Cheap Viagra, Summer Internship

This is the season of summer internship applications. In March-April, the inboxes of professors in top tier business schools in the country get flooded with e-mail from second year and third year students of engineering at IITs/NITs and other leading engineering institutes in the country.

The arrangement is good for both the parties. Many professors work on their research projects during the summer vacation when they are free from classroom teaching. They welcome the high-quality but inexpensive assistance the bright young men and women from the top engineering institutes provide. The students gain even more. Most of them are interested in doing an MBA after their engineering. A close association with a professor and an inside view of a top business school give them an edge when they compete for a place in these business schools.

But a large number of these smart engineering students never get a reply, not even an acknowledgement. What’s wrong? Instead of identifying the kind of professors they want to work with, customising their request to appeal to those individuals, and then e-mailing them individually, these students adopt the persuasion techniques of spammers who peddle cheap Viagra.

For spammers, a one percent response rate is more than enough because their e-mail goes to millions of people of all ages and colours all over the world. Secondly, their aim may not be to persuade you to buy cheap Viagra (or whatever) they claim to be selling but to get you to click on a dangerous link. Even if you don’t want the product or service they advertise, you may click on the link if they can arouse your curiosity. Their persuasion techniques are inappropriate for students interested in summer internship in an academic institution.

Here’s the body of an e-mail I received from an IIT student recently. It’s reproduced without any change except for dropping the names.

Respected Sir,

            I, [First name Second name], am second year undergraduate student at Indian Institute of Technology [Place name]. I am currently pursuing my B.Tech Degree in Mining Engineering. I have perused through your web page and found your field of working to be coinciding with the field of interest of mine and find it very interesting.

I appeal to you, to consider me for a research internship under you between first week of May to 30th June. I enclose herewith, my Curriculum Vitae. I firmly believe that your guidance would surely add to my excellence.

 Thanking You,

Yours Sincerely,

I am certain that this bright young man has not visited my website and has no idea what research I do. If he had, he would have referred to something that I am working on. While not wasting his time visiting any professor’s website he thinks he can persuade some of them to respond by making a general statement that is true of any professor who has a website and who does some research. They are violating the first principal of persuasion: know your target and frame your proposal to meet their expectations. If they get a positive response from a professor, it only means that the professor doesn’t care who gets to work as a summer intern for him.

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