1999
Sometime in the spring of 1999 i spent a week emailing every company on www.careerlink.org looking for a internship. Of all the companies I emailed only 1 of those companies responded. Farm Credit Services of America. This lead to a phone interview and a in person interview at the Farm Credit Building on 19th and Douglas
. My interview consisted of asking me what I want to do. Which is programming and going down to the cafeteria to buy a pop. After being told I was hired on that day. I was told I would receive a letter in the mail in a few weeks to accept the offer officially.
When I received the letter and saw my hourly rate. I thought $13.00 an hour was a big deal. The previous summer I think I made $6.25 an hour.
My internship was from May to August.
Highlights on which I can remember.
The company took all interns to Des Monies to see a Iowa Cubs baseball game, farm visit and to just hangout for a few days.
My project was taking employee images off a 3.5 floppy disk. There were about 300 disks which 6 to 9 images on them. It took about 3 weeks to manually do this. Saving them by networkid to a shared location. Then writing a program that would auto size them in VB6. The image was for the Company Directory so you can see who a person was.
This was for Access America which looked at the time.
So before the internship ended. I talked to the leader about being a full time employee when I graduate. He said reach out next year.
April 2000
So a few weeks before my graduation in April I get a call from Farm Credit Services of America having a developer position open. I never did apply for that position and didn’t get a interview. I was called two weeks before I was to graduate and told they hired another person, but because they like what I did during my Internship they created another position for me.
I started May 15, 2000. That day I started my professional career and had my first team outing that Friday.
Last thoughts
Come to think of it, I never actually applied for a position here. I just kept showing up everyday and getting paid. So I am probably just on my 20+ year of being a intern. Come Monday I wonder if I will still be technically employed?
Let me know your thoughts.
Remember the reason of being a intern is to make where you are at, World Class.