In honor of National Intern Day, four full-time employees who were once Nuance interns shared advice and encouragement to this year’s current intern class. Read about their experiences as Nuance interns and learn from them as you near the end of your internship and think about the next steps in your career. Our guest contributor, McKenzie Mack, shares her perspective.
McKenzie Mack is an Employee Communications Intern at Nuance for the 2022 summer. She is a rising senior at Elon University in North Carolina, majoring in Strategic Communications with a minor in Business Administration. She has found great passion within Corporate Communications and collaborating with the team, working with internal and external communications. She has tested the waters in several fields within Communications and is excited to continue her journey. Outside of work, McKenzie loves to travel and hopes to live in Europe one day (preferably Florence, Italy.)
Growth happens from experience and diving into unknown situations. For most, this summer is your first internship experience, and it may have been nerve-wracking and unknown at the beginning. Take a moment to look back on who you were on the first day of the internship and who you are now. You have added to a growing list of valuable skills and experiences. Interning at Nuance is a wonderful opportunity that will set you up for success in the future. Learn from four full-time employees, former Nuance interns, as they reflect on their own internship experiences and share their wisdom and advice.
Matthew, Software Engineer
Hello interns!
For many of you, we share a common trait: Nuance is/was the first internship opportunity we ever participated in. It is quite a big leap going from a second or third-year college student to working at a company like Nuance. With a leap like that comes the expected feelings eagerness, high-spirits, drive and most likely some feelings of overwhelmingness and confusion.
Well, I hope this letter can help alleviate some of those feelings regarding feeling overwhelmed and confused. My first advice is to ask questions. I must accommodate Nuance and my colleagues for being incredibly receptive to questions. From my experience as an intern, I initially did not want to ask too many questions and be seen as annoying or as a dependent, but throughout the internship I saw just how eager my teammates were to help me learn and better understand my role. Now as a full-time employee, I can honestly say I encourage asking questions. I better both myself as an engineer and the intern when these questions are discussed. So simply by asking questions, you as an intern add so much value to the team.
Now about the feeling of confusion. I must admit, a lot of roles have so much to them, that it’s impossible to perfect in only 3 months. So, my first bit of advice to you is to accept that no one before you has mastered their role during an internship. Feeling confused is perfectly fine so long as we are making continuous steps towards solving the problem!
Lucia, Research Application Scientist
Dear current and incoming Nuance Interns,
Welcome aboard! Following my masters, I started as an intern on the Research Science team under DoYeong in August 2019. I was fortunate to work on cutting edge projects, contribute to codebases and interface with brilliant colleagues such as Jose, Dermot, and Dushyant! So much so, I joined the team full-time!
- Ask A LOT OF questions (Through your questions, you will learn, and possibly educate others)
- Team channels are a wonderful resource to open discussion on specific matters (Dante..)
- Interact with the other Interns
- Try new foods!
Deepak, Research Developer
“Demonstrate high agency and don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions!”
Jenni, Employee Communications Specialist
Dear interns (and hopefully full-time members of Team Nuance, one day!),
As someone who had a few internships under their belt before I started working full-time, the best advice I can give (as cheesy as it sounds) is to ask questions. Be the intern to ask your boss about taking on new projects (if you have the bandwidth). Ask your team and peers questions about what they’re working on. Reach out to people across the company who do work you’re interested in and ask them if they’d have time to meet and grab coffee so you can pick their brains a bit. Your questions and input are so valuable, and trust me, companies are always searching for someone who brings their new and diverse experiences to their work. I can’t even put into words how much I learned from the interns on my team over the course of the last few months.
This is also one of the few times in your life where you’ll get this kind all-access pass to networking opportunities. Connect with as many people as you can – it’ll help you figure out what you like to do (and don’t like, which I would argue is just as important.) The office environment (in-person or virtual) gives you access to so many different types of roles and job fields. Pursue your interests and build those professional relationships. Everyone at this company wants you to succeed and will help you however they can!