Unnatee Pawar - Unacademy

Hola! I am Unnatee Pawar, a third-year student in the Department of Chemical Engineering. I am from Nashik. I am writing about my little journey about how I got my internship. If you feel confused about where to apply and where you would land up… Don’t worry! Most of us go through the same:

and of course, you cannot have a good idea of which field you should choose for an internship in the first two years of insti life. But trust me, something good is waiting for you :P

Initially, I was confused about what profiles I should target for the intern season. Hence I signed almost every IAF that I could stretch my skillsets to! But I did not get shortlisted for any firm other than HUL (Supply Chain), for which I could not make it through the screening test. After that, I just kept appearing for the coding or aptitude tests the companies were taking. As coding was never my preference, I did not consider preparing specifically for them.
Though I was initially confused about the core field, I applied for Piramal and Dr.Reddy’s. I did not get shortlisted for Piramal but did reach the second last round for Dr.Reddy’s, which was an interview round. Again, I did not get selected there. I was waiting for a good profile that could match my interests.
I even tried for some finance profiles but being someone who was not well versed with the terminologies or any of the concepts; I could not get into any. So, two months passed, and I was still unsure which profile I should target and how to proceed. In the meanwhile, I also thought of apping for companies or some of the easy-to-hit firms. That period was confusing, and I was just signing every IAF coming my way.

Some Gyaan

One thing I would like to mention here is to keep your hopes and confidence high because the process could stress you out if you are not getting shortlisted or selected anywhere. You should always keep in mind that the process might get challenging to cope with, but you have come sooo far from where you were two years ago, which means you are capable of a lot, and you just have to wait a little for the perfect opportunity to come :)
After two months had passed, Unacademy came to recruit interns at IITs for the first time, and the profiles provided were Associate Product Manager (APM) and Associate Product Designer (APD). Though I had good experience in designing through my design PORs (during my second year: Institute Design Convener, ICC; and during my third year: Design Nominee, UGAC); I decided to apply for product manager because I had a little experience with it through my previous internship and project.
Some details about my previous experiences:
During my second year, I completed a course project for DE414: Innovation by Design, where I learned about product creation through a systematic methodology using design thinking and design principles. Subsequently, in the second year of summer, I completed an internship in a small-scale firm, ‘Zebrathoughts,’ as a product developer. I learned a lot about the procedure for developing a product, from a problem statement to a solution with various iterations. I thoroughly enjoyed this entire process, and because of this, I decided to apply for the APM role at Unacademy. And it turned out to be the best decision :P

The selection process for Unacademy was reasonably straightforward: Resume shortlisting, Interview round-I (Technical), and Interview round II (HR).
The interview round-I shortlist was out a day before the interview schedule, so I had no time to prepare for the interview, but I worked well on knowing everything on my resume. For the first round, I was asked some standard set of questions like introduction and interests. I was also asked to work on two problem statements. The interviewer was mainly assessing my thought process; he kept tweaking the questions to understand if I was clear on my thoughts or am I changing them according to his response. I was also asked about my POR of Design Nominee and my work until then. The interview was focused on finding the level of problem-solving ability and creative thinking. After this, there was a shortlist for round 2 of the interview procedure, which was all about HR questions.
Finally, it was my day :P I got selected for the APM role at Unacademy!

My internship was completely virtual because of some restrictions but having a WFH intern also had some of its perks. I did not have any fixed amount of time commitment to be given; the flexible hours also helped me explore other things. The only sad part of a WFH intern is a lack of good communication between our team members and other co-interns. Still, the team was accommodating, and they guided me well even though it was difficult to communicate everything effectively in a virtual setting.
Officially, the intern started on 6th May 22, when I was given an overview of my project. The project was to create the feature developer needs for one of the software that Unacademy is building. Right from the first week of my internship, I had to do a lot of research, from understanding the context to understanding the user requirements. The learning curve in my internship was getting steeper as time passed. I got to interact with many team members and learn new perspectives. The fun about being in PM is that you see the problem statement differently every time you go through it after a certain amount of research. Until my midterm review, I was a little confused about my working strategy and goals, but the review cleared up everything, after which the path got better visibility.
The last two weeks of my internship were a bit hectic, which really shaped my skills as a PM, and I learned a lot about the role and responsibilities of a PM.

Takeaways

Summing up, it was a great experience working as an APM at Unacademy; the learnings were amazing, and now I have a better idea about the role and my abilities(!)
At last, All the best for the internship season, and it WILL surely turn out to be great for you. Get help from your peers, seniors, or anyone you feel would be the best person to give good advice. In my case, luckily, I have a very supportive and helpful set of humans (my friends) who never let me go through this alone, and they helped me to pass through this challenging time :)

Again, ALL THE BEST, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions! Goodbye 🐾