Focus on technology
INTERN AND CO-OP OPPORTUNITIES FOR IT STUDENTS

IT internships can lead to real job offers

Interns with good grades, initiative and work experience land solid jobs in IT. Vanguard's Melinda Smith: "I let them know I wanted to stay on with the company"

By Abbi Perets
Contributing Editor

You've studied hard and almost finished your IT degree. You know a lot. But to get a real job - the kind that offers a steady paycheck - knowledge alone is rarely enough.

Hiring managers see plenty of smart, highly qualified candidates for every open IT position. But what they look for is real world experience, to know that a candidate will show up for work properly dressed, on time and with a good attitude. They also want to feel confident that a new hire will fit into the corporate culture.

One of the best ways to prove that you can do those things is to go out and, well, do them. You can get the real world experience you need - and reap major side benefits as well - with an IT internship.

Would you like Java with that coffee?
The HR pros and IT interns told us that interns today do hands-on work in their field from day one.

Cheryl Wilson.

"Our interns participate in team meetings, have their own work to complete, meet with clients and are invited to department meetings and events," says Cheryl Wilson, IS/IT staffing specialist at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN). She brings in about thirty IT interns each summer, mostly to work on programming projects. "We involve students in the actual day-to-day duties of their departments."

At the Vanguard Group (Malvern, PA), senior HR manager Dawn Lindberg says her ten week program brings in about twenty students in several different IT areas. "Our internship program is highly structured," she says. "The group comes in as a class. They work together, network together, and present a class project in addition to their other assignments - programming, hardware, Web services or another technical area - from their supervisors."

Ensuring diversity
The companies we spoke to agreed that there are diverse candidates ready to fill their open slots. "It's a major benefit of the industry," says Lindberg. "IT students are naturally diverse." Nonetheless, companies connect with on-campus affinity groups and most are well represented at minority job fairs.

"Our Principal Scholars program targets minority students," says Nu Huynh, diversity recruiter with the Principal Financial Group (Des Moines, IA). "We actively seek out minority students with majors related to our business needs. Because of the program, we've been able to attract and retain minority students, adding to the diversity at The Principal. This is one of several reasons why most people are pleasantly surprised by the diversity they find at a financial firm in central Iowa."

Read on to see what internships have given these talented IT students - and what they've done for their companies in return.

Vanguard Group's Melinda Smith says, "If I don't have the skills I need, I'll find a way to get them."

Vanguard Group's Melinda Smith: internship led to a full-time job
"I'm not a typical student," says Melinda Smith. "I was a stay-at-home mom when my three daughters were young. I had an associates degree in computers. Then I got divorced and went back to school. It took nine years to finish my degree."

After nearly a decade of hard work, Smith graduated from Temple University (Philadelphia, PA) in February 2003 with a BS in computer and information sciences.

"As a kid and when I was in high school, I always loved seeing how things work," says Smith. "Computers and programming were a natural extension of that interest."

In the spring of 2002, with her degree finally in sight, Smith attended a Temple job fair hoping to find an internship. As in previous years, the lines around the booth for the Vanguard Group (Malvern, PA) were long. She figured they must have something worth waiting for. "That's the only thing I knew about the company," she recalls. "They always had the longest lines at our career fairs. Everyone wanted to be a part of that company."

She handed in her resume and was called back for an interview with two managers. "I was told that the internship would involve Unix and VB programming - skills I had learned in college. They liked my experience in these areas and said they were important for the work I would do if I were hired," recalls Smith. A few weeks later, she was chosen for one of Vanguard Group's fifty internship slots.

Smith landed her interview, she says, because she was honest about her skills. "Don't say you can do something if you can't. Most interviewers ask some very technical questions. If you can't answer something you've just claimed you know, you're already out of the running."

When Smith started her internship, she quickly learned that the company had high expectations for its interns. "I started working immediately on the applications they create and support. I never sat around waiting for instructions or watching someone else work," she says.

As in school, says Smith, she has opportunities for learning on the job. "What I noticed from the beginning is that it's fine - even encouraged - to ask questions. Vanguard provides a lot of training. If I'm asked to do something and I don't know how, plenty of people are willing to show me. I can even go to senior people and ask questions, because everyone here is very open to helping, clarifying needs and working to make things better."

