IIT Madras Conducts Day One of Internship Drive Completely Online, for the First Time

Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras conducted its Day One of the Campus Internship Drive completely online for the first time in its history. It proved to be a major success, featuring the participation of several top Indian and global companies. They interviewed students over video conferencing platforms and offered internships for the Summer of 2021.

This year also saw two international profiles for Internships – Rubrik’s Software Development, based in the U.S., and Jane Street’s Quantitative Researcher, Hong Kong. These two international profiles that provided the highest compensation.

Day One of this Internship Drive alone saw the participation of 20 companies who made as many as 152 offers to Undergraduate Students. The last year’s figure was 147 offers made on Day One of 2019. The total number of internships offers made during the last academic year (2019-2020) was 554. Students get paid a stipend during their internship.

Highlighting the Institute efforts to successfully organise the Online Internship Drive, Prof. N.V. Ravi Kumar, Advisor (Internship), IIT Madras, said, “I am happy to inform that the online internship interviews for Day one has been quite successful. IIT Madras Internship Office conducted three student surveys and two surveys with companies who frequently recruit our students for internships and placements before arriving at this date of 30th August for Day One.”

Further, Prof. Ravi Kumar said, “We had requested companies to be flexible considering that several of our students were in remote and far-flung locations where Internet connectivity may not be as good as in urban locations. The collective efforts of internships student heads and their teams in collaboration with the companies who participated in this approach resulted in positive outcomes.”

Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd. extended the maximum number of offers – 21 offers – during Day One. Other top recruiters that offered internships include Google, Jane Street and Rubrik. Most of the companies utilised their organisation’s indigenous or outsourced platforms for conducting the interviews.

Day One of Internships was held last year on 11th August 2019. Despite the pandemic, IIT Madras undertook a lot of groundwork and collaborated with the students and the recruiters to hold the Internship Drive around the same time frame as last year and conducted Day One on 30th August 2020.

Sharing their experience in organising this event, Mr. Kunal Gupta, Mr. Sourabh Thakur, and Mr. Omkar Thombre, Students’ Heads of the Internship Team, IIT Madras, said, “Organising Day-1 was about overcoming the challenges imposed by the limited infrastructure of the students spread-out in the various regions of the country, and providing them with fair opportunity to secure an internship in their dream company. It took us months of planning, but we made it, and not only did we provide a seamless experience, but we also added new companies to our repertoire. We are glad that the online Day-1 was a huge success, and we thank all those made it possible.”

The Internship Student Team coordinated the entire process in collaboration with the Placement Team of IIT Madras. This team coordinated with the students through various social media platforms and set up clear communications on how the internship process will be held this year. The entire process was planned in advance with very few things left for the last date, and it made organising the very first day of the hiring season a pleasant experience for all the stakeholders. Internships are mandatory for B.Tech. and M.Tech. courses besides Dual Degree students as part of their academic curriculum.

Speaking about how this experience will help her prepare for campus placements, Ms. M. Harini Saraswathy, a student placed in Jane Street, said, “Internship Drive 2020, being entirely online, was very different from how I could have imagined. Despite all the issues faced, I believe my skills were judged effectively and in the best possible manner. There was a great outreach in spite of everything that could have gone wrong and I think that this internship will do wonders in shaping the path I take in the future.”