Engineering Internships at Redbubble
Revamping our program to optimise the intern experience
Over the last few years, the engineering group at Rebudbble had the privilege to work with interns. Every year during the Australian summer, we got to welcome a group of 3 to 5 joining us for three months. We believe in the value of internships and — when done right — their benefit to everybody involved. A select few of our previous interns are still with us, and we are very happy to have picked up some top talent early on in their career.
While we had success in patches, the feedback for our program was rather mixed over the years. Neither the interns joining us, nor employees and teams supporting them were blown away by our approach. This forced us to rethink how we want internships to work. For our latest round starting December 2017, we put in a completely refreshed program.
Rethinking Our Goals
To start off on the right foot, we first defined our desired outcomes. And as it turns out, the goal was quite easy to articulate:
Our interns have a great experience during their three months at Redbubble.
We decided to completely step away from any kind of hiring outcome. We were also not interested in a deliverable after the program. All we were focused on, was to make sure our interns are well supported, learning, happy and working with a team.
Our thinking was simple: Ensure someone is engaged and has a good time, and they will be their best self. We do not have to set ambitious goals. There is no need to wave a potential full-time position in front of them for motivation. If someone enjoys working with us, they will make sure to present themselves in the best possible way.
Three Areas Of Focus
Once the goal was decided on, we explored how we could set up our interns for success and happiness. In the end, we structured our approach around three areas.
Learning
A great deal about how fulfilled we are at work comes from being able to learn and grow. This was our first priority. We wanted to ensure that our interns absorb as much as they possibly can, and become better engineers in the three months they are with us.
To encourage a growth mindset, we handed out a list of achievements. These were not meant as items our interns had to complete. But rather as inspiration to ensure each intern gets an idea about the opportunities they have to learn and grow.
Examples on the achievement list are:
- Commit some code to the Redbubble code base
- Deploy something you have worked on to production
- Present at a fortnightly Showcase
- Pair with someone who is not an engineer (e.g. designer, analyst)
- Attend an all hands meeting
- Post something to our tech blog
The Team
What is the worst intern experience you can imagine? If you are anything like me, it is to work in isolation on an unrelated, time-boxed project.
We tried that approach in previous years and it was not ideal. This time, we wanted to give our interns a real glimpse of what it is like working with us. So we placed them in an existing team and treated them — in most ways — like any other new hire.
We work in small, agile, cross-functional teams. Interns were able to contribute to one or more features from end-to-end. They got to collaborate with designers, product managers and other engineers. And be proud of seeing their code on the live website.
Individual Support
Learning a lot and working with a team are a good start, but it does not necessarily set our interns up for success. If you have ever hired a graduate or junior, you understand the need for ongoing support. It is not the same as taking on a 10 year veteran, who knows exactly what she needs to do in a new team.
To make sure we give our interns the best chance of success, we approached support from three angles:
- Team Support Person. Teams taking on an intern, had to nominate a support person. The objective was to give guidance in the day-to-day, to make sure the intern feels integrated and looked after in team settings.
- Dedicated Mentor. Each intern got assigned a mentor. The mentors function as sounding boards and advisors outside of the day-to-day.
- People Manager. The third area of support were catch ups with a trained people manager. Primarily to look out for any issues or red flags.
Yes, thats a lot of people. However it is better to start with a lot, than to regret the lack of support half-way through. It is also not a full-time (extra) role for those involved, but rather an hour or two per week.
Takeaways & Learnings
One major area we identified to improve on is around setting expectations. Our interns did not really know what was expected of them. This made it hard for them to focus on the things that are most important to us. Setting clear expectations also allows us to give more guided feedback along the way.
Overall though, we are really pleased with how things have worked out. The feedback from all involved has been largely positive. This fills us with confidence we are on the right track, and are looking forward to the next round of interns this year (2018).
