What it's really like to intern in Austin tech

by Kelly O'Halloran
August 16, 2017

The entertainment industry tends to portray internships as miserable experiences that force young folks to complete menial tasks. In real life — for the most part — it’s quite the opposite, where interns carry responsibilities that support pivotal aspects of a company. We caught up with three interns of Austin tech to learn more about their roles and the impact they made.

 

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Davina Bruno held a copywriting internship for the RV park and campgrounds startup RoverPass. Following her internship, RoverPass offered Bruno a full-time role as the company's content writer and data team manager. Bruno shared how working for RoverPass has helped acclimate her to areas across the country.

What were some of your responsibilities during your internship?

Creating SEO and marketing copy in the form of blogs and campground descriptions, as well as suggesting ideas for new content.

What surprised you about the experience?

The amount of personal agency that I had during my time as an intern. I was able to offer suggestions, get quick feedback and even got the opportunity to pitch myself for a full-time role.

What were some of your biggest takeaways?

An internship is what you make it. Be it for experience or in pursuit of a long-term career, an internship can only accomplish your goals if you're determined to make it do so. Also, there's nothing really stopping anyone from holding true to internship commitments. I've worked alongside less-than-committed interns, but while I worked with RoverPass, I was also in school and waitressing full-time and was still able to meet and exceed expectations. Internships should be taken seriously and like any other commitment, you have to be prepared for hard work and long hours.

What was the coolest project you worked on?

Writing blogs on some of America's biggest camping cities. I'm an immigrant to America and I've only been here for four years, so it was nice to have a project that allowed me to explore various states, cities and fun areas. I'm definitely going to travel to some of these spots soon just because I know about how amazing they are now!

 


 

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Springbox welcomed Laura DeMartino this summer as its social media intern. DeMartino said working at the digital marketing agency taught her that there are no bad ideas.  

What were some of your responsibilities during your internship?

During this internship, I was responsible for keeping up with current trends, platforms, happenings and making recommendations for optimization for a range of clients. I helped the creative team with monthly cadence concepts and lent audience and content insight to guide overall content creation. Tracking influencers and ambassadors while assisting with outreach strategies was also a huge responsibility of mine as I worked on the Tradewinds Iced Tea Blogger Program.

What surprised you about the experience?

What surprised me most about working for Springbox was how each and every team member welcomed us interns with open arms. I never felt like the type of intern who was supposed to do coffee runs or print documents. My creative thinking and ideas were all taken seriously and some were even implemented by clients!

What were some of your biggest takeaways?

From this internship, the biggest takeaway for me was the notion that no idea is a bad idea. If you can conceptualize something, have a thought process behind it and can see it being implemented, then it’s safe to share with a group during a brainstorm. Specifically, in social media, I learned that having multiple options for a post can come in handy.

What was the coolest project you worked on?

The coolest project I worked on was our intern project for TYLER’S. As a group, we came up with various concepts centered around driving consumers to the newly designed TYLER’S website. We implemented a social media campaign that included Snapchat Geofilters, Instagram stories and static Facebook posts. Overall this project allowed each intern to utilize their strongest suits to implement a great campaign.

 


 

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Intern Javad Ataly joined NSS Labs this summer as a member of the company’s Quality Assurance team. Ataly, a student at University of Houston, is pursuing a Master's degree in Information System Security and will graduate this December.

What were some of your responsibilities during your internship?

As a member of the Quality Assurance team, my job was to do manual and automated testing on the latest release of NSS Labs’ CAWS Continuous Security Validation Platform. My goal was to make sure our customers have the smoothest experience possible.

What surprised you about the experience?

I would say the company culture, in a good way. NSS Labs is the first company I’ve worked for in the United States. As I talk to people and colleagues who have experienced working at different companies, I can say NSS Labs is among the best. At NSS Labs, employees are the top priority, and everything else is designed around them. I understand that a business is about making money, but NSS Labs knows how to handle both.

What were some of your biggest takeaways?

The connections made and experience I gained working alongside experts of my field.

What was the coolest project you worked on?

Being a member of a cool team. We all collaborated on creating a tool that would automate manual routine tasks.

 

Images provided by companies.


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