How I grabbed my summer internship at redBus?
Before I begin, I would like to give a vote of thanks to Saranya Remana for believing in me and having trust in me to work with an insanely talented team of incredible designers here at redBus.
Secondly, I would like to thank Harvinder Solanki and Atithi Srivastava for their constant support and mentorship. I am highly grateful🙏 to have mentors like these people whom I can approach any time for any help.
So, getting back to the business😃
Going back in time, my 6th semester of engineering curriculum was started in January 2023 and as a part of graduation requirement, every student has to go through 2-months summer internship at the end of their 3rd year of engineering. Interestingly, our college has a unique curriculum where students can opt for 6-months of extended internship either in 7th semester or 8th semester. The courses will be adjusted automatically for the remaining semesters. I opted for 6-months summer internship in 7th semester starting from June 2023 all the way up to November 2023.
To start with, I connected with Harvinder (one of our college alumnus) just to get tips on how to write cold DMs and emails. Meanwhile, I was searching the same on YouTube as well. During the research, I have found that cold DMs on LinkedIn is much better than cold emails as far as getting response is concerned. According to me the reason is very simple, you are directly talking to the person whom you can receive any assistance from, no barriers or third party sites involved.
Being a human-behavior enthusiast😃, while creating the message for the cold DMs I kept the needs of recruiters, hiring managers and similar people in mind and came up with the following message:
Hi [Name], hope you’re doing great.
I’m Vaibhav, pre-final year UG at IIT Ropar. I have been learning design since 2020 and have worked as design intern at [Previous Company Name]. I am looking for 6 months product design internship for summer of 2023.
Please let me know when you are available to discuss.
This message was for the people who are not in my connections and I have to send them a request with a note. Every time I send a connection request to somebody, I attach this message in the note.
I am not sure whether it’s an ideal one or not but it worked insanely well for me as I am directly asking what I want in minimum words possible considering the fact that in note, you can only write at max 300 characters😅.
For the people, who are already in my connections I used the following message:
Hi [Name], hope you’re doing great.
I’m Vaibhav, a pre-final year UG at IIT Ropar. I am looking for a 6 months product design internship for the summer of 2023. I have been learning design since 2020 and have worked as a design intern at [Previous Company Name]. Please let me know when you are available to discuss this further. Please find attached my resume.
Thanks Vaibhav
This message also worked very well for me as here as well I used the minimum words possible to ask the other person what I want. Moreover, I also did not want the other person to scroll to see the complete message, so keeping that in mind I created this message. Of course, this will depend on the length of characters of the name of the person whom you are sending this message and the name of the company you previously worked in.
After spending nearly a week on creating these messages, around 6th January 2023 I started applying in the companies that I wanted to work in. I don’t have any sort of list or so which contains my dream companies. My definition of dream company follows:
“Any place where I can spend more than 90% of my time with people much smarter than me is my dream company”
The steps I followed to connect with people in the companies that I wanted to work in are:
- Go to LinkedIn and types the name of the company.
- Go to the company’s LinkedIn page and then go to the People section.
- Type the keyword Designer in the search box. In this way, it was easy for me to filter out people with “Designer” roles.
- Then connect with them using the message in the note.
Through this method, I connected with probably more than 200 designers across 70+ companies.
I was doing all these stuff and a month passed. During that time, some people replied, some don’t and some didn’t even accept the connection request. The people who replied are either hiring for full-time or need somebody who can join immediately in-person/remote but I wanted a summer internship due to constraints from the college side.
Slowly, I started feeling anxious😥 about not getting the internship and was about to message Harvinder that “Bhaiya (that’s how I used to address him), I am not getting any internship. What should I do?”
After that within 1–2 days on 8th February 2023, somebody from HR team at redBus called me and said, “Hi Vaibhav, you connected with Saranya asking for summer internship at redBus”. I paused for a second or two because I can’t recall whether I have applied as I have applied to so many companies that I can’t even remember the names of the companies that I have applied to. So, just to continue the conversation, I said “Yes”😅, hoping that I have applied. Then, we talked for a minute or so.
The first interview of the internship was scheduled on 9th February 2023. Interview went quite well. I was asked some questions about the project that I was presenting in the call and some general questions about product & design thinking.
Before the interview, I was feeling very nervous as it was the first one after a long time. But after the call, my confidence boosted exponentially. Then I took upcoming interviews as informal discussions between two friends.
I didn’t stop there, the applying process was still going on. Meanwhile, I gave 2–3 more interviews in various companies. After my first interview at redBus, I was feeling very confident. In fact, it’s funny in an interview at some company the interviewer asked, “Vaibhav, did you feel nervous during the interview?” to which I said:
“No, definitely not. I just took it as an informal discussion between two friends sitting at a tea stall sipping tea and discussing about design”😁
Finally on 17th February 2023, I got a confirmation that I was selected for the internship at redBus. On 21st February 2023, got the offer letter. I was very extremely happy. Only after I got the offer letter, I informed some of my friends and family about this internship.
After that, I still continue applying in various companies. Nobody can deny the fact that this is how off-campus hiring works. Candidate will opt for the company that will give them the best offer.
A week passed, when I realized something is not going right. I felt emotional on the fact that somebody trusted you and no way I can betray their trust. The only way to gain trust is to first show trust. I looked the situation from company’s perspective and put myself in place of hiring manager and analyzed the complete situation. So, I stopped applying and whosoever replied to the cold messages I sent earlier, either I did not reply to them or I replied them saying “Thanks a lot but I got an offer”.
During these two months (January & February), I faced a few rejections as well, saying “Your work/portfolio is not good enough to continue conversation with you” to which I said this to my brain:
“Well OK, it does not make any difference to me but the company lost a gem.”
After I got the internship, I frequently connected with Atithi to discuss stuff about design and user experience in general. I asked a lot of non-conventional UX questions to which I got amazing and thought provoking answers. Although I did not inform her about this internship till my joining date just to create excitement😅.
Finally, 20th May 2023 arrived. It was the first time I travelled solo in flight from Delhi to Bengaluru, (extremely excited of course😃). The joining date was 22nd May 2023.
Next came 22nd May 2023, my first day of the internship at redBus.
I am very much excited for the projects I will be working on and the people I will be working with. Eagerly waiting for new challenges, new tasks, new mistakes and most importantly, new learnings.
Thanks a lot everyone🙏 who helped me either directly or indirectly in the shaping me the kind of person I am today.
Again, thanks a lot Harvinder Solanki and Atithi Srivastava for the support🙏.
If you need any assistance from me, do not think twice in asking me. Always there to give back to the community who helped me, just shoot me a DM on any of the socials below.
To all the hustlers reading till this point, all I can say is “stay hungry stay foolish”.
Thanks everyone, signing off…
