Highlights:
- National Intern Day is Thursday, July 28
- RingTern Volunteer Day gives back to local communities
Celebrating National Intern Day
National Intern Day was established in the US in 2017 to recognize the efforts and achievements of interns. We’ve always known— a good internship can be life-changing, providing critical experience, career recognition, and hopefully, a future job. That’s why we equip our RingTerns with specific skills, industry knowledge, challenging projects, and volunteer opportunities, setting them on a path to success.
International talent emerges
We recently interviewed three of our Summer 2022 RingTerns who shared thoughts on their current projects and the ways their experiences with RingCentral have built their skills and shaped their career ambitions. Seanne Sabroso, Employee Branding Associate RingTern based in Manila, Philippines, enjoys communicating directly with employees and encouraging participation in Comparably surveys. “Since I’m an Organizational Communication student, this current project has really helped in furthering my skills.” Sabroso has her sights set on an Employee Branding career.
In London, Associate Account Executive RingTern Sava Zeki recently attended end-of-quarter meetings, “Being able to apply all of the concepts I’ve been learning at university into these like real-life business scenarios, I found that really great.” After her year-long internship at RingCentral, Zeki will return for her last year at the University of York with the confidence that her education has real-world applications. Her internship has confirmed her career goals, “This reassured my idea that I’m a people person, and that’s the sort of role I want to be involved in, something along the lines of what I’m currently doing with the ability to meet lots of new people and talk about how great our product is.”
US interns Disrupt
Our RingTerns have no shortage of talent and bright ideas, so we have challenged them to disrupt. For the summer-long Disrupt Innovation Challenge, RingTerns will mimic the entrepreneurial show “Shark Tank” by creating and developing product features they will then present to our panel of executive judges. RingTerns are encouraged to team up with peers in other departments to work cross-functionally to produce a feature from conception to presentation. The best idea not only wins Disrupt, it gets put into production as a part of a future product release. Judges will use a predetermined scale to judge and decide which feature they would consider putting into production.
Khalil Barnett, a Charlotte-based IT Desk RingTern, says Disrupt is helping him develop project management experience, technical expertise, and collaboration skills. “When it comes to certain ideas, disagreements happen but we always do what’s best as a whole.” Khalil credits his IT Manager for inspiring him to want a career as an IT Manager. “He’s straight to the point, teaching how to collaborate and function well.”
Getting experience, giving back
There’s more to work than work. In addition to their regular roles, RingTern Volunteer Day encourages our RingTerns to share their bright ideas, inspire, and help strengthen their communities. This summer’s cohort of RingTerns had two volunteer opportunities to choose from. One group created digital flashcards introducing basic coding concepts. Boundless Brilliance will use these to encourage girls to learn to code and enable girls to explore the sphere of programming through creative and educational resources. Another group of RingTern volunteers learned American Sign Language – and then recorded a video message with birthday greetings to raise the spirits of the Deaf community. These video messages were filled with warmth and love, emanating feelings of compassion, kindness, and goodwill from the volunteers.
Experience is everything
Wherever our RingTerns land, we know that they have increased their interpersonal skills, industry knowledge, and their ability to innovate and inspire through collaborative projects and meaningful volunteer work. We are proud to recognize our hardworking RingTerns’ achievements and foster a creative and innovative community where interns are valued and celebrated. #NationalInternDay #NID
Originally published Jul 28, 2022