4 reasons why you need to intern at a startup
If you interned this summer and it wasn’t at a startup, you willingly missed the greatest summer of your life…
And I’m being generous by only giving you 4 reasons.
1. THEY TREAT YOU LIKE AN EMPLOYEE
As an intern, you have probably heard the stories about getting coffee for your higher ups or doing mindless busywork. At a startup they do not hesitate to give you real work. You’ll never be sitting around updating email designs or coding some coworker’s side project. You will hit the ground running the moment you step foot into the office.
I remember being in one of my first meetings and one of the product managers kept asking me:
“ Is this ok with you, Hasque?”
And in my head I’m thinking “Why is he asking for my approval?”. That was when I quickly realized that the product manager actually valued my opinion, even though I was an intern.
2. YOU ACTUALLY IMPACT THE COMPANY
Even though your job title is “intern” it should be “full-time designer”/ “engineer”/”product manager”. Why? Because:
∙ You will push production code.
∙ Your designs will be available for all to see.
∙ Your road maps and user stories will be used.
This point ties in with last one because since you’re essentially an employee, you will have real work. For example, over the summer I contributed heavily to the redesign of internal tools by redesigning the look and feel, fixed the information architecture, UX, road mapping, among other alterations.
The work you do will impact the company in some meaningful way. And impacting a company is priceless not only for your resume, but for yourself; knowing that you actually carried weight in furthering a company’s success is an indescribable feeling.
3. YOU LEARN A LOT ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS
When I landed the product design internship, I was expecting to do the typical designer stuff like create wire frames, personas, conduct usability tests, among other responsibilities.
But on top of all that, I was doing:
∙ Information Architecture
∙ Product Management
∙ Content Strategy
I was mainly working on design, but had the freedom to venture over to the product management side or work on content strategy whenever I felt like it. And the extra skills that you pick up are straight ✨gold✨ further down the road. They allow you to be more versatile whereever you decide to apply next.
4. YOUR TEAM BECOMES FAMILY
My personal favorite reason of interning at a startup is that you and your team become really close during the summer.
You’ll be eating those scrumptious $2 chicken biscuits at the local restaurant every Thursday and enjoy team breakfasts at those expensive hip breakfast spots around town.
I remember working from one of the bean bags in the office and receiving the Slack message “Wanna go Glamping next month?” which I replied with “Say no more”. And a few weeks after we went “glorified camping” at a upscale camping site.
And of course you’ll have disagreements every now and then, but the good times will vastly outweigh the bad times.
I sometimes catch myself dreaming back to the glory days of when I interned at Bellhops. The fun nights with the interns along with working together with an amazing team resulted in a near perfect summer. Nonetheless, I learned a lot about design, business, and storytelling.
I highly recommend students learn & apply to start ups for summer internships.
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