During her internship, Smith maintained a positive attitude. "I let them know I wanted to stay on with the company," she says. "For me, it's all about determination and a can-do attitude. If I have the skills to do the job, I'll get the job done. If I don't have the skills I need, I'll find a way to get them," she says.

Near the end of her internship, Smith was asked to work part time until graduation; now she's a full-time information systems engineer with the company. Her internship, she says, was "absolutely instrumental" in getting the job.

"The internship was the key - it's the way to get inside a company and get a heads-up on everyone else," she says. "Since you're right in there working, you can decide if this is what you really want to do. And your employer will usually cut you some slack when you're an intern. If you contribute and do your best, they'll want you to stay."

In her current position, Smith works on the applications that produce Vanguard Group's internal quarterly reports. "We use this application to support our business. We can keep track of people who request investing kits. It gives us a way to effectively follow up with them," she says. "My job is to make it 'friendly' for the Vanguard users."

A flexible schedule helped Smith shift from college student to full-time worker. She can adjust her hours so that she is home with her children when school ends.

On a typical day, Smith finds herself "all over the place." She starts at her desk going through e-mail and reviewing tasks. Because she works on several applications at once, she generally has projects in different phases of the life cycle. "Sometimes I program, sometimes I modify existing applications or work on an analysis for a new project."

Her department is very team oriented, so Smith also spends time meeting with co-workers and collaborating on group projects. Most of her work is done in VB, Unix and Java, says Smith, but she has also had a chance to do some mainframe work.

"The company encourages friendliness and openness. It's a nice place to work - a supportive, professional environment. Networking is big around here. IT really offers me the best of both worlds: I get to program, but I still have time to work with people," she says.

An internship at Convergys helped Brian Sejas upgrade his job goals.

Brian Sejas of Convergys likes the technical side
High school gave Brian Sejas his first introduction to computers. "I took a programming class and discovered that I really liked the technical side of things," he says.

When Sejas, who grew up in Dayton, OH, enrolled at Miami University (Oxford, OH), he chose to major in management information systems. He earned his degree in 2003.

During his junior year, Sejas first heard about the summer intern program at Convergys, a billing, employee-care and customer-care services company, headquartered in Cincinnati, OH.

"I went to a career fair," he says. "I spoke with a recruiter, handed in my resume and figured I'd never hear from them again." But Sejas got a phone call from Convergys a few weeks later. After a phone interview, he was offered a spot in the Convergys summer intern program.

Heather Gagnier.

The program focuses mainly on IT, says Heather Gagnier, technology recruiter. Most students stay for about three months. "Of our forty or so interns each year, only about five are not in IT," she says.

After all the students arrive, they attend an "Introduction to Convergys" seminar. "The seminar is designed to acclimate them to the corporate culture," she says. "And we schedule some activities for the interns, including a diversity presentation, sports events, lunches with executives and a Convergys Jeopardy game."

To make sure that the company gets a diverse group of intern applicants, Convergys recruits heavily through Inroads and attends minority career fairs sponsored by groups like Black Data Processing Associates. In addition, when Convergys reps go to college campuses, they seek out minority groups and activities.

From the start of his internship, Sejas was doing hands-on work. "I was updating and creating Perl scripts and working with our production support teams. It was definitely a taste of what 'real work' is like, because I was working with 'real workers,'" he says.

Most of his assignments came from one manager, but Sejas worked with everyone on his team. "I worked closely with five or six people - teamwork is a big part of the culture here," he says. He also went to team meetings, although he wasn't required to attend all of them. "The few that I sat in on were mostly about project implementation," he says.

"I knew I wanted to work for Convergys, and I knew they wanted to hire former interns, but nothing was guaranteed," says Sejas. "It wasn't until December or January of my senior year that I started talking with the company about full-time employment."

His conversations with Convergys were less stressful than talks he had with other companies, says Sejas, because "I knew what the company was like, and I was familiar with the people I was talking to." He felt confident during the interviews, even though he had never worked with the manager who interviewed him. "It was just a more comfortable situation," he says. "I knew I had the right experience to work there."

