With mandatory internships for engineering students as a move to address unemployability issues, there is an urgent need to connect the colleges with the industry. The Minister for Human Resource Development, Mr. Prakash Javadekar, on 24th July 2017 announced that engineering students will need to do three  internships of four to eight weeks before graduation. Following this, Internshala, India’s leading internship and training portal, has opened up the college registration feature. Through this, a college can register all of its students on the Internshala platform in one go and provide them with internship opportunities as well as get regular updates on their internship selections.
The feature, which is free for colleges, has been in beta testing and ~1,200 students from 500 colleges have already found an internship through this initiative. With HRD Ministry’s announcement, the onus is now on the colleges to help their students find an internship and this feature aims to simplify the process for them.
Colleges including NIT Surat, NIT Kurukshetra, NIT Surathkal, NIT Bhopal, NIT Jalandhar, VIT Chennai, NMIMS Hyderabad, St. Xavier’s Kolkata, and Christ University Bangalore have already registered with Internshala using this feature. As a part of college registration feature, all students of a college would get their own accounts on Internshala through which they can apply to various internships. The Training and Placement Officer (T&P) can track the performance of the students and grant them NOC for the internships. The platform also provides live webinars on internship preparation to help the students before they apply for the internships.
Internshala was founded in 2010 and provides internship opportunities to over 2 million students registered with it. Students can find internships in a diverse range of fields including engineering, management, applied arts, science, law, design, hotel management, architecture, and so on. On April 27th of this year, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Internshala signed an MoU to facilitate internships for students of colleges under AICTE’s purview.
Sarvesh Agrawal, the founder and CEO of Internshala said, “The announcement by the HRD ministry is a welcome move for Engineering students across India. The experience and learning which comes from 3 internships would be immense and would easily help the students find a job once they complete their graduation. The Government of India has been focusing on improving the employability of our graduates and has made Skill Building a top national priority. In India, most graduates feel that it is difficult to find even one internship. At Internshala, for past 6 years, we have been debunking that myth and have built a culture of meaningful internships. Through the college registration feature, colleges all over India can help their students find quality internships for free. We hope that this feature aids the Engineering colleges in simplifying their internship search and us in achieving our vision of creating a world full of opportunities for every student.”
