Internship Advice

Hey everyone! I recently landed an internship working in a data center for an insurance company. When I took the position I was sold on the idea that this position was a stepping stone into the company and would provide a great deal of experience. However, I'm coming up on my 4th week and I having a hard time seeing where this "great deal of experience" is going to come from. I spend most of my day surfing the web and doing my WGU homework. I have maybe a total of 15 min worth of backups to do a day and that's it. Co-workers seem very reluctant to teach. I seem to have a different manager everyday...

A little background on myself, I finished up a 5 year enlistment in the Navy last September, primarily working with RF comms and Cisco gear, but had quite a hard time finding an IT job because of my lack of "real world" experience.

I guess what I'm trying to get to is this, is this typical of an Internship or have I stumbled into an odd one? Should I be looking for a new one already? If I'm not learning anything does it make sense to stay?

Looking for some advice.

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Comments

Jon_Cisco

It sound's like your in a tough position.

I think you need to push your coworkers and bosses. Find a way to connect.

I have worked with interns that were content to browse the web. Usually I let them because they were there for themselves not me. If it is an unpaid internship then I would express my concerns and see what happens. If you are being paid it's probably worth sticking around and just learning the environment and picking up on what the coworkers do for a living. Remember it's still experience even if it's not good experience.

Good Luck!

Phileeeeeeep651

Thanks for the advice Jon_Cisco.

It's a paid internship so at the end of the day I am gaining something. I don't want to surf the web for 8 hours a day but that seems to be the norm here. Walk in, log in, youtube... I try to engage my coworkers, ask questions, take responsibilities like the tapes and backup (not rocket science) but nothing seems to get through. I guess I thought as an Intern there would be training, projects, to work on, etc. Coming from a military comms center environment I'm very used to moving from project to project, outage to outage, and while I understand that a finely tuned corporate network can run relatively smoothly I guess, again, I just thought I'd have something to do.

Sorry for the rant...Again, thanks for the advice!

hellolin

Phileeeeeeep651 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice Jon_Cisco.

It's a paid internship so at the end of the day I am gaining something. I don't want to surf the web for 8 hours a day but that seems to be the norm here. Walk in, log in, youtube... I try to engage my coworkers, ask questions, take responsibilities like the tapes and backup (not rocket science) but nothing seems to get through. I guess I thought as an Intern there would be training, projects, to work on, etc. Coming from a military comms center environment I'm very used to moving from project to project, outage to outage, and while I understand that a finely tuned corporate network can run relatively smoothly I guess, again, I just thought I'd have something to do.

Sorry for the rant...Again, thanks for the advice!

Sorry you just got out the military, get used to the real world, where they don't work their employees like slaves, this coming from a former navy as well. Just get paid and study certifications while at work if you can, and If you do get hired in that company then just laid back and chill. You will soon find out most of the lower end IT workers can't even tell you the 7 layers of OSI model yet...

ande0255

I can tell you first hand, that the company you are with does not promote growth, and will not extend opportunities to you to climb their IT ladder. While there I was actually warned by my manager not to be loyal to the company, because it will not be loyal to me, and it was shown throughout my time there. It was pretty shocking to me that my manager dragged the company through the mud upon our first one on one meeting, but over time, I realized why he had.

For your job specifically as a computer operator, I'd bring in either study material or pillows, because the entire day will consist of trying not to fall asleep. When I was last there they had interns doing 50/50 ops / help desk, not sure if you got trained in on help desk stuff yet, but it was the help desks answer to hiring more help to take the endless stream of calls without paying the new hires jack ****.

While there I asked if there was any sort of incentive for continuing education, even in the form of reimbursements for cert exams or tuition reimbursement, and the long and short answer was No. It would only be approved by your manager if it was directly related to your work, but because there is no education required to perform either job duties of frantically answering phones or not falling asleep watching for server alerts, it was in the HR pamphlet that it is offered by the company but the manager will never approve it out of their cost center.

The only step up you can hope to make in the next 2-3 years is to Tier II desktop support, possibly IPS (where you can take the huge technical leap to doing permissions in Active Directory), but higher technical groups do not pick talent from the lower levels of the company IT ladder - I can assure you of that 100%.

To move up to a higher level technical role, I've watched people who deserved open positions that were either cancelled, or given to external candidate contractors who are willing to work for a few dollars cheaper. I've watched countless people in all departments leave the company to take a step up in IT job roles, and leaving that company is the best thing I've ever done for my career, the horror stories I've heard from several managers about how employees there have been screwed out of promotions is seriously unbelievable.

All part of the culture there, I'd get out ASAP, I have been there for years and its a toxic environment for an aspiring IT professional. It's pretty much like career limbo, and the longer you stick around, the further behind you will be from your end goal of your career.

/rant

Xavor

I had the same issue coming out after 5 years in the Navy. I was comms on subs and was told "no relevant experience" for a number of mindless jobs.

If you had a clearance within 2 years you can reactivate it and employers will scramble to hire you.

If that's not an option, keep your eyes out for junior networking jobs, career fairs, and college recruitment job fairs. You can always study in the interim and complete a Cisco cert while at work to leverage your exposure to Cisco to find a job.

Phileeeeeeep651

@Hellolin I didn't expect to be worked like I was in the Navy but I figured I'd at least be learning something at this internship, guess I was wrong. Haha.

@Xavor I just recently got my clearance re-activated through the reserves so I'll have to check that out.

In the meantime I've got my WGU courses I guess I can get paid to do! Haha. Thanks everyone!

Heero

First, try to find some of the easiest tasks and push your coworkers to show you how to do them. You will probably have to take the lead to get them to show you stuff.

Second, it sounds like even if you do push your coworkers to teach you some stuff and to let you do that stuff, you are still gonna have a lot of free time. Paid study time isn't that bad. Enjoy it for what it is.

hellolin

Exactly, if I am not busy at my internship I am either studying CCENT or writing a term paper, I won't graduate until next June and my goal right now simply is just to let them extend my internship contract from end of this year to next summer, it's still way too early to talk about hire me on.