"Our goal is to hire every intern who does a good job," says Gagnier. "This year, for example, twenty of the interns graduated. Some found jobs with other companies, but only two who wanted jobs here weren't offered positions."

Sejas took a position as associate programmer/analyst and began working full time after graduation. The difference between interning and working full time, Sejas says, is that he now does more teamwork. "I work closely with two team members, and I'm involved in weekly staff meetings," he reports. He also does more product testing and has greater responsibility. But he stays in touch with his internship team, even though he no longer does as much with them.

SBC's Jason Walker: "I love using technology to push business forward."

Jason Walker of SBC: combining tech and analytical skills
Jason Walker knows the advantages that internships can provide. The Houston, TX native has been active in Inroads since 1999, when he was a summer DBA intern at Bank of America in Dallas, TX. Later, Inroads helped him secure a tech support internship with a telecom company, and last summer he joined the student management program (SMP) at telco SBC (Richardson, TX). SMP is the company's intern program. It offers opportunities in both IT and network engineering.

Inroads, Walker says, is partly responsible for his success. "This program helps minorities learn the skill sets we need in corporate America," he says. Through Inroads, Walker says, he sharpened tech skills, explored leadership roles and gained project management experience.

What he learned seems to be paying off: Walker is extremely active in the group's alumni association and was recently nominated for Alumni of the Year.

Walker's interest in technology goes back to high school, he says. "Technology is constantly changing. I was fascinated by technology - how powerful it was, how much you can accomplish with the right tools. I thought it would be exciting to work as a programmer and have some control over how the technology works."

He attended the University of Texas at Dallas because of the opportunities the location presented. "UT Dallas is in the 'IT corridor' along with SBC and other high tech companies. The school has a reputation for graduating some of the best and brightest technology professionals," he says. "It gave me that extra edge right away." He graduated in May 2003 with a BS in business administration and a concentration in managing information systems, then started working on his MBA.

"I wanted a way to combine technical and analytical skills," says Walker. "I love using technology to push business forward."

Because Walker participated in SBC's SMP, he came on board as a manager; his official title is associate analyst with the company's centralized development team. He doesn't have any direct reports yet, but he's expected to show initiative and handle his own projects with little assistance.

"I started out with ten projects. I've completed five already," he says. "When I first came here last summer, I designed an internal website for my department - the company's first departmental website. I presented it to some of the company executives and they loved it," he recalls. "That's the kind of drive they want me to have."

He recently developed a working prototype, in the form of a schematic diagram, to help the company manage its data flow operations. "Misdirected calls are obviously a huge problem for a telco," he explains. "The data flow diagrams I created are one tool that can help SBC solve those problems."

The diversity at SBC is a key factor in Walker's positive feeling about the company, he says. "It's a friendly company with people of all backgrounds working together towards a common goal. I love the company's values. I was so happy when they wanted to bring me on full time."

As an intern, Javier Lozano had deadlines to meet and people who depended on his work getting done.

Principal Scholars Program gives Javier Lozano a head start
Javier Lozano remembers when his uncle left Mexico and settled in Dennison, IA in the 1960s. He encouraged Lozano's family, who lived in Monterey, Mexico, to join him. The family eventually moved to the U.S. in 1992 despite the fact that none of them knew English.

In the U.S. Lozano had a chance to work on computers in school. "I was always interested in technology, but we didn't have access to computers in Mexico," he says.

Stateside, Lozano used an Apple IIe at school, and his parents scraped together the money to buy a Packard Bell machine from Wal-Mart. "I started learning keyboarding and basic programming, and my addiction just grew from there," he says.

Lozano knew that his parents were prepared to sacrifice so that he and his younger brother could attend college, but that challenge was solved by a program sponsored by Principal Financial Group (Des Moines, IA).

In high school, Lozano heard about the Principal Scholars program, which offers graduating minority seniors a full scholarship to a four-year state college, plus three years of internship experience. He applied, was accepted and enrolled at Iowa State University (Ames, IA).

