Internships in IT provide real-world work experience

Companies seek early relationships with future hires

Interns build marketable skills

By Claire Swedberg
Contributing Editor

'We’re pursuing students earlier in school and earlier in the year so we can establish a relationship earlier,” says Stephanie Roemer, college relations manager at Freddie Mac (McLean, VA). Freddie Mac and other companies are targeting sophomores and even first-year students.

Internships give students an edge by helping them understand their interests and skills while introducing them to potential employers. “Whether they take a position here or elsewhere after they graduate, we want our interns to leave with skills that are resume-worthy,” says Roemer.

Interns interview better
Work experience does a lot more than build a student’s resume and a company’s pipeline for future hires. “It’s much more challenging to get in the door without an internship,” Roemer says. She explains that candidates who understand the company, have good grades, and can articulate the role they played in a project do better on interviews.

“Those graduating without an internship might want to consider taking an internship after graduation,” Roemer suggests.

Twenty-five of Freddie Mac’s ninety-four 2008 interns were in IT. Interns are active participants in the company, with access to the same resources as full-time employees, including the onsite gym and online training.

Communication skills are important
Another company that has changed its internship strategy is Highmark Inc (Pittsburgh, PA), a health insurance company. Employment specialist Jared Johnston says that interns who start after their first year of school tend to return year after year.

Johnston says that Highmark’s interns are put into project-focused work that is integral to a team. “We really try to engage interns with employees and day-to-day work,” he says. “There’s a lot of on-the-job training.”

Highmark finds that interns benefit from non-technical training as well. “We make it a point to teach them business etiquette and how to network,” Johnston says. An intern’s progress is measured against benchmarks to note what’s been gained.

Highmark is a family-oriented company that encourages children and relatives of employees to apply. Sara Oliver-Carter, director of corporate staffing, notes that the company is also passionate about diversity. “By now everyone knows that diversity is something companies need to remain competitive. We want to ensure that the group here at Highmark mirrors our customers,” she says.

Roemer agrees that it’s important for companies to seek interns with diverse backgrounds and points of view. She says that college clubs and organizations are a primary source for Freddie Mac’s on-campus recruiting. Student connections are also made at diversity conferences.

Do your research before choosing an internship
Knowing the opportunities a company offers is vital to finding an internship that matches a student’s interests. It’s also helpful to understand a company’s culture. “Applicants should do their homework before applying,” says Kristi Breen, director of segment college and international programs at Walt Disney World Resort (Orlando, FL).

For example, Disney wants its IT interns to have a good understanding of the entertainment industry. “We want our guests to feel welcome and respected,” Breen says. “So it’s important that our cast and leadership reflect the changing marketplace and the needs and expectations of our guests.” All Disney employees are referred to as “cast members,” and all customers are “guests,” she explains.

Breen says that Disney hires interns with dynamic personalities along with skills and education. The company likes people who listen to and enjoy being around its guests. “Many interns continue at Walt Disney World Resort after graduation,” she notes.

Tami Martin: project portfolio analyst at Highmark
Two summer internships at Highmark led to a job after graduation for Tami Martin. She joined as a project portfolio analyst after earning her 2008 BS/MIS at Shippensburg University (Shippensburg, PA).

Martin interned with Highmark after her sophomore and junior years and worked in corporate strategic planning. Her tasks involved managing and updating a database to track projects and related costs. “MIS sounded like an interesting major, but I had little notion of what the corporate world would be like,” she says.

Martin worked very closely with her manager generating reports for executives during her first internship. “I found that I really liked working with databases,” she says.

The next summer she was given more responsibility and autonomy and she got to work with more departments. “Understanding that each department has unique requirements has helped me in my current job,” she notes.

Today Martin is teamed with another analyst to maintain a database and automate processes. She hopes to expand her skills as she continues her career at Highmark.

Martin stresses the importance of internships. She advises college students to talk to
people who’ve recently completed one or more. “You can learn a lot from their experiences,” she says.

Henry Guo is a senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton
Henry Guo did not one but three internships before he refined his career goals. He got a dual undergraduate degree in information systems and international relations from Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh, PA) in 2007. Then
he leveraged his internship skills to land a job at Booz Allen Hamilton (McLean, VA).

After his freshman year Guo did an internship at York International
(York, PA) with the business development team in Shanghai, China. He worked with HVAC manufacturers, shadowing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysts at manufacturing sites.

The next summer Guo held a co-op position on the helpdesk at Chemtura Corp (Middlebury, CT). He fielded calls to fix computers and remove spyware. “I found that I liked technical work just as much as the business-related work I’d done in Shanghai,” he says.

Guo’s third internship was at General Electric (Shelton, CT) where he was part of the security team’s information management leadership program (IMLP). His tasks involved core development and a lot of programming. He worked with firewall rules in XML format, doing editing and output into CSV format that’s readable by Microsoft Excel. “By this time I knew I wanted to work on the IT security side,” he says.

