3 Things I’ve Learnt from Finding and Doing My First University Internship with a Startup
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The startup’s founder believed in my ability to learn, rather than by only looking out for the number of years of experience I had. The company trusted me with meaningful, impactful work, although I was just a newbie.
Back in late 2019 to mid 2020, I was looking for a summer internship, but to no avail. I was mainly applying to data analyst roles (since a huge part of what I learn in school is related to that) and business roles (since I’ve always considered myself more of a business rather than tech person), but I wasn’t getting interviews because I did not have a strong portfolio in any of those areas. And to be honest, the thought of working as a data analyst did not excite me at all. At that time, I did not know what I wanted and I felt very lost.
My official summer internship was slated to begin in mid May 2020, and by the end of April, I was still struggling to find an internship, feeling defeated and demoralised. Then, I chanced upon a job posting by Silence Laboratories’ (SL), a cybersecurity startup. The job involves understanding users, doing journey maps, doing wireframes, and usability testing. After searching up terms like “usability testing” that were foreign to me then, I was very excited as the job sounded like something that I was genuinely interested in. I had some experience with UX research (at that time, I didn’t know the term for it) and design-thinking from the modules I took in school, as well as my projects, but I did not have any formal internship experience. However, after an interview with the founder, Jay, I was accepted and I finally got an internship!
I am very grateful that Jay chose to believe in my ability to learn, rather than only looking out for the number of years of experience I had (because I had 0). Recently, we were in the process of selecting new talents and he told me that, “it’s mostly about the will, people can learn”. I agree with this completely, and I’m thankful that there are founders out there like him who believe in this and give newbies a chance to learn and prove themselves.
Although I was a newbie, I tried my best to produce work of industry standards. During my free time, I took online courses relating to UI and UX, read books, blogs, and research papers. I felt that I was learning so much in a short period of time, and I felt very satisfied and accomplished knowing that I was applying what I had learned immediately into the work that I was doing. Actually, it went two ways — I applied what I learnt from my self study into my work, and doing the actual work taught me lessons that I did not come across from my self study.
The good thing about the team in Silence Laboratories is that they were willing to consider my opinions although I was new and inexperienced, they were willing to let me implement my findings from my learnings, and were willing to trust me with the huge responsibility of planning and carrying out an entire user study for one of their key products.
In the first four months of my internship, I designed prototypes using Figma, planned and conducted a user study, analysed the results, and reported my findings in a research paper (that was successfully published, yay!). As someone who is hungry to learn and enjoys being productive, I would say that the fast pace of work in Silence Laboratories and the level of autonomy given to me really suited me.
Looking back at my first internship hunting + internship experience, here are three key takeaways I had:
1. “Not getting what you want might be a wonderful stroke of luck” // it is alright to feel lost, as long as you take actions to move away from the “lostness”
I came across this quote some time ago and I thought it made sense. As someone from an engineering school, I used to keep telling myself that “I am going to be a data analyst”, “I don’t really like it but with practice I will become better and grow to like it”, but I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy doing it. I felt lost because I kept thinking “this is what I’m studying, but I don’t enjoy it, then now what?” Had I successfully gotten a data related internship then, I think I would have convinced myself that that was the way to go and I would work hard to try to do well in it, although I might be miserable.
Thankfully, I was lucky to be unlucky enough not to get the data internship I was yearning for then, and got a UX internship that actually opened my eyes to UX as a job. Reflecting on that, I think that this will serve as a reminder for myself to view things more positively, and to be patient with myself in discovering my strengths and inclinations.
I feel that in my earlier stages of university, I was lost because I wasn’t aware of many types of jobs out there. I think it is normal and acceptable as long as we actively try to become more aware, for example by browsing different types of jobs on job portals, reading about them to understand them better, and by talking to others with more experience. Since my internship with SL, I kind of “found my direction”, but I still tried to grab as many opportunities as possible — pro bono work to help others redesign their website, another UX research internship, took modules in school that helped me enhance my experience and knowledge in this area — these further allowed me to learn and identify my areas of interest.
2. Your actual work experience matters more than the size or name of your company
For me, one of the key purposes of an internship is to learn, and working in somewhere fast paced (like in Silence Laboratories) allowed me to learn a lot in a short period of time. (I subsequently had another internship with a larger organisation and for roughly the same duration of the internship, I did one quarter of the work that I did with SL.)
There are definitely perks of working in bigger companies, and I also understand the idea that having big names in one’s portfolio might help to “secure better jobs in future”. However, I feel that your actual job experience matters more than the name of your company. If you do more meaningful work on the job, the more meaningful things you can say during your future job interviews and that might probably be one of the factors that lands you your job. My experience in a fast paced startup like SL that entrusted me with meaningful, impactful work allowed me to have some interesting things to share with my job interviewers.
3. Give people a chance
This is for my future self, if I were to be in the position to hire others. While one’s experience certainly matters, attitude is just as important (I feel that this is especially relevant when hiring interns or fresh graduates who might not have prior experience for the job). If someone is hungry to learn and improve, they will find opportunities to learn, get that experience and do well in the job.
Fast forward to today, it has been more than a year since I have embarked on my first university internship with a startup (I am still working part time with Silence Laboratories). I am grateful for the opportunities given to me, and will definitely remember how this internship experience and the kindness of the founder opened my doors to exciting opportunities ahead.