Lozano spent his first two summers interning at Principal as a Web programmer in the company's retirement and business services group. The third summer, he worked in the IS department to get a feel for Principal's centralized IT services.

"I spent all three summers doing IT work. From the start, I had deadlines to meet and people who depended on my work getting done," says Lozano. "In fact, my first summer here, I couldn't complete one of my projects because of some security and IT issues. I asked the lead developer if I could work on it, even without pay, during the school year. In the end, I wound up getting a part-time paid position and finishing my project."

One of the most valuable aspects of his internships, Lozano says, was the chance to see what developers actually did in the field. "Professors are often out of the workforce and might not be as current as someone who uses the technology daily," he says. "I think that experience makes me much more marketable. And it raised my own expectations of myself."

In 2003, Lozano graduated with his BS in computer science and began working full time as an IT applications analyst on a team of about twenty-five people.

"Mornings usually start with a short team meeting, then I'll do some programming on my own or with help when I need it. I also get documents that I need to review." He sometimes takes work home, "mostly because I'm new to the department and I'm still getting up to speed on some projects."

Lozano works in a variety of languages and development environments including Java, C++, Cobol and C#. "Some people might hear Cobol and say, 'Oh, that's not what I want,' but I think it's important to look beyond that," he says. "For me, working here is about creating and putting my personal touch on a product that people use daily."

Guarav Jain of Mayo Clinic sees interning as a way to learn about different areas.

Guarav Jain, Mayo Clinic: improving patient care with technology
"Games attracted me," says Guarav Jain. "I really liked using computers to play games." But the nineteen-year-old has a serious side - he's already finished college and is working full time at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN).

Jain came to Rochester from Punjab, India in 1995 with his father. He wasted no time mastering American accents (he already had a strong background in English) and jumped into schoolwork. "I used a Mac to do my homework - even the spellchecker fascinated me," he says. "I loved seeing how technology helped me do things faster, with less effort."

Jain took the option offered in Minnesota to combine his junior and senior years of high school with his freshman and sophomore years of college through Rochester Community and Technical College, the local college. "I wanted to major in computer science and work in health care," he says.

He graduated in August 2003. His BSCS is actually from Winona State University (Winona, MN), although he completed his coursework at the RCTC campus, thanks to a partnership between the two schools.

A professor thought that Jain might be interested in an internship at Mayo. Once Jain heard about the opportunity, he went to Mayo's website and filled out an online application. Two weeks later, he got an e-mail requesting a phone interview.

"They asked some questions about my schoolwork designed to test my technical knowledge, like details about debugging applications," he recalls. "But the biggest focus was on the team projects I did in school. They wanted to know how I worked with other people. About two weeks later, in January 2003, they invited me to become an intern."

At Mayo, says Jain, interns are assigned to work on more than one application. Since starting, he's worked with various Web technologies, mainframes, ColdFusion, Java and Cobol. "I move around to different teams. It's a chance to learn about a lot of different areas.

"Even more important than the technology is the chance to see the lifestyle of an IT professional," he says. "As an intern, you learn a lot about balancing work and life.

"Working with health care and technology is incredibly exciting," says Jain. "Everything I do here improves patient care. That's a great feeling."

Enthusiasm, interest and a good GPA help land internships
Everyone we spoke to stressed that grades weren't the most important factor in landing an internship. A good GPA is important but many HR reps look at grades last. "I look for someone enthusiastic who wants to work with us," says Convergys' Gagnier. "I'm more interested in someone who knows about Convergys and has a reason for wanting to be here than in someone who just wants a job."

SBC's Walker encourages students to network constantly. "Jump on every opportunity to advance your career. Get involved in school programs, develop your personal skills and sharpen your technical skills."

"As soon as you get into college, get involved in organizations where you can demonstrate involvement and leadership," adds Vanguard Group's Lindberg. "At the interview, give specific examples of how you made a difference on a team, in a club or in the classroom."

HR pros agree that you should follow up the interview with a phone call. "Don't be passive," says Principal's Huynh. "Go to on-campus presentations and talk with the recruiter afterwards. Get business cards and keep in touch. Keep your name fresh."

D/C

Abbi Perets is a freelance writer based in Valley Village, CA.