Achievers’ Archive (Aditya Singh)
Interviewee: Aditya Singh, Production Engineering (2017–2021)
Former Summer Intern at ISWP (TATA Steel) and Current Six Month Intern at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratory
Internship Offer from Nestle India
Placed at ITC Limited
SIME: In which company have you been placed in and what’s the job description?
Aditya- Right now I am placed in ITC where my profile is GET (graduate engineering trainee) and I will be looking after their trade marketing and distribution that is supply chain basically from producer end to consumer end. In FMCG there is a lot of division maybe I will be handling the tobacco division. I guess supply chain management is one of the core papers of production engineering. I’m lucky that I got into the core company.
Right now I’m in a 6-month internship with ‘Dr. Reddy’ and it’s a manufacturing intern profile. I am in the biggest plant of Dr. Reddy CTO6 CTO (chemical technical operations) where you will make an API (active pharmaceutical ingredient). Right now CTO6 is manufacturing that, I guess there are around 18 production blocks(PB) which manufacture a different kind of APIs. I’m in PB15 that is COE (center of excellence) which is the highest-rated production block, and in that, we make API for heart disease. I’m looking after the complete batch monitoring along with yield Improvement.
SIME: How is this new transition in life is going for you? How do you manage your workload and social life?
Aditya- I have been a part of the Formula Student Team in BIT Mesra, also known as Team Srijan. Currently, I’m the President of that team. Right now my GPA is around 8.33 which is one of the best of the Production Engineering branch we have right now. Along with that I always wanted to be in other fields apart from academics. I was a student coordinator, I did a lot of activities and just want to convey that focus on your work and don’t give excuses. Everyone can manage their time and if I can then definitely you can do this too. It is not something new for me so I’m used to this. The transition is good for me and I’m enjoying that condition because from college student to an engineer like when you will go to plant you will be having a proper engineer feel. I’m enjoying the transition phase but the workload is very high but this is a part of life that means if you want to gain something you have to manage. Everyone is managing personal and professional life their way and you will have to manage it too. It will show your qualities so try from college life only because college life is the best part to start and learn those things because you need to cope up with that basic values and skills from early on.
SIME: How was your college life? Were you a part of any club or society in college and how did they help you?
Aditya- In the first year I was not associated with any of the clubs or society I was just focused on NDA but I couldn’t clear its interview of the last round. Before starting the 2nd year I joined Team Srijan, because I wanted to work somewhere so that I can learn and gain some experience. After some time I joined as a student coordinator with SARC ( student alumni relation cell) and a few days back I took an interview of 35 k18 people for the position of student coordinator. There is a rule if you are the student coordinator of SARC you cannot be the student coordinator at T&P cell but I was the only one who was selected for the interview round of student coordinator also. If we work for the betterment of college then more companies will come to college that’s how my college life started and even though I am in my final year I’m working for my college only by taking interviews and I always hope to make a positive contribution to my alma mater. Apart from Team Srijan, I am also working as the Vice President of SIME, BIT Mesra.
SIME: Since you appeared in the online recruitment process. How was this new experience? According to you, which one is more beneficial for students?
Aditya — I think the online experience is a mixed one. At the starting of any process, I was feeling that what will happen if there would be some problems with my network or electricity. So these are the things I was worried about and these things are not in your control. The ITC process started on the 17th February where we had an aptitude round and then on the 18th we had GD followed by the 1st round of interviews and on the 20th 2nd round of interviews. Before the start of every round, they said every round is an elimination round and I was feeling like what if my internet would stop working and during GD it happened all of the sudden that my light had gone and because of not having any backup power I was kicked out from zoom meeting but since I had already spoken a lot so it didn’t hamper my result and I cleared that then I just joined within a minute with my phone.
Overall it was good it didn’t hamper a lot but suppose this thing could happen with me in starting only then the person would have rejected me on that point. So these are the things which are not in your control and I guess this is the bad part of online recruitment that every person is not at some location with the same facilities. At the same time, you can say the good parts are also that if you are going for an interview you need a comfort zone and in your home, you are in your comfort zone so you don’t need to panic. I always wanted to be in core so I’m in the core, so don’t worry about that profile that’s all!
SIME: How one can prepare for internships and what role it plays in a placement process? Where did you pursue your internship? Whether doing many training and internships helps during placement?
