How’s it like being a HR Intern at GovTech?
Nice to e-meet you!
Hey there! My name is Carmen. I am a 3rd third year student at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, currently undertaking a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources Management. Currently, I am embarking on a 1-year internship as a Campus Outreach and Internship Recruitment and Engagement intern with the Young Talent team under the People and Organisation Division.
You may have gotten a shock twice, yes, I know. What? A year-long internship? Why is your role job title so long? That’s right! I am here for a year with the team, and I am undertaking two roles during my time here which has allowed me to experience a really meaningful and holistic internship. Let me share more about what I get to do below. 😊
Campus Outreach
As a Campus Outreach intern, we will head down to various schools to participate in career fairs and various events.
During my time here, I have had the opportunity to meet and speak with students participating in StandCon 2023, NUS Hack & Roll 2024, NTU TechFest 2024 and many more! Such events allowed me to share more about what GovTech is doing and about our Young Talent programmes available.
If you see us around, do feel free to come and say hi at our booth!
Creative Involvement
For those of you who have attended guest lectures held by our GovTechies and/or visited us at our booths in 2024, would have seen us showing a video about our Young Talent Programmes — GeekOut, Internship, Smart Nation Scholarship and Technology Associate Programme (psst, if you have not heard any of them, do check out the other articles on our Medium blog here!).
Our Young Talent Programmes video project was a year in the making since 2023. I was fortunate to be tasked with seeing it through to the final stages after most of the filming of our Young Talent activities were filmed. This involved filming the remaining scenes and collaborating with an external creative agency on the editing and final delivery. This was a unique and valuable experience for me as I have always had an interest in communications and employer branding. However, I also knew that this was an area I am particularly weak in which became clear through some challenges I faced with myself. Despite these, my manager and team provided unwavering support, gave me the autonomy to manage the project while offering valuable guidance. Curious about the videos? You can watch one of the videos here! You can catch the rest of them at upcoming guest lectures (check your school’s EDMs!) and campus events. See you there!
Internship Recruitment and Engagement
Recruitment
One of the reasons I chose to pursue an internship at GovTech was the unique recruitment experience I could be exposed to. GovTech’s internship programme recruits interns for over 100 roles, gaining experience working on nation-wide #techforpublicgood projects. These openings encompass tech roles such as, Software Engineers, Artificial Intelligence Engineers and even non-tech roles such as Marketing interns and HR interns (like me!).
If you are keen to apply for an internship with us, do check out this article written by a fellow intern for more resume and interview tips before you apply! (The advice shared is really good).
Engagement
GovTech offers a well-structured internship program that fosters intern development within their teams. Beyond that, the Young Talent Team organises various engaging events to support our interns’ professional growth. These events include but are not limited to Brown Bag sessions, Career Workshops, Intern Engagement Day, Intern Volunteering x Bonding, etc.
All our new interns are invited to join us at Intern Engagement Day, where you get to hear from current interns, network with your peers, and meet your career mentors. During this event, we also invite interns to join the Intern Experience Committee (IEC). Led by the Young Talent Team, IEC empowers interns from various backgrounds (tech and non-tech) to directly contribute to planning and executing upcoming intern events, truly embodying our “by interns, for interns” spirit.
In my role as Internship Recruitment and Engagement intern, I also lead and oversee the IEC. This has been an incredibly fulfilling and rewarding experience. Beyond delegating tasks and ensuring smooth execution of events, I am also given the opportunity to collaborate with fellow interns across GovTech. This allows me to foster my leadership skills through stakeholder management, including coordination with event speakers, senior leaders, and even external partners.
Overall Internship Experience
When I first joined GovTech, it was shared to us that interns are not seen as just interns but as a valued team member where our voices are heard. I was intrigued by what they meant when they said this, because I thought “how much influence and impact can a mere intern like me deliver?” But truly, interns are truly given the space to run, fall and grow. At GovTech, we are guided by these values — Agile, Bold, and Collaborative. In all honesty, I thought that such values were a placeholder and would not be evident in the workplace. However, being more than six months into my internship, it is clear that these values are more than just a tagline but deeply embedded into our daily work ethics.
My supportive and nurturing managers and team have been instrumental in my exponential growth. Without their guidance (huge shoutout to my reporting officers, Supansa and Gillian!), I would not have experienced such a significant development over this internship.
If you are looking for a holistic internship experience to really grow and be challenged, why not consider joining us? Find out more about internship programme at go.gov.sg/govtechinternship.
