Not long ago, I had the opportunity to be coached by my friend and Agile development expert, Garrett Borunda. Over the course of a month, he evaluated my management style as CEO of Telaeris. One of his first observations was how much I loved to teach. He asked why I hadn’t leveraged my PhD to become a professor? I smiled at this and answered that I had just become a teacher in a different way. From the very beginning of Telaeris, we have created a culture of hiring and training interns and employees. I want employees at Telaeris to be able to learn things every day. Similarly, I view internships as a real-world classroom for students which can be as or more important than their classical school training.
As I thought about it, during the 12 years of Telaeris’ existence, we have had interns each year working in various aspects of our company. One summer, we had as many as 5 interns! However, while many internships provide little in the way of creative expression or practical application, Telaeris tries to be significantly different. Students don’t spend summers making coffee, shuffling papers, or making copies.
At Telaeris, our interns work on projects that we hope will become actual products. They expand their capabilities during their time with us and grow in unexpected ways. They are given the opportunity to succeed or fail – they learn how to learn, instead of just following instructions or being directed.
The beauty of a small company is that our interns get in-depth experience in their chosen craft – engineering, marketing, business, etc. Additionally, they get to discover how their craft intersects with the rest of the business world. Our hope is that they walk away with skills that will be immediately useful not only in their jobs, but in their lives. And most importantly friendships that will last much longer.
Telaeris is looking to hire a few brilliant interns who are bright, clever, passionate, and striving for excellence. All the better if you play ping pong, ultimate frisbee, basketball, and/or love to eat food from all around the world. If this is you – send us an e-mail! If you know someone who fits this description, make an introduction!
Potential projects we currently have in mind for internships include the following:
- Schematic Design + Board Layout (Electrical Engineering)
- WebPage & Graphic Design (Visual Arts)
- Sales and Business Development (MBA/Entrepreneurship/Communications)
- Android / iOS App Design (Computer Science – Mobile)
- RaspberryPi Embedded Coding (Computer Science – IoT)
- Ruby on Rails Web Development (Computer Science – Web Dev)
- DotNet Database Driven Programming (Computer Science – Desktop Apps)
- Product Design and Molding (Mechanical Engineering)
- Root Beer Flavor classification (totally serious)
- Marketing + Graphic Design + Messaging (Business)
- None of these fit, but you are intrigued? Let’s talk!
It is even better if you are multi-talented! Interns may work as few as 10 hours per week during the school year and full-time during the summer. You won’t do grunt work. You will be paid. You will be exposed to much more than your focus. You will have a great time. And it could lead to a job.
Over the years, we have identified some basic skills we require before hiring our interns:
All positions
Ability to creatively solve problems
Computer engineer applicants
Solid knowledge of >= 1 programming language required (C,VB. Net, C#, Ruby, Javascript)
Electrical engineer applicants
Knowledge of Circuit Design, Schematic Capture and Layout (EagleCAD)
Mechanical engineer applicants
Knowledge of CAD program (Solidworks, ProE, Sketchup)
Web/graphic design applicants
Knowledge of Photoshop/Illustrator, HTML, CSS, and Javascript
Marketing applicants
Good eye for details, solid writing skills, able to multitask to manage channels
Business/sales applicants
Outgoing personality, willingness to hustle, enjoy negotiations, thick skin
As a side note – here is a list of Telaeris interns and projects from the past 10 years – perhaps your name will be next!
Leave A Comment