Aditya- I got a job in one of the biggest company ITC but the whole interview was on my internship only, meaning that they have asked me entirely based on my internship, and except 2–3 technical questions they didn’t ask me any questions from my paper so you can guess the focus and attention they gave to the internship. But the only thing is that it should be a legitimate internship. When you will get a project you need to work for a motive and reason and you will solve any technical problem only then they will consider that as an internship. Fortunately, I got an internship in my 3rd year only which was a summer internship through college only and that was the starting moment for me. My internship project was on ‘Roller bearing failure and their analysis’.
Production Engineering is common to every industry because it forms the backbone of any particular industry. Because of this as production Engineers, we can associate with any and every industry. Try to work on your internships and be very clear about those areas. The best thing you can do is to present the internship. The core people generally don’t ask you anything about coding. In case you don’t have any internship worth presenting then the people will move on to your subjects and ask you about your technical papers. It is best to avoid that since in technical papers there is no limit on the area or topic of questions.
SIME: What are the projects and competitions that you have worked/participated in during your college years and how they helped in your placement and internship?
Aditya — Since I’m not interested in engineering research papers I didn’t do any project under any of my professors. I am interested in the core part but not in the research part because research is something else and the core is totally different and I’m interested in the core part. We participated in the Coimbatore “Formula Bharat” which is the national competition for all the formula student teams in India.
In the current season of 2020–21, Team Srijan has won a medal for Business Innovative Idea. I have participated in those competitions through team Srijan only but I didn’t do any kind of project under any professor.
SIME: What was the selection procedure for your company? Is there any particular advice you would like to give your juniors while preparing for PI?
Aditya — I got two internships and placement offers that which company you want in the generalized way which is the initial shortlisting that every company does and sometimes it is based on GPA only. Initial shortlisting is based on GPA or sometimes they will ask you for a resume. Most of the companies go with GPA only, I had applied for Axis Bank, and there I was not able to clear the initial shortlisting round. Why? Because they remove all the people whose GPA is less than 8.5 GPA so sometimes these things can also happen but in most of the cases you can easily clear that initial shortlisting round. Then you can have either aptitude round or technical round, in DRL I had technical round and in ITC I had aptitude round so it depends upon company to the company what they want but mostly either aptitude or technical or mixed so work on both as that will help you. Then some of the companies will take GD also and some will not but most core companies will take GD. Then usually an interview takes place which again varies with companies. At DRL they took a mixed interview once and in ITC they took a mixed interview 2 times 1st HR + technical then again HR+ technical which went around 30–35 min for me and for everyone else it was around 15 only. HR is ok because you can easily handle people that what HR people are looking at it but technical unit to prepare either it is internship or core and they are going to ask you a lot of questions because when you go to the practical field they will ask you theory questions and there you need to understand the relation between theoretical and practical.
One more important thing is that the interview is only in your hands, they will ask you questions regarding only what you say, so to speak on the topic where you have good knowledge, then can you easily clear the interview. I guess this is from my practical experience that you should just speak with ease in case of an interview.
SIME: Apart from CGPA, what other skills one should incur to make a strong CV/Resume?
Aditya — If you want to impress your HR then you don’t need to put skills just write those like what I did in Pantheon and Bitotsav he/she shall be happy but if you want to impress your technical people just put some good project either 1,2,3 or if you have one project only they will ask you from them so just try to convince them as much as you can. They will be more than happy and HR people will be happy with all your extracurricular activities that this person is capable of doing like team management and leadership management etc. If you want to ace the questions of the technical people you must have a proper grip of your papers and if you talk about consultancy you should have a proper grip on consultancy systems. They will not look at your resume, they will go through that and point out some points from that. So if you want to have a positive influence on the technical people, try to work on projects and if you want to Impress your HR, work on extracurricular activities.
SIME: Do you have any plans for further studies or giving competitive exams?
Aditya — I don’t want to stop here right now and I have been thinking that first I will work for 1 or 2 years and then I want to have a degree in supply chain MS not from India but preferably outside India then again work for 3–4 years then do MBA and then finally settle in life. One of my seniors already did that and he is pursuing his MBA from Cambridge and I also want to achieve that.
SIME: A general advice you would like to give to your juniors?
Aditya- Don’t give excuses rather work on yourself. Your hard work never goes to waste. Luck is a big factor in placement and I accept that sometimes things don’t go the way you have thought of but if you have done proper research and hard work then it never goes to waste. Work on yourself, that’s the best you can do, nothing is in your control, what you can control is your mindset, motivation, effort. Just work on that, trust me you can get whatever you want but try to avoid giving excuses
