A Real Hands-on Internship Experience

Editor’s Note: The following is an open letter from Ania Prelich, our summer HR Intern. 

When starting an internship it is hard to know what to expect. Being young , with little experience an internship may be the best way to learn about where you want to go in your career, along with gaining that valued experience that employers are looking for. Internships even the unpaid ones, are extremely valuable for both the employer and the intern. I started my internship two months ago and now coming to the end of my time with Pivotal I can look back and understand why so many employers are looking for people with years of experience.

In the last two months I have learned more about HR I could have ever imagined. Being in university I learned a lot about theories and a few different ways to use them. On the other side being here at Pivotal I have seen so many things that I have learned in action. Through this internship the value that has been added was the physical process of doing projects, such as a pay equity, and really understand the roots of why I am doing them and how they should be done properly. Pivotal could have just asked me to photocopy and file papers for two months, but instead I was working alongside the team.

The most important thing that I learned here at Pivotal was that HR something that has to be done. Meaning someone may read about how to find policies but it’s a completely different thing to implement them. The HR department is what is actually going to put it into motion and give it the value that it needs to make an impact on the organization. Another thing that I learned here at Pivotal was the importance of culture in an organization. If everyone in an organization has a poor attitude and doesn’t want to be at work, then no one is going to grow and learn in that organization. Through my internship I learned what kind of culture I will be looking for in the future, and what kind of culture I like to work in.

All in all, Pivotal has been an amazing organization to work with. The amount of HR exposure  that I received was outstanding, and the people that I worked with were so open to helping me learn and getting me involved in different projects. It was an amazing experience.  For all those individuals who are finishing school and don’t know where to look don’t turn down opportunities because they may be unpaid or not what you are looking for, because you may just be turning down the best experience of your career.