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This question which is mentioned in the title comes up to me every day. I get emails of students that they want to do training in India’s most prestigious place i.e Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO). Today, I would like to throw some light on this area. But before that I want to mention some prerequisites required for applying anywhere for training or summer project.
The most important three things which make you a standout yourself is your ability to express your abilities
- CV/ Resume : People generally ignore the fact that when they are applying for any job or any internship, their CV or resume represents them, its their virtual identity.
It should have a well defined objective.
Brief details about your interests and what do you want to learn from that place during the course of internship.
It should contain a brief information about your academic details.
Extracurricular activities and any special achievements should be mentioned correctly
I generally dont emphasize on putting family details or personal details in CV.
You can put your current address, permanent address, contact number, valid email id thats it.
CV should be soft, crisp, easy to read as well as digest for the person who is reading it.
Note :(2nd year student should not worry that they dont have anything to write in their CV, whatever you are, be true to yourself , they will judge you on the basis of being from 2nd year only so dont Panic)
- Cover Letter/Email: This is the most important part of your application process, you can treat it as a letter of intent or statement of purpose.
In this one letter or email you have to tell about yourself in short in such a way that it impresses the person to download your CV and read that. I have seen most of the times student making silly errors while writing email please dont do that
Do’s while writing cover email
- Subject of the email should be clear. Most of the students dont even bother to write the subject, because of which email lands in the trashbox. Subject should be like for example “3rd year Biomedical Engineering student seeking summer internship at your esteemed organization “
- You should proof read your email before sending their should not be any grammatical mistakes
- Don’t spam the recipient by emailing again and again, email then wait for the reply for atleast 7 days. if you don’t get a reply send a reminder email. PLEASE DONT SPAM the inbox
- Clearly mention your contact details in the signature of the email
After that you have made a good Resume and cover letter, now seek recommendation of your professors. Generally in places like DRDO, email is filtered so their is a good chance that your email might not reach the professor.
Most of the times email addresses of the defence people are not disclosed on the web at that time these recomendations come in handy.
Till date I have seen most people get into DRDO, as they had good recommendations with them, but we should not lose heart as there is a other way around. it is a little bit harder but you have to be persistent and determined to get your summer training in DRDO.
STEP BY STEP summary for Applying Summer training in DRDO
- Update your Resume/CV
- Write a Good cover email, you can get examples from WEB ” How to write good cover letters or email”
- it is most important step, this step is the “research to get a research opportunity”. You need to get email id’s of the person to whom you have to apply
- Contact all the seniors through your college or alumni who had previously done their training or Final year project at DRDO to get the valid email ID’s
- Contact your professors in your college, if they know some one in DRDO to whom you can email your resume and cover letter
- If the above two steps, dont work out and you dont have anything, then you have to start your quest on your own. How to do that.
- First of all you need to search the Laboratory you want to do research, that you can get from the website of DRDO, see the research interests whether they match your research interests or not. Then there will be contact info of the director of that email. You can send the email to that director stating yourr requirement.
- If you are not able to get the email id’s through that step I have a walk through, Actually this method is used by me generally. I dont know how many of you know about it.
First thing is you need to find the name of the person you want to apply to. If you are able to find the name, 50% of the work is done. That name you can get from the projects being carried out by the research scientist
I will show you a snapshot
See now As you can see in the snapshot above , name of the people are mentioned along with the project. Now as we have got the names of the person to whom we have to apply to.
Now Search for the research papers published by these people on the google, you would be able to find the research publications of these people there on web.
Generally people give their contact email ID in the research papers for the reference, so now you can extract the email id of the person from there and email them your cover letter and email
if not then you have to be persistent in searching the email address from google.
Google is a very helpful tool in this case.
if you are not able to find the email id of any person then you can drop an email to me at Kushtripathi20006@gmail.com stating the researcher’s name and organization. I would try to get the contact information through my contacts.
you know this activity also shows your perseverance to find training, A person who can go to this extent to apply for summer training, it shows that person is really passionate to do something.
so if you follow these steps and apply them as I said you can get your summer training or research project in any institution of this country.
Just you should have the persistence and determination to apply for the training.
I would love to hear comments on this post
Please share this post with your friends.
If you need any help regarding making CV’s / Resumes/ Cover letter do email me , I would be happy to help you.
Website of DRDO– go to the laboratory page and search your interests