In the fall of his senior year, Guo attended a technology career fair and connected with Booz Allen Hamilton. He joined the company in 2007 as a consultant working with identity and access management, smart cards and security documents, and writing use cases. He gradually moved from implementation projects to operations.

A year later Guo was promoted to senior consultant. He works directly with clients on IT security issues, but his work is very team oriented. “We meet regularly to comment on and review each other’s work and to get input from the project manager,” he says.

Internships had a major impact on what Guo is doing today. “They helped me determine what
I really like and I got a better understanding of corporate structure,” he says. He encourages students to start early, as he did.

Guo notes that it’s important to research a company before applying for a position because companies invest a lot of time interviewing a candidate. “Be prepared to answer questions so you don’t waste their time,” he cautions.

Guo grew up in China and Arkansas before attending an international high school in Hong Kong. He is on schedule to earn his MS in computer science at George Washington University (Washington, DC) by 2011.

Friends and college alumni have been a great resource for Guo. “I’ve gotten some really sound advice from them,” he says.

Georgia Dunlap: software engineer at Harris
Georgia Dunlap thought she had two more years of grad school to find an industry or company that interested her. But an IT internship for Harris Corporation’s broadcasting industry business changed her course. “I was planning to complete a masters to make myself more marketable, but I don’t need to look any further,” she says with a smile.

Harris (Melbourne, FL) is a communications and IT company. Dunlap signed onto the company’s internship-to-hire program in December 2007 just before finishing her BS/CS at the University of Central Missouri (Warrensburg, MO). She’s now a software engineer at the company’s Lee’s Summit, MO facility.

Dunlap’s internship focused on learning business logic and coding. She now works on
auto-reconciliation software programs that Harris offers to 800 television and radio stations nationwide. The software is used to create and reconcile a station’s planned-to-actual daily programming. “I’ve also been doing development in other areas as I gain experience,”
she notes.

The internship eased Dunlap’s transition from college to the business world. She explains that students learn the basics at school and work on very small projects. Suddenly facing the massive projects at Harris was a bit overwhelming. “I think I learned more about projects in three months here than in four years of college,” she says.

Dunlap believes that internships and networking organizations help students identify areas of interest. “They also give you an opportunity to experience what it’s really like in the business world,” she says.

Simone Hunter learned the value of internships before entering college
Simone Hunter did her first internship while still in high school. Inspired by
an aunt with a CS degree, she began working as a computer lab assistant at River Oaks Baptist School, an elementary school in Houston, TX.

“That experience taught me that internships were the way to get your foot in the door,” she says. Hunter went on to do four more internships while earning her 2008 BSCS at Spelman College (Atlanta, GA).

During the summer after her freshman year Hunter worked as a research advisor for Northeastern University (Boston, MA), using a computer application that analyzed cancer cells in x-rays. Her task was to enhance a tool that displays images with zoom features in both infrared or black and white. Back at school, she continued working on the project for the next three years.

After her sophomore year, Hunter did an internship at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA). The school was working in collaboration with WITS University in Johannesburg, South Africa to develop a computer program designed to translate one language to another. Trying to determine the best network for the tool involved taking data samples of the different ways people say the same word, and took Hunter to Johannesburg for several weeks. “I learned to speak some Zulu working on that project,” she says with pride.

On her third internship, Hunter worked with the “tiger team” of T-Mobile (Bellevue, WA), at
the company’s Atlanta, GA location. This data solutions team uses HTML to help testing teams create test scenarios. She returned the following year to continue work on that project.

Each internship helped Hunter build the skills that qualified her for the next. “I try to take advantage of every opportunity,” she says. She’s also building her network as she meets people involved with IT.

Hunter hopes to pursue a masters as she continues working with T-Mobile’s data solutions.
Her aim is to finish the degree by 2010.

Hoa Tran is in a co-op program at Harris
Hoa Tran is working as a Web developer in a co-op program at Harris. He’s on track to earn his 2009 BS in IT at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT, Rochester, NY).

Tran came to the U.S. from Vietnam in the 1990s. Before getting a job to help support his family, he took an English as a second language (ESL) course at a local high school.

Once he could afford it, he went to Onondaga Community College (Syracuse, NY) and earned
a 2003 associates degree in CIS. After graduation he did factory work. A layoff brought him to Houston to work with his brother repairing cars. But he was tired of going from one job to another. He wanted a real career. “I knew I could do so much more if I went back to school,” he says.

Tran enrolled at RIT in 2006. His concentration is in Web and data; he started his co-op in
Web programming at Harris in Rochester, NY in the spring semester of 2008. His job at Harris involves maintaining websites and much more: he gets involved in all aspects of multi-tier web design, development and implementation. “It’s just the kind of company I was looking for,”
he says.

