What I learnt from my internship at Godrej Consumer Products Limited -By Hemant Singh from NITIE Mumbai

Here is an anecdote of my virtual internship at Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL), a platform that added a new dimension to my learning experience. 

‘Every problem is an opportunity in disguise’ - this quote by John Adams struck my mind as soon as the announcement came: “All the internships will be virtual considering the current pandemic situation”  from GCPL. Knowing the fact that we do not have any control over the current situation, the only thing we can do is learn to work in virtual mode.

Get ready for a campus story

The selection process of internship at Godrej Consumer Products Limited is very structured. They start with a video round and filling of the set of carefully crafted questionnaires before campus round. Based on the video round, a shortlist was announced. Finally, on the day of campus round the process included a Group discussion followed by a long interview. The interview process is jointly conducted by HR and domain experts.

Time to gear up

This was probably the best part of the internship when you get your project synopsis in advance. GCPL has a very good strategy of engaging an intern by giving them synopsis and details about the pre-read. These two weeks I utilized for executing secondary research on the topic relevant to my project area. 

Gelling in with a new ecology

“In a crisis, do not pretend like you have all the solutions”, CEO & MD, Godrej Consumer Products Limited. It was week 1 of the induction process of my internship at Godrej and everyone was trying to adapt to the new ecology called Microsoft team view. Soon the team members would ask questions like ‘Am I audible?’, ‘Is my screen visible?’ etc. But here came the well-planned execution of induction by the GCPL HR team. They focused on a simple solution by sending a pre-read deck and getting the questions for the panel in advance. These small planned things made week 1 of the induction sail past smoothly. This week-long induction was crucial as they set the base for understanding how business works for GCPL. 

A time to ACT: All about project execution

Knowing the fact that the internship would be slightly tough as it was virtual, my guide suggested a simple solution to this: ‘Let's connect more often for feedback’. This came out as a key to solve the problem of a virtual internship. Now by increasing the frequency of connecting on a call we eliminated the so-called danger of going off track due to the virtual aspect of things. Additionally, I kept myself on the ACT cycle (Action, Execution, and Transformation) after every meeting. 

• Action: To make the MOM and know the portion of the project to be completed before the next meeting. 

• Execution: To plan the action strategically to break the dependency of the activity as much as possible. 

• Transformation: Get feedback to improve the week's work. 

This ACT cycle has really helped to keep on track despite my internship at Godrej being in a virtual mode.

An opportunity to learn and explore

Despite being on the virtual side, the cycle of learning was smooth. My expectation was to learn about the GCPL supply chain and how exactly the supply chain based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC) works. These two months gave me an in-depth understanding of both objectives. The project gave me an additional opportunity to learn various tools such as Lingo (optimization tool) and Tableau (data visualization and analysis tool) as well. My internship experience and the leadership of GCPL has bestowed me with great insights. Some of the key learnings to survive the virtual ecology during the internship are:

• Always have back up data on the mobile to stream from the data pack

• Let your audience know about the shrouding before you start

• Have a white plain background (use Team features) to avoid audience distraction

• Check the camera angle before you start.