Veritas Interns: My experience running a virtual Intern Project Showcase

[MMichel]

This past summer, I had the opportunity to participate in the Veritas intern program. I was honored to take the responsibility to design, implement, and run a virtual Intern Project Showcase for interns to share their projects and experiences while networking with fellow interns and the Veritas Americas (AMS) community. Additionally, the showcase featured a contest to celebrate the top three intern presentations of Summer 2021. My goal was to deliver a virtual showcase that could be replicated and leveraged for future showcases (virtual and in-person). To reach my goal, I did extensive external and internal research and leveraged my experience. After developing the plan, processes, and resources, I held multiple sessions for HR Business Partners (HRBPs), managers, and interns to share information, resources, and answer questions. To help the interns develop and hone their presentations, I ran a 15-minute pop-up workshop on Effective Presentations and established run-throughs with interns. The event was amazing and well-received, and I was excited to see many people and top leaders from across Veritas participate, including Greg Hughes, Veritas’ CEO.

What helped me succeed and excel in my role is relying on my growth mindset and leveraging my transferrable skills from other jobs, school, and hobbies, resulting in the successful completion of projects that have been well received. For example, knowing how to operate in virtual settings based on my experience with remote work and classes enabled me to use platforms like Zoom, Google Meeting, and Slack to my advantage. Additionally, an important element to me is aligning my values to the company’s values, such as sparking innovation and collaborating with others.

My favorite aspect about Veritas Technologies was meeting people who welcomed and supported my efforts and projects. The Tuesday Talks and Virtual Intern Connects enabled me to get to know Veritas employees and fellow interns quickly and facilitated easy communications, interactions, and laughter. A special highlight was sharing my project and analysis with Veritas’ Chief Human Resources Officer and HRBPs.

I felt challenged yet trusted to host the Intern Project Showcase event, where interns illustrated their work throughout the summer, some of whom are continuing their journey with Veritas and others who will implement their projects. I thoroughly enjoyed the guest speaker’s series because it allowed me to learn so much about Veritas, the different organizations, and initiatives that support growth, innovation, and corporate social responsibility, plus much more. I found Greg Hughes’ transparency refreshing, and his willingness to answer questions was valuable in helping interns like myself better understand Veritas, its people, and culture.

The intern showcase was one of the most significant professional projects I have worked on, and I am proud of the event’s success. My experience has allowed me to gain skills that I can transfer to future roles, including a deeper understanding of creating and improving processes, event planning, university recruiting and activities, and developing employees while working with global teams of varying sizes.

My advice for future interns is to stay open to all opportunities. Get exposure to insight, knowledge, skills, teams, and so much more by saying yes. It is essential to communicate with your manager and teammates about the passions that you want to pursue, your bandwidth, and how to align with the team’s priorities; I find this opens doors you would not have guessed were available! Lastly, be yourself! Your passions, experiences, and skills brought you to this point and made you who you are, and the new opportunities that await you will only make you better; learn from these and always keep growing.