Now in its fifth year, the Population Data Science Summer Internship was created to provide real-world project experience to students interested in a career in, or supporting data science. But the programme is also having a positive impact on the host teams.
Michael Bale is the IT Development Lead for SeRP, who have welcomed interns in to work on projects within their team for the past five years. Here, Michael talks about SeRP’s experience of being involved in the programme.
“Initially we were interested in working with the programme as we knew we had exciting opportunities to showcase what we do, but we needed extra hands to help get some smaller projects off the ground. But we’ve had an exceptional group of candidates work with us over the years which has spurred us on to continue to support the programme.
We’ve been fortunate to have gone on to hire a number of our interns once they have finished their studies, and there’s a great mutual benefit in them having had the initial experience working with us.
The area in which we work, and the types of products we develop can be difficult to understand, so for them to already have that understanding and rapport with the team allows them to seamlessly move into a full-time position with us. It’s also been a great opportunity for members of our team to get experience mentoring others.
Our interns get great hands-on experience working with a very knowledgeable and multi-disciplined team, where they have an opportunity to develop real products and get exposure to new technologies. They have also gained experience working in an Agile environment with the Scrum framework, which is invaluable to hiring managers and without doubt elevates our intern’s CVs.
Our team have most certainly benefitted from being involved in the Population Data Science Summer Internship programme over the past five years. Our interns have had a really positive impact on helping the team deliver on SeRP innovations. Having additional staff on some of the projects has helped broaden our capacity and alleviate some strains. Expanding the programme to allow anyone to apply, not just students local to the university, has also really broadened the talent pool and allowed us to hire interns with different skills and backgrounds to work on an even wider range of projects.”
For further information on the Population Data Science Summer Internship Programme, click here.