Many college students are eager to gain work experience that will help prepare them for their future careers. Internships serve as an important indicator of whether they are ready to enter the workforce.
Jim McGinn, the AWS Global Alliance and Technology Solutions Lead at Infinitive started the Technology Internship Program in 2018 with hopes of establishing the next generation of talent. His goal for the program was to give students exposure to a wide variety of technology services. The interns learn cloud computing (primarily AWS), full stack application development, cybersecurity, data science and analytics, and AI/ML. McGinn is passionate about giving interns a true hands-on experience and helping them take their knowledge to the next level. In addition, Infinitive’s AWS Advanced Consulting Partner status allows interns to achieve entry-level certification and become Certified Cloud Practitioners.
There are 10 technology interns working on three different projects: web application, social media analytics, and IOT analytics. Brandon Peretin, a rising senior and industrial systems engineering student at Virginia Tech is working alongside Infinitive’s technology team. “Within the first few weeks of my internship, I got to work with services such as S3, Glue, Athena, QuickSight, and Cognito,” said Peretin, who is a part of the IOT Anomaly Detection team. “At school I learned just the fundamentals. The real learning comes from the projects and realizing that failing is okay.”
During the nine-week internship, intern teams were tasked with creating a unique AWS solution for their specific business case and then developing the project from scratch. Patrick Glebus, a rising senior and computer science major at James Madison University said, “Instead of being given a solution to implement, the process of synthesizing one by collaborating with my group members has strengthened not only my coding skills but my soft skills as well.”
Interns who understand technology, take the lead, and communicate efficiently are the ones who stand out. “One of the biggest lessons I learned during this experience is to stop saying ‘I can’t’ and turn it into ‘I can do this, but can you give me some support in this area,’” said Rylee Showalter, a rising senior and business information technology student at Virginia Tech. Embracing Infinitive’s “kick-ass attitude” drives growth and success within the internship but also as full-time employees. “After the program, we extend many full-time offers to the interns in hopes of them starting their professional careers at Infinitive,” said Samantha Papagoda, the staffing coordinator at Infinitive.
As the summer 2021 internship program comes to an end, Infinitive will soon be searching for the next group of talent ready to take on the world of technology. The application for the summer 2022 Technology Internship Program opens the first week of September. For more information, contact us at info@infinitive.com.
