the future, high-end projects and clients, and most importantly, how we can work with them and create an impact!

4. Communication

A firm could be average at all of the above and still be a winner by just adopting over-communication into its culture. This is especially important when layoffs and salary cuts are rampant and a sense of guidance is the need of the hour. Hexaware set a benchmark for me with the touchpoint programs they had made for the entire lockdown period. A dedicated leadership lantern series where leaders like the CFO, COO, CXO, CPO, and other members of the executive suite conversed with employees and spoke in length about issues they faced and how they would steer past them. The CEO had a catchup mailer twice in a month and an in-person session with employees whenever needed and never failed to lift the morale of everybody present.

In many ways, it taught me that in tough times communication is what binds us and somewhere along the line, most firms just forget to do this one simple thing which can get them out of a tough spot.

All-in-all, the past 2 months of my internship at Hexaware have certainly been different and most definitely a once in a lifetime experience leaving me with learnings not just in skill but also in leadership. On a concluding note, I would like to recommend Hexaware to candidates looking for a well-rounded management experience while working on building our digital future.