Insider Report: A student in the world of startups
My HR internship experience at Sqreen
I joined Sqreen in October 2019 for a one-year HR internship (contrat de professionnalisation in French). After these past months I wanted to share with you here my experience, feedback, questions and tips that may be useful to you if you’re thinking about joining a startup ;)
As a student, you ask yourself a lot (a lot!) of questions about your professional career, especially when you are looking for an internship. Some of mine were:
- How to find a company that meets my expectations?
- Am I even legitimate enough to have these criteria?
- Are the values of the company in line with my own?
- Is the proposed job description realistic? What will the job really be like??
But for me the most important question to keep in mind was: Will I be fulfilled?
The recruitment process:
It all starts with the recruitment process, this is the time to ask all the questions that you have in mind. The goal here: to be aligned with the company.
- My first point of contact with Sqreen was with Alison (Head of People), who explained to me the product, her role, why an additional pair of hands could be beneficial to the People team (which was 3 people at this time). And also to know what I was looking for so she could see if there was a possible match. After a first telephone contact and then a physical interview to really see the proposed missions, I continued with great enthusiasm this process!
- The 2nd person I met was Yasmin (People Operations & Workspaces Manager), this interview allowed me to review the day to day mission, to ask my last questions and above all confirmed my desire to join the team.
- The 3rd person was Pierre (Co-founder & CEO), an unexpected telephone interview because compared to most interviews with company leaders, it wasn’t me who had to “sell myself” but instead a real conversation about what I thought learn by joining the team and above all, a focus on the heart of Sqreen: Culture.
After 3 interviews, an English test and a meeting with the team here I am at Sqreen, because it wasn’t one-sided, Sqreen chose me too!
Onboarding and the first months
Onboarding takes time, you shouldn’t rush and try to see everything right away even if it’s tempting! You have to progressively complete one task and then the other. Finding the balance between wanting to contribute and learning is necessary and you have to tell yourself that it’s okay to slow down.
I was fortunate to have a smooth onboarding experience, to meet the whole Sqreen team in Paris and in San Francisco and remotely via video conference. The first step is immersion in the culture, a point that surprised me because many companies claim to have strong values and a strong team cohesion but little by little you discover the skeletons in the closets. At Sqreen, no skeletons, you quickly realize that culture is the heart of the business and that it is not just empty talk.
As the months go by, you become more competent, more efficient, you acquire more and more automation and you start to save time on your tasks. A watchword: priority management! Use tools such as Notion and Trello. These management tools also allow your tutors to know what you are working on but above all it’s up to you to see how to allocate your week, on what tasks you will be working on and not to forget events like upcoming onboardings for new starters for example. Using post-its or a notebook is also possible but this solution is much less secure than a management tool, because yes you may have to deal with confidential information ;)
Pros and Cons of Joining a Startup
Sqreen is my 2nd experience in the world of startups, so I wanted to share how I see things:
Advantages:
- Joining a flexible company with more modern processes
- Being supported to develop a variety of different skills: relationship, communication, HR & more
- Getting to see the different stages of the company’s development
Disadvantages:
- Things move fast! Really fast!, You need to hang on tight and stay in a positive dynamic
- Keeping abreast of information, you can lose information when you arrive in the morning and you see all the emails, so you have to know how to select the information. One of the things that helped me to keep up with the news was the almost daily check-ins with Yasmin and Alison
My tips:
- Communicate! Being surrounded by good tutors is essential, it’s better to ask the same question 3 times rather than staying in your corner, stuck.
- Take days off when you feel the need, because when you’re in internship you have to know how to juggle between the company, your classes and your private life, a real challenge!
- To err is human! Yes, we make mistakes and not only as an internship student. You have to know how to put things in perspective, not to torture yourself (believe me it is not easy but when you are surrounded by kind people it helps!). One thing is certain, it is better to talk about it rather than hiding the error and having an unpleasant surprise.
- Always challenge yourself, the purpose of an internship is to put knowledge into practice, but there is some knowledge that you really only learn by practicing.
Conclusion:
The world of startups is flexible, you can join one that is just starting out, or that is in a growth phase, but it’s in this kind of structure that you have the possibility of to see the company evolve and participate in its expansion, to see how everything is structured, to understand the different challenges at the different stages of evolution.
To the future student who reads these few lines, trust yourself, learn about the company before joining it and the people who work there. If you have a good feeling then go for it! Take advantage of this human experience to grow and enrich yourself.
In any case, my passage at Sqreen is not finished and I intend to live it to the fullest because it has really allowed me to discover modern HR and reassured me even more in my career choice. I now want to break the icy image that we can have of HR and make corporate culture my priority!
A new challenge for me :)
