Internship program offers valuable experience

For many young professionals, entry into the workforce starts with an internship to gain valuable, real-life work experience, often leading to full-time, permanent positions in some cases. Accio Data is proud to offer such internship experiences for students looking to get some insight into the world of background screening software development. For several years, Accio has given this opportunity to many students, and most recently two former Accio interns have accepted permanent positions as junior software developers.

A few years ago, Emma Rodrigue was working as a barista at Starbucks while attending Texas State University where she was studying microbiology. But in her second year of college, Rodrigue became interested in computer science, started taking online classes in her free time and eventually changed her major to computer science and mathematics.

“My internship at Accio was extremely fulfilling and taught me skills that I actually ended up using during the completion of my bachelor’s degree,” Rodrigue said. “After spending five years in the service industry, my internship at Accio showed me for the first time how a career in computer science could look.”

She began her internship by learning how to manually test bug fixes and new development projects, which she said was a great way to learn agile practices while getting used to the Accio product itself.

“While I continued to work on my bachelor’s degree and started taking higher level computer science courses, I even found that a lot of my classes used tools and resources that I used at Accio,” Rodrigue said, “which even further proved how important my internship was in preparing me for a permanent position.”

 

Estephan Melella also joined Accio as an intern while in college. His previous work experience had been limited to working construction jobs in the summer. Melella said joining the Accio internship program helped him tremendously. And like Rodrigue, Melella decided to stay on after college in a junior development role.

“I got all the help I could need to succeed in the internship, and I was doing relevant work that helped me learn the system,” Melella said. “I felt like I was doing important, necessary work. This on top of everything I learned made it an easy decision to come back after graduation.”

According to an article on Zippia.com, there are more than 300,000 interns working every day in the United States, and more than half of them will receive a job offer. In the first few post-graduate years, former interns are 15% less likely to be unemployed and earn 6% more than students who did not intern, according to the article. Additionally, paid internships are 32% more likely to result in a full-time offer.

Accio Data CEO Barry Boes, who himself interned at Peavey Electronics and Advanced Microelectronics while at Mississippi State University, understands the importance of internships to students and to the companies who employ them.

“The real-life experience I gained as an intern gave me a huge career advantage. The practical application of my theoretical knowledge significantly improved my ability to gain value from my education, too,” Boes said.

“We started the paid internship program at Accio Data in partnership with local high schools to give computer science students an opportunity to learn,” Boes said. “The kids wanted to keep working with us in college, so we expanded our program to college students. It is an excellent way to develop and retain top talent in today’s labor market.”

Sources:
Zippia. “20+ Compelling Internship Statistics [2023]: Data, Pay, And Trends” Zippia.com. Feb. 9, 2023, https://www.zippia.com/advice/internship-statistics/