While summertime is great for spending time poolside, it’s also a great time for many young adults to start earning their keep with summer jobs. Whether getting a head start out of high school, keeping busy between college semesters, or coming fresh out of college, internships provide the perfect opportunity for young adults to make some money while gaining relevant career experience or building up a résumé. This summer, DAT Solutions provided this opportunity to 15 wonderful young people and brought in interns for departments such as sales, customer support, marketing, technology services, and facilities.
A group of 15 interns, assorted like different chocolates in Forrest Gump’s metaphorical box, came together from all different walks of life to work for DAT Solutions. A handful of interns came directly from the families already working at DAT, but others had more interesting connections. Removed connections like a friend of a friend of a mother, a childhood nanny, and even an alum from a shared small town high school brought together our diverse bunch.
As the summer comes to an end, and more and more of our intern group heads back to school—some for their first year of college!—we wanted to leave a message with our feedback, insight into what our lives looked like here, and a kind goodbye to the company that welcomed us for three short months.
When résumés begin to be drafted, the first answer we will each have to answer is what we did for the summer at DAT Solutions, but the answers vary greatly between each of us.
“My job was very diverse,” said Kate Hart in facilities, “I got to go on the computer and look at some classified information and create reminders to send to executives.”
“I liked doing the front desk a lot because I get to meet new people and talk to everyone,” said Cailee Martin, also in facilities.
Jesse Leonard, working alone in strategy and business intel, explained the complexity of his job as, “learning about the data sciences team and how they work with Connexion and RateView and using that data and making dashboards out of it. Then looking at a little bit of the data base code, the sequel.” In my words, “computer stuff”.
Job responsibilities were even wide-ranging between interns in the same department. Christian Goo, in customer support, spent his summer creating instructional videos while his counterparts Ann Johnson and Jonathan Hart worked in different accounts on account cleanup, system reorganization, and adding or removing users.
What Ann liked most about her time here was not the experience she walked away with, but rather the one that she gave by being involved in real-time projects. I think she speaks for all of us with her response, “I felt like I actually had an impact, and helped a little bit. I really liked that.”
This summer was particularly special for the interns as many of us got involved in activities related to the building move. Grace Galantine, in sales, worked the same internship a year prior and noticed the difference between the two. “This year I’ve done a lot of moving [documents] into Google Docs,” she started, “I [also] helped with moving stuff for one day, so I was like putting up TV mounts… That was probably the most interesting thing I did.”
“Once the move started it was insane,” described Kate, “I would go around ask people what they needed, extra supplies things like that; move related things.”
When asked what the majority of her responsibility was this summer, Cailee answered, “Moving the company to the new building.”
Now that we are all moved, we recognize that with the new building come new opportunities, which some interns may return to in the following summers.
Many of the interns leave DAT feeling that they’ve learned a lot about professionalism, business functions, and the importance of teamwork. Perhaps more unforgettable than the experience, is all the lovely people we worked with here that we will say goodbye to as we head off to another chapter of our lives. Every intern felt that they’d grown close to the people in their department. “All the data science people were cool,” said Jesse, in summary of how we all felt about our corresponding department members.
A few special shout-outs were made to some individuals who made a memorable impact working alongside the interns.
“I really like Janice [Compton]. I liked working with her.”
“I like Marlene [Holm], she’s the best. Ned [Damon] was pretty funny.”
“Pam [Turner] is my favorite. I also like Sandy [Cahill] and Ken Harper, they are like a dynamic duo of mischief.”
“I really like Marty [Carson] cause he’s funny. I really like Curt Wright, he’s funny and I talk to him a lot. Chris [Engelke] I always like to say hi to him because he doesn’t have a smile on his face so I always make him smile.”
“Robert Rouse, he is very motivational and encouraging for all his staff.”
Cailee Martin even made new friends in her position, saying, “Probably Kate is my closest friend this summer, Kate and Matt [Gaustad].
Of course if we listed every awesome person we’d run across this summer, this post would be unbearably long. Instead, we would like to give a special thank you to all of you for having us this summer. The people truly make a company, and our happiness with DAT is a reflection of our experience with you. Thanks!
