Think projects, not internships.
Why projects matter more than internships for MBA aspirants.
What do I mean by a project?
A project is an act of creation. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, SpaceX, all started off as projects. Rather, I don’t know of any firm or successful career that didn’t start off like that.
When you start a project, you don’t really know how big or successful it is going to become. You have a hunch and you know what you can do next in it. But as you keep working and making one version after another, the fog starts clearing up and you become more and more confident of the path that you are pursuing.
Why not internships?
When our profile is dependent only on the work that others have given us, then we are leaving a lot to chance. We are not going that extra mile to explore different avenues and really going deep in them.
Especially nowadays, the quality of work in most internships is way below par. Most of the work involves promoting some product over social media and LinkedIn without actually understanding the needs of the target audience.
Very few internships provide an experience that the intern can talk about for even 5 minutes.
How do we create MBA relevant projects?
What are the different projects that you can initiate which can make your profile stronger in different fields? Let me tackle this one by one.
Strategy
Project 1: How does a Consultant day looks like?
Interview 5–10 consultants across different companies and ask them about their work day. What does their typical day look like? Some examples of projects they are working on. Then write an article or record a video and publish your findings through Medium or Vimeo.
Project 2: Launch a Consulting Case Study Competition in the University.
Reach out to 5–10 consultants and ask them to participate in a University wide case study competition. Promote the competition and get maximum participants in the event. If you need to charge a fees for evaluation of the submissions, you can do that also.
Marketing
- Project example 1: An in-depth analysis of the social media strategy of Swiggy and Zomato for Diwali 2020.
- Project example 1: Insights from “This is Marketing” by Seth Godin applied to marketing strategy of Indian startups.
Finance
- Project example 1: Insights from Google’s Annual Report for 2020 | Impact of the covid-crisis on Google’s business.
- Project example 1: Insights from “Valuation” by Aswath Damodaran applied to market capitalisation of Apple Inc.
What if everyone starts publishing? How would then I stand out?
A single project can tell the recruiter or the admission committee a lot about you. You ability to initiate something unique and deliver on it. Your understanding of the subject and the sector. The depth of your analysis would tell them about the rigour that you went through in writing and publishing the project. Your communication skills.
With each project, you can sharpen these skills and then reach those 2–3 brilliant projects that you can then highlight over everything else.
If I do it on my own, then where does the credibility of a brand come from?
Some brands like HUL create very structured internship and these can be a great learning experience for the students. It is highly recommended for anyone to try and get selected for such internships. Rather, creating your own portfolio of projects can be a really good way to get selected in such internships.
On the other hand, most students are not able to access such opportunities. They are too far and few in order to depend solely on them to build our profile.
If there is no barrier, then why doesn’t everyone do this?
The biggest barrier in our careers is our own mind, or as Steven Pressfield says, Resistance. This Resistance causes procrastination, self-doubt and perfectionism.
That’s why executing a project is difficult. There is no external deadline or pressure for us to publish.
Even right now, when you are reading this article, you may have a project in your mind. But to get it live, that’s a different ball game altogether.
How do I make it live, then?
Use versions. Make it live.
Instead of working on the perfect version, try to make the first version live today itself. You can keep editing and updating this version, but if this is your first project, you would not have the entire internet waiting with baited breath over your publication.
Add stakes
Add stakes to your deadlines. Use Beeminder.com or Stickk.com or a friend or colleague who won’t cut you any slack. Bet some amount on publishing your project by the set deadline and see the magic happen.
What if I publish a really bad project and they find it out?
This is the fear. Isn’t it. One, you are not going to work on any project that will be unethical or illegal or affect your professional life adversely.
Second, if you feel like keeping only your top projects on your profile, then you can archive anything that you don’t want seen.
However, having a portfolio of 31 projects and highlighting 3 out of them gives you much more credibility than have only the 3 highlighted projects.
Also, you are not a good judge of the quality of your projects. I keep visiting articles that I wrote months ago and become shocked at how good/bad the article was. At the time of writing, we cannot possibly know the quality of our writing.
Anything else?
Consistency is more important than one big push. If you commit (again, by adding stakes) to publishing something every Tuesday, very soon, you will start seeing a very strong portfolio of high quality projects.
It’s better to ship consistently rather than working on one idea for a long while. The latter very seldom sees light of the day.
Examples of successful online projects
Ramit Sethi’s www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com
Seth Godin’s blog. seths.blog
Seth has published a blog entry daily since 2002. Subsequently, he has over 6570 blog articles. It’s not magic, it’s maths. Check out his latest book https://seths.blog/thepractice/ in which he gives direction on having a creative practice.
Tim Ferriss’s podcast — The Tim Ferriss Show
Tim started his podcast as a few weeks experiment after being a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast. His initial few podcast episodes were with his close friends. It has been around 7 years now since he started. He has more than 100 million listeners right now. He has published a podcast every week since starting the podcast.
Srinivas Rao’s UnmistakableCreative Project
Srini started his amazing career by writing articles on Medium. This outlet to his creative energy brought him the opportunity to publish a book with Penguin and then subsequently he started the Unmistakable Creative project which has affected thousands, if not millions of creatives lives worldwide.
