From engineering undergrad to a non-tech internship at Twitter: Kushagra Tyagi
Kushagra is a final year undergraduate at Maharaja Surajmal Institute of Technology. He is the founder of IdeaPanda and has previously interned with six companies, including Twitter, PVR, WeWork, Bobble, and two other early-stage startups. In this story, Kushagra walks us through his journey from joining college to finding this way through the tech giants in his dream roles.
How did you discover your field of interest?
I always knew I loved management, given that I had good people skills right from my school days. Everybody in my family is an engineer, and so it was a natural consequence to take up science and then engineering. However, back in 2016 when I joined college, I had no idea about what marketing meant, or how things worked actually — I had PCM stuff going on in my mind then.
Once into college, I joined a lot of societies, tried out different stuff. I realized that I didn’t want to sit in front of a screen and code throughout my life. So coding was not an option for me. One thing that I’d like to mention is that my faculty has been really co-operative with my attendance that helped me do a lot of things outside college later.
I became the youngest President of the Entrepreneurship Cell of my college, which was a major break for me as a freshman, learned a lot from there.
Tell us about your internship journey.
My first internship was after my freshman year, where I was kicked out after 8 days being advised to never try sales as a career option. However, given my hunger for learning, I applied to another company and learned a lot about the nitty-gritty of sales.
Post this, I also interned at Unacademy as a Talent Acquisition Intern. As much fun I had there, I also realized I didn’t want to continue in HR.
During my second year, I also worked in the team of TEDx Hansraj — a group of marvelous individuals who inspired me with their sheer brilliance. Meanwhile, as the President of the E-Cell, I also had to work with (manage) seniors, which taught me a lot.
Towards the end of my second year, I interned with Bobble, and spent 6 months with the team, working directly and learning from the CEO itself.
There’s one thing I have observed — people love teaching me. Somehow it makes them very happy.
After Bobble, I applied to WeWork (Bobble used to work out of WeWork) and worked on marketing through local events with two other interns from schools like LSE. I had great fun there as well and went back to college, post that for my 5th-semester examinations.
After my second year, I also interned with PVR where I worked on offline marketing and partnerships. Again, a great set of learnings there.
Post my third year, I got a chance to intern at Twitter as the only ‘tern’ from India in 2019 in the Large Client Solutions team. I was invited to Twitter HQ in San Francisco for the intern orientation and spent my time having the time of my life during the internship.
How was the interview/application process for the internships?
My internship application stories are pretty interesting.
For Bobble, I walked straight into their office, and handed over my resume to the CEO himself, and requested him for an opportunity, and I got lucky!
For WeWork, I had reached out to the HR team via mail and after multiple follow-ups landed an interview and ultimately an opportunity to intern.
Same for PVR — reached out to the HR team and got in.
For Twitter, the story is very different.
I noticed an opening for the summer of 2019 in the Twitter careers page and applied for it. Got no reply. So I decided to find out who my hiring manager would be and reached out to her. After multiple emails to her, I didn’t get a reply — but as always, I wouldn’t stop trying.
Drawing inspiration from how testimonials help sell products, I decided to create a deck pitching myself with testimonials from my past managers. It worked!
I got a call from her, where she said the team was looking for people from management background (MBA students) and not from where I came. But, as luck would have it, I got an interview call.
The interviews were intense, and I was joined by IIM folks as interviewees. I was given case studies (I’d never done one before), asked about my interests, and the last round was completely about my love for solo trips and what I learned from them.
Within a few days, I got a call from a recruiter than I was selected and my joy knew no bounds getting to know that I was invited to Twitter HQ!
So yeah, I just got lucky!
What has been the transition to IdeaPanda been like?
So after my internship at Twitter, I started freelancing for them. In a while, I started exploring other companies as well and got really deep into freelancing. With advice and support from my manager at Twitter, I registered IdeaPanda.
My vision of IdeaPanda is to create a platform where people can draw inspiration, share ideas, and collaborate on them.
What would be your advice to aspiring interns?
Listen to your heart, always. If you are aspiring to get into your dream company, you have to be persistent — I remember applying to 200 companies and getting rejected from 150.
If you don’t have any experience in and are targeting non-tech roles, try putting activities you did in college on your resume — it really helps.
What sort of resources would you recommend?
Most of my learning has been on-the-job, so I didn’t really refer to content/resources majorly.
I often watch TED talks, Talks at Google during my free time. For reading, I prefer Medium, Business Standard, Bloomberg Quint, Adweek.
I’d recommend reading books by Ryan Holiday, they’ll surely teach you a lot.
You can reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter, will be happy to help!
If you have an internship story to share, feel free to reach out to us.
We will get back to you!
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