Why millennials are keen on Sabre’s internship program at Bangalore

With every passing year, enthusiastic and energetic members of Generation Y are taking their first steps to choose the best of the career paths. This group of individuals is characterized by their tech savvy-ness, enhanced ability to multitask, social media connections, and competitive  nature. This generation also comes with certain expectations from a career. Continuous learning and development, opportunity to work flexible hours, exposure to cutting edge technologies and working on real time projects and a friendly environment, are some of the key traits that millennials enjoy the most. In fact, statistics indicate that other than salaries, the relative degree of importance when choosing a job, a millennial seeks a good work life balance – about 16.8%, followed by opportunities to grow and flexible work hours. Every year Sabre visits a number of reputed universities in India to offer a six months internship program. This July, the Bangalore development centre on boarded its largest number of millennials as interns – about 44 students and it was the perfect time to give them an experience of what it means to be a part of the Sabre ecosystem. To begin with, we tailored the usual induction process and organized a fun-filled ‘Interns Day.’ Millennials want transparency and they value honesty. So who could be better to introduce them to the company than vice president and managing director, Shail Maniar. In kicking off the event, he pointed to the growth in applicants:

“This year, we have the largest number of interns joining us ever! It’s another remarkable milestone in our growth story. I am glad to see that students find value and pride in working with us.”

Maniar also emphasized the importance of working on real time projects and the exposure Sabre offers to any student as an intern at the site. The intern experience in Bangalore During the program, the interns will be involved in various projects and would gain experience in product development, quality testing and agile practices. While being at Sabre means having hands on experience with the latest technologies, the internship program is also designed to offer mentorships and opportunities to learn and develop interests. A usual norm is to treat an intern as a peer, grant responsibilities, and set expectations to allow them to experience multiple facets of their role. A work plan is created and seniors support as mentors to help them showcase concrete results at the end of the program.  It can all seem a little overwhelming, so to give them a clear picture, interns were encouraged to interact with some of the senior leaders and employees who joined the company post an internship program. Knowing that millennials look for ways to improve their leadership skills – we introduced the group to Sabre’s Young Professional Council (YPC) that undertakes various mentoring and leadership initiatives. They also help employees build around their off-work capabilities with sports events, fun activities, learning sessions and initiatives that aim at giving back to society. According to talent acquisition manager, Shreedevi Roogi, “At Sabre, we offer an environment that enables our interns to look beyond work and develop the other side of you – be it sports, social work, health training, music, art forms and more. We look forward to all the young engineers harnessing their skills and utilizing this opportunity to build a strong foundation – right at the beginning of their career.” To give the interns a sense of our core values ‘collaboration and teamwork’ and ‘creativity and innovation’ two team building activities were organized. The ‘Bingo’ icebreaker session –exploring common traits with another person in the group, allowed everyone to know each other beyond the usual introductions. Creativity kicked off and enthusiasm went to higher levels at the end of the first activity and interns were already gearing up for another round of excitement. This time, each one was asked to individually pick their dream destination, form groups and find an optimal route to their destinations together. The result was the construction of a lively chain of imaginative stories that involved their expedition and meetings fellow team members along their way. Everyone appreciated the opportunity to collaborate, share stories, discuss ideas and get to know each other more. “The icebreaker sessions were fun and relaxing. I got to know a lot about the company and my co-interns with whom I will be spending the rest of my six months here,” Parakala Sankarabala Sankalp, an intern with Airline Solutions said. As a part of our initiative to develop and nurture the millennial community Sabre incubated IGDTUW Quality Centre of Excellence at the all women university in Delhi. Over the last six years, 129 interns have joined Sabre as full time employees and have made successful careers. If you are interested in being a part of our eco-system in Bangalore write to joinusblr@sabre.com.