Beach Balls & Gelato: Building Connections and Facilitating Career Growth Pt. 1
Let me start off by laying this out – one of the most important experiences you can have while in college is not the college itself. You may ask – “I thought I needed a high GPA to get a good job,” or “Maybe I’ll finally find a close group of friends in the dorms.” While both thoughts are valid and correct in their own right, a good internship is crucial to your early adult “college years” life. By a good internship, I’m not talking about getting rich or meeting your idols; I’m talking about an experience that truly gives you the opportunity to learn, gain real world experience, and make lasting connections.
Part I: Choosing a Path Forward
Now, I haven’t had the most typical path. Graduating with an associate’s degree and having all these credits, just to find out that most wouldn’t transfer between schools, I was left questioning whether I made the right choice. I chose to stick with my electrical engineering degree because I was sure that it was going to give me the opportunity to support myself and that I would enjoy that career path the most. As I’m about to go into my 6th and final year in my journey of getting my bachelor’s degree, I found myself again wondering if I made the correct decision.
Since I was very young, I had a knack for figuring things out and coming up with new solutions for a problem. I knew, my parents knew, everyone around me knew that I was going to end up as an engineer; it was just a matter of when. Fast forward to high school, and I was extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to join my school’s chapter of “Project Lead The Way” (PLTW).
PLTW is a program through Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) that provides high school students with the opportunity to take engineering classes throughout high school that could also earn them college credit (shout out to Mr. P from Frankfort-Schuyler HS). Each year was a new course in mechanical, electrical, or civil engineering culminating in a college credit exam that would determine if we could buy the credit from the university for our transcripts. While I passed every year, I never took the opportunity to purchase the credit, as I was still unsure of what specific engineering field that I wanted to go into. To be honest, I graduated high school telling everyone that I was going to college for cybersecurity, which ended up being far from what I ultimately decided to do.
Like I said earlier, this whole time in college I had been questioning if I had made the right choice, if I would enjoy my career path after college, if the subject matter of my career would even make sense to me. Thankfully, Indium Corporation saw my potential, and I interpreted that as a way to align myself, finally, with what I ultimately wanted to do in the future. Setting sail on a new course, I found myself in a new role, in a new field, learning completely new subject matter under the vast umbrella of mechanical engineering.
Part II: The Indium Way
So where does Indium Corporation come into this? The environment at my Indium Corporation internship is conducive to learning and gaining practical experience while also having the opportunity to make important connections. Starting day one, I had a good feeling about this place. Before even getting into orientation and taking our ID photos, I heard numerous people walk by and say “good morning”; I knew this was a good environment.
After we were all set and ready for orientation to begin, we were set up with one of the best icebreakers I have ever done. While we had all the usual topics of name, college, major, etc., a ginormous beach ball was hurled our way. With the inherent entertainment of watching people try to catch the ball, especially when someone misses completely, the beach ball was covered in all types of questions to get to know you, like, “What is your favorite ice cream flavor?” or “What is your dream travel destination?” These questions were more important than I initially realized, as they didn’t just give us a way to learn a little more about each other, but also acted as conversation starters.
This sense of openness and camaraderie was infectious from the start. It was but the second day when, without coordination, us interns at headquarters gathered and had lunch together – which has been the case ever since. Another immediate occurrence was the big groups that formed during our first lunch-and-learn session: interns and co-ops from all sites pulled together tables and created groups, which facilitated conversation and relationship building.
Another way that Indium Corporation creates a sense of bonding for not only their interns, but every employee at the company, is called the Indium Way. The Indium Way is a set of three tenants that is meant to most closely represent Indium Corporation’s values – these being respect, appreciation, and achievement. In no particular order, these values are what appeal to me the most about how my ideal working environment is. When working, I want to feel accepted and respected, gaining the acknowledgement of my successes and failures, while also being able to ask for guidance when needed. I feel that this feeling aligns great with what Indium Corporation strives to give to their employees.
It’s not just employees that follow the Indium Way either: it comes from the top down. When it came to lunch time on orientation day, I was undecisive with what I was going to eat. Wanting to switch out my salad for a sandwich, I went back up to the counter where it just so happened that our CEO was also looking at the lunch options. I didn’t even recognize him, because at this point, we’d only been in the building for 4 or so hours. Despite this, he reached out his hand and introduced himself. It wasn’t until I sat back down at the table and my supervisor said, “Oh, you met Ross,” that it finally kicked in who had greeted me during my covert chicken operation. I took this interaction to heart, especially because at other companies, there are many stories of higher management not caring much about their employees, sometimes not even making an appearance, especially if it is a large company. While Indium Corporation is not quite the same size of industry titans like Google or Apple, it is also not a mom-and-pop shop, so with upper management being present at an internship event, it definitely made me feel more connected to my role at Indium Corporation.
