Intern Insights: Zaneta Szczypior, Marketing Intern

Six weeks at a company is not a long time, but being an intern at test IO is definitely an opportunity to discover your strengths (and weaknesses), all the while getting immersed in the awesome startup culture.

One of the reasons why I wanted to intern at in the start-up pool rather than pursue an internship in the corporate world was because of the close collaboration between departments and multitude of learning opportunities. Simply put, I wanted to work in a “Hacker, Hipster, and Hustler” environment, where the department you’re in doesn’t limit the skills and knowledge you gain. So, this was a perfect opportunity to not only gain hands-on experience in marketing, but also to further my knowledge of the tech world and what methods of app and website testing there are and see agile development in practice.

So, along my journey I’ve been involved in the preparation of the blog, website, SEO and SEM processes. Becoming friends with Google is harder than my marketing lecturer let on and tools like Google Analytics and Adwords require time to understand. However, with the help of my manager Chris, these tasks were much easier and enjoyable.  It’s important for interns to be given a certain amount of flexibility to figure things out and ask questions without feeling intimidated; Chris’s patience and willingness to listen and help as need has definitely shaped my experience here at test IO.

Prior to starting here, my tech background was limited, consisting of reading TechCrunch articles and reviewing apps on the App Store...that’s where Tech Tuesdays came to the rescue.  All employees would gather over lunch as our CTO presented a crash course on variety of topics, such as methods of software testing or how an app is created.  This was a fun way to learn about mobile app development and website testing, and the benefits this offers a company. It was interesting to learn about the testing, automated or manual, that goes on behind the scenes.  Bingo! Now, I realize that I’ve actually been a victim of functional bugs many times without even knowing it.

What was also important in the company culture is that everyone stays ‘in the loop’. Even as an intern, I didn’t feel like I was thrown into the deep waters. With bi-monthly Town Hall Thursdays each team updated everyone on their achievements and goals for the next week. So for example how the engineering team implements new features or what valuable feedback the Operations guys get from the customers.

I still wouldn't call myself an expert in the field of Software Testing, but I’m definitely not a newbie anymore, and I can truly say that I’ve been well-introduced to the tech-savvy environment.