The 2018 BTI360 summer internship program brought together seven students from UVA, JMU, and Clemson. Internships are a great way to get some hands-on experience and develop professionally, but little did we know how much we would learn and grow — both as people and as software engineers — during our summer at BTI360.
It’s always a little daunting (and maybe a little scary!) to start a new job, but everyone at BTI360 was personable and welcoming from the beginning. They made us feel like we were part of the team from the second we walked in. Everyone we met, from the directors of the Internship Program and current teammates to the leadership team, let us know they were committed to helping and guiding us along the way.
On our first day, we spent some time getting to know each other through ice-breakers. Members of the leadership team even participated, and we had interesting, lively discussions around questions like, “Would you rather sweat cheddar broccoli soup or have every 80-year-old person who sees you try to kill you?”.
We also met with MJ, BTI360’s CEO, who introduced us to the company’s three core values: Lead With Humility, Do the Right Thing, and Grow Each Day. We saw these values exemplified by the teammates we worked with throughout the Internship Program.
Another valuable part of the BTI360 Summer Internship Program is the mentoring aspect. Each of us was assigned two mentors. We met with them every week for lunch to talk about a variety of things, including what we had learned so far, what we were currently working on, and any issues we were having from a coding and technical aspect. Our mentors were also there to support us personally, and we all developed great relationships with them. It meant a lot to us that they chatted with us about life in general and other things we had in common, not just “work” related to the internship.
In order to develop our technical skills, we participated in various hands-on workshops designed to challenge us and broaden our knowledge base. It started off with the Angular workshop, where we were thrown into the world of front-end development, something foreign to most of us. However, the workshop leaders made it approachable and fun, explaining the concepts to us clearly and encouraging us to ask questions.
It felt rewarding to have built a fully-functional sample web application after just the second day of workshops. Over the next two weeks we had workshops on Agile development, Spring, Git, databases, REST, AWS/Docker, and Java testing. It was somewhat daunting to learn so much in such a short period of time. But after the workshops were over, we all felt thoroughly prepared to take on our main project for the summer, which utilizes all of these technologies.
Overall, the first month of the BTI360 Summer Internship Program challenged us on professional and personal levels. We learned new things, bonded through fun field trips, and developed as members of the BTI360 team.
Ready to Accelerate your Career? Apply Now!
Are you a junior status college student ready to accelerate your career? Then apply now for BTI360’s industry-leading internship program. You will leave the program ready to commit on day one on your first software project. We will train you in the latest technologies as well as teach you how to be a part of a high performing software team through a blend of training geared towards leadership, mentorship, and practical application. That’s right, you’ll be apart of high-performance software team developing a real-world application.
Learn more about BTI360’s paid, summer software engineering internship program and apply today.
