MY GREAT INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE

Many have spoken or written about the importance of having an internship. This could be during your undergraduate degree programme or upon completion, prior the mandatory national service in Nigeria. It could also come during your post-graduate studies. The bottom line is you don’t remain the same after a great internship experience like mine.

I did mine in several places but the one I had in one of the Big 4 firm is memorable. It was a complete learning experience in the Nigerian advisory arm.

Many might complain of the usual difficulty in getting this internship experience, but there are several strategies that could be employed. One is offering decent effort for little or no pay especially if it gives you core exposure. Another is working your way through top staff and mentors. For this option, excellent grades and good recommendations could come in handy. Targeting well structured internship programmes is another route. Mine was the pilot phase of an elite internship programme. One that affected my life positively.

My internship team was unusual in that the management combined about ten very brilliant and diverse set of young Nigerians. We had an engineering grad, accounting undergrads, MBA interns, finance persons and even a hydro-geologist on the team. We were pulled from federal schools, private universities, foreign undergrad programs and an European Post-graduate institution. Imagine the power in the room!

I earnestly looked forward to a different experience every day. From the early morning discussions over a cup of coffee, after reading the national dailies, to the brainstorming sessions, it was blissful. The access to Managers, Senior Managers, Directors and Partners made the experience one of a lifetime.

We were commissioned to work on a special project where we had to sell some states to investors. The task involved many facets that we had to handle them one after the other based on the project schedule. Ordinarily, other interns were in other arms/units where they were engaged in various tasks, but ours was an elite task which Senior Associates would find difficult, even with their wealth of experience. Worst, we were given ten weeks without training. We learnt everything and even more on the job.

Research was one thing I can say we did. There was a time I downloaded materials worth 2 Gb in a day! We had to support each notion with solid facts; our arguments were based on what the states had and the efforts of the various governments. Getting data was difficult, so we had to be innovative and experimental.

An example, for one of the states, we contacted over 100 small real estate firms, to get the rent for certain areas of the state as we couldn’t find recent data online. Since the primary research had limitations, we drew a map of the state and used different colours to show the various bands of rent required just to give an idea. In fact for each report we submitted, we almost always had up to seven different copies as we experimented with different ideas. We could meet a Manager and we would agree on one point, then other Managers would strike it out. In fact, it was easier to deal with Partners and Directors than to deal with Managers. It was our final decision to make at the end of the day.

We made presentations of work done every fortnight to different people. For each sub-sector, we had to run our ideas through subject matter experts, especially when we were doing industry risks and rewards index. It was just intense, all-through.

I had been in various teams but that gathering of raw talents was out of this world. We didn’t just do the job, we practically gave our lives. The effort I threw in then still helps me in my personal business now as I still give over 100 hours every week. Everything we were seeing on television or reading in the papers, we were linking back to the work. Posting data and double-checking; analyzing and re-analyzing; getting our graphics and pictures right. Aha, graphics! Summarily, even if you have great content, people, your slides must be very fine!

The firm has colours they prefer, so we spent hours experimenting with the best graphic element that suited that particular concept, after suffering to finally agree on the content. The back and forth was out of this world. It had to be perfect!

I can’t remember the number of times I slept still battling that we should have used a red circle instead of the green square we settled for. We were very pictorial. Instead of just writing say, Abuja is in Nigeria for example. We would show the map of Africa, highlight Nigeria, then show Abuja’s map or from the map of Africa, we would just show Abuja while adding the Nigerian flag by the side. My point is we played with many ideas. Imagine leaving creative youths locked in a room, you need to see our final work!

After the programme, we were better for it and even rewarded with a three-course meal in a high-end restaurant on the Island by the Managing Partner of the project.

Cheers to all members of the Pilot Phase of that Advisory Internship. We did the impossible!

IMAGE CREDIT: Forbes.com

See also: HOW INTERNSHIP WITH KPMG CHANGED MY CAREER ORIENTATION