Tran gathers development requests from internal Harris customers and then constructs and modifies them in accordance with the customer’s requirements. “This is the perfect fit for me,” he says. “I’d like to stay here after graduation.”

Doing factory and automotive work taught Tran how to adjust to new environments. During the co-op he’s been gaining programming and coding skills, but more importantly he’s learning how to deal with customers and coworkers.

Tran urges students to concentrate more on their classes, but he’s aware that it’s hard to digest everything when you’re taking several classes. “I sometimes wish I could go back to class and learn it all over again from A to Z,” he says.

Shonteé Goldsboro is in quality assurance at Freddie Mac
Shonteé Goldsboro is a senior quality assurance analyst in the operations and technology division of Freddie Mac (McLean, VA). She earned her 2005 BA in communications with a minor in IT at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA). “I was interested in IT, but I’m a people person,” she says.

After her sophomore year Goldsboro interned at Freddie Mac. She worked in the company’s business continuity department in Reston, VA on disaster recovery planning and developing safeguards to keep the business from going offline.

Goldsboro returned the next summer to resume her work, but took a more active role on the communications side. She suggested that the company develop a newsletter to keep company managers informed about its business continuity plans. “My idea was accepted and I spent the rest of my internship developing the newsletter,” she states proudly.

Looking for something different her third summer, Goldsboro took a position at the testing center. Her work involved developing a vendor tracking system in Excel. The detailed spreadsheet impressed her manager. “The system is still being used today,” she notes.

Goldsboro enjoyed Freddie Mac so much she was happy to accept a job there after graduation. As a junior quality assurance analyst for delivery services she was responsible for testing software before deployment to business areas within the company. In 2006 she was promoted to senior quality assurance analyst, which has given her a greater leadership role on projects.

Her communications degree helped Goldsboro get the position she holds today, but she was lacking in technical skills. “I’ve been working on that since day one,” she says. She updates
her managers regularly on her progress.

During her internship Goldsboro learned how to navigate in a corporate environment. But more importantly, she began to recognize her strengths and weaknesses, technical and non-technical. “When I found I was lacking in public speaking skills, I made sure to take coursework to develop those skills,” she says.

She notes that there’s a lot to be gained from an internship and professors and other interns are great sources for finding one. Goldsboro’s long-term goal is management and she wants
to earn an MBA within the next few years.

Sprint’s Sean Sharp is a telecom design engineer
Like Hunter, Sean Sharp was in high school when he was inspired by a relative to enter IT. “I was always fond of computers and saw how successful my uncle was in IT at Sprint,” he says.

Sharp’s uncle directed his interests toward CIS and helped with his transition to college. He earned his 2006 BS/CIS at Lincoln University of Missouri (Jefferson City, MO).

It wasn’t his uncle’s connection with the company that brought Sharp to Sprint (Overland Park, KS), however. In college Sharp was a member of Inroads, a national program that arranges internships for talented minority youth. He was delighted when an interview at Sprint led to an internship after his sophomore year. “Inroads brought me onto Sprint’s radar,” he says.

Sharp joined the vendor contract management group and was responsible for tracking trends in external vendor software. He also helped edit and revise the literature needed for a contract between a minority vendor and Sprint.

The following summer Sharp interned in Sprint’s problem management group. His task was to generate a daily report that tracks system availability in IT and business applications. He maintained a spreadsheet to monitor trends and identify problem recurrence. “These reports tell us if the problem is major or minor,” he explains.

While this internship wasn’t directly tapping into his major, Sharp said it helped him gain a better understanding of the business. “I learned a lot about the corporate environment,”
he says.

Choosing Sprint after graduation was an easy decision for Sharp. The company had positions available in his skill set and he’d enjoyed the work environment. “It’s a cutting-edge company,” he says, “which is a perfect fit for my personality.”

Sharp was hired as a network system administrator for the business support group. He served as mediator and point of contact between groups and maintained a database that tracks employee hours and drive usage records. He also oversaw a system that monitors time spent on a project to ensure that workloads are correct.

In late 2007 Sharp joined the core services development team in Sprint’s subscriber data management group as a telecom design engineer. In this position, he’s responsible for maintaining and testing hardware, doing software upgrades, and maintaining data integrity for the application server in a test environment. “This is my first opportunity to fully apply my technical skills and I’m extremely happy,” he says.

Sharp would like to move into management at Sprint and he plans to pursue an MBA.

He speculates that good grades, training and performance made him marketable, but internships were crucial to getting his current job. “Internships provide an opportunity to
prove yourself,” he says. “Go at it with an open mind, work your hardest and find out what interests you.”

D/C

Claire Swedberg is a freelance writer who lives in La Conner, WA.

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