June 4th, 2018 by Thea Maisuradze
We have recently hosted another intern - a young man named Niko from Parkmont school in Washington, DC. Niko turned out to be diligent and smart and a delightful person. We enjoyed giving him an opportunity to experience tech company work-style at our office in Silver Spring, MD.
Below is his own account of this internship.
I’m a seventh grader at Parkmont School in Washington, DC. As part of the school curriculum, Parkmont students are encouraged to participate in an internship program which allows students to take a 10-week long, unpaid internship as a way to experience a real-world job.
In early March 2018 I got in contact with Inflectra – a software company based in Silver Spring, MD to get an internship. By the first week of April, I started “working” there. My internship was one 3-hour “work-day” at Inflectra’s marketing department.
When my internship at inflectra was approved, I expected to be doing little tedious things that my boss didn’t feel like doing. What I actually got was something closer to an average office job. I was treated with as much respect as any other adult employee in the office. This was surprising because I expected to be given tasks like sorting through files, and cleaning whiteboards but I found myself helping in a re-design of a website of an international tech company.
The tasks I mostly did had to do with social media marketing or improving company's recently redesigned website in some way.
During my internship I learned a lot of new skills. Because I was seconded to Inflectra’s Marketing Department, my efforts were focused on learning about marketing techniques, including email marketing and paid social, i.e. advertising on platforms such as: Facebook or Youtube. I also learned how to use programs like Hootsuite (marketing automation tool) and Mailchimp (email marketing platform). With Inflectra’s website redesign, a few tweaks were needed here and there, which I helped with.
Everybody in the office was really nice and the biggest problem I had was putting in the right password on the door lock (which refused to cooperate until the very last day of my internship). Overall, it was a good learning experience and I would and have recommended it to people looking for an internship.