We’ve promised an update of our Internal Internship so here is some insight into what it took to pull off our internship and what our team members had to say.
If you read VUEREAL'S INTERNAL INTERNSHIP blog from July, you would notice that we were planning our internal internship for August. As anything when it comes to start-ups, things NEVER go as planned so you improvise and just go with the flow. Due to some tight deadlines, we had to shift the internship dates out to a date where the entire VueReal team would be able to participate. After all, we wanted to make sure this team building activity was inclusive of everyone! At the end of October we were finally able to see this come to life and team members were extremely engaged during these internships.
The initial idea of the internship was to run it for two days with each internship running for a full day. Team members were able to select any of our functions which included Device Fabrication, Cleanroom Operations, Hardware, Circuit Design, Test & Characterization, Software, Micro-printing, FPGA design, Mechanical engineering, Project Management, Patent Writing, Finance, and HR. We wanted to run each internship for a full day but based on the overwhelming interest from the team, we ended up shortening the sessions so team members could sit in a number of different internships.
Before team members could participate in internships, we had to make sure all access and safety training was completed. If you have ever been into a cleanroom, you would understand the amount of training involved. The team actively participated and took the training very serious.
We started the internships at 10am. Coaches were asked ahead of time to have the session prepared. This involved giving an overview of the kind of work involved as well as allowing for hands-on tasks.
Lunch time was spent like any other day here at VueReal which includes free catered lunches. After lunch, the internships continued and went until 4 pm. The structure of the sessions varied.
Our Project Management internship involved VueReal interns getting an overview of the role and then breaking out to take what they’ve learned to apply project management principles to a project they are currently or will be working on in their personal life. After they’ve put their own project plan together and it was reviewed, team members got involved in VueReal Project Management which is drastically different than traditional PM approaches.
Our Device Fabrication internship allowed interns to go into our newly built $13M cleanroom that we opened in August. This was a very neat experience as it allowed the team to see part of our device fabrication process that involved using photoresist to burn an image onto a glass wafer.
With a social succession index of 77%, it’s safe to say that we will be running these internships again. The team had great feedback on the sessions and as always, some great feedback for improvements going forward. Have a look to see what the team thought:
I learned a lot more about the product that VueReal is making and how the process is completed. It was nice to get to see the other side of the building where a lot of the creating and testing is happening. I also enjoyed the initial sit down portion of the internship which explained the whole process thoroughly. Overall, I learned a lot and can appreciate even more how much work goes into making the product.
I didn't know much about so I definitely learned something new. I liked seeing what Sebastian was working on, and the fact that he was so open to questions.
A great opportunity to learn in more detail what other departments do. For PM specifically, I learned valuable information that I can apply in my own work. There was opportunity to jump in on other sessions because aspects of them were only 30min - 1 hour, so it was nice to have that flexibility.
I loved learning more about what we do. Yunhan started with a presentation which was a great overview and then he went into the cleanroom to show us an important part of the device fabrication process.
Learning more about what a project manager does as well as the specific tools that testing uses was very helpful in understanding their contributions as well as offering a better understanding of the impact of my role.
Great learning experience! Fun hearing about what other teams do
This is a very good chance to understand other team's work. Also, this helped me to understand my work a lot better.
We’re happy with the success of the internship and are already looking forward to planning the VueReal Internal Internship 2020.
