Internships are a very important part of engineering studies. They give you the opportunity to apply your learnings in real life cases and get some hands-on experience. However, with the number of engineering students increasing every year, getting an internship is becoming more and more difficult. Are you one of them who is looking for an internship but have not got one? Then this article will help you.
We, at Bolt IoT, get a large number of applications for Internships every year and we select a few students to intern with us. All our internships are typically paid internships which give a stipend to the selected students. Over the years I have realised the common mistakes that students make when they apply for the internship and keeping this in mind, I have written this post which will tell you how you can get an internship and what points you need to keep in mind when you apply.
Why take up an internship in IoT and ML?
- Work in the fast-growing field of Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning (ML): With 50 billion connected devices and a $19 Trillion industry size by 2020, IoT has become the requirement of every industry. International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that spending on ML will grow from $12B in 2017 to $57.6B by 2021. This presents a huge opportunity for engineering students.
- Work on the excellent & state of the art technology and business processes: that will help in evolving one’s overall business perspective and market understanding.
- Grow professionally: Most of the internships will give you a dedicated mentor to guide you during the internship. You can ask questions, clarify your doubts from your mentor to help you grow professionally.
- Increase your chance of getting a high paying job: Doing one or two internships during your engineering studies will increase your chance of getting a job in the field of IoT or ML by many folds. In fact, many companies with high paying job offers have at least one internship in the relevant field as a minimum requirement for hiring.
What do companies consider while selecting students for internships?
- Subject knowledge: In my opinion, it is obvious that companies expect you to have knowledge of the subject. i.e. IoT and ML. Companies pay you during the internship and hence obviously they expect you to give returns on the stipend they pay so knowledge of the relevant concepts of hardware, programming language, cloud computing etc. is a must.
- Hands-on project experience: Just the theoretical knowledge of the concepts taught in college is not enough. This will not help you to build real-life projects and applications. It is an idea that you have to build at least 4-5 projects on the topics of IoT and ML before you apply for an internship.
- A well-written CV with relevant points: Here are a few points to keep in mind when you write a CV:
- Ideally, keep the CV not longer than 1 page.
- Mention your marks of 10th, 12th and engineering.
- Add links to your projects in CV e.g. Github, YouTube videos of the project, project documentation etc. These could be any projects that you built on your own or built as part of any training.
- Mention any training that you have completed on the relevant subjects along with the date of completion.
- Your skill set should match the companies requirement. Typically the knowledge of HTML, Javascript, Python, Cloud Computing, Hardware (WiFi, GSM Modules) etc is preferred in the fields of IoT and ML.
- Attach your CV in PDF format. Any other formats like .doc or .docx or .key etc might mess up the formatting when opened in a different version or a different software or a different OS.
What if you don't have the knowledge of IoT and ML? or What if you have never built an IoT or ML project in the past?
Based on some of the common requirements I have shared above, you might have these points in your mind. That's a fair enough keeping in mind that most of our college education does not cover the latest topics like IoT and ML.
To solve this, I suggest you take up training on IoT and ML that will teach you the necessary concepts. Make sure that the training also includes hands-on industrial projects. Many companies in India offer such training.
We at Bolt IoT also offer an IoT and ML training which will be an ideal choice for you. If interested, I would highly recommend you to visit shop.boltiot.com now and know more about the training.
