When I’m driving down the road and see the brand-new office building to my left, I don’t see all the people who made that building possible. I certainly don’t see the project management software that carried it to the finish line.
When I was pulling into a parking spot next to this very same building, riding up the elevator, and walking towards Kahua’s front desk, I didn’t see the drawings and specs that foreshadowed the space…
We are Rilla and Lindsay, seniors in college who interned at Kahua this summer. Rilla’s at Samford University, Lindsay at the University of Georgia. Just as we did not see the blueprint for Kahua, we did not see ourselves in the construction software industry, not at first.
Like many people who have not experienced it, we associated construction with people wearing hard hats.
We knew there were engineers, project managers and contractors behind all projects, but had never stopped to consider the breadth of people, skills and technologies necessary to bring a capital project to life.
The goal of an internship is to gain real-world experience and learn the complexities of an organization. In other words, it’s trying on a hat. Our internship experiences at Kahua allowed us to explore the myriad roles, not only in the construction industry, but also in the larger business world.
Over the 11 weeks of the internship, we learned not only about marketing, AI, social media, and product marketing, but also how to thrive in both the corporate world and construction software industry.
More important, we learned that a great internship doesn’t just sit you down at a desk.
We were able to contribute, ask questions every day, and discover where our own skills might fit into the construction world.
Instead, we were allowed a seat at the conference table, beside our CEO, or the Starbucks booth, across an intern-turned-full-time employee.
Lindsay’s Intern Lessons Learned
Before this summer, I was eager to test out different areas of marketing but was unsure what it would look like in the construction industry. I was timid and nervous because it felt completely different than any of my school projects.
From day one I noticed that there is room in this industry for builders and engineers, but also for marketers, developers, storytellers, and people whose future jobs might not even exist yet.
For other students like me, that means you shouldn’t rule out an industry just because you don’t immediately see where your major fits. Sometimes the greatest way to discover it is to step into something unfamiliar.
Give interns opportunities to participate in broader company-wide discussions.
After just a week of learning about this unfamiliar industry, I began to see how important marketing is and how well it blends with other departments. I accepted an internship with the title “Social Media and Influencer Marketing intern”, but I ended up experiencing so much more
Let interns experience different roles and people across departments in a hands-on way.
I got to sit in on meetings with the Sales Development Representatives, had one-on-one meetings with members of different departments, created a new LinkedIn carousel series, filmed and edited human-centered short form video content, sat in on podcast recordings, and got into digital marketing by tracking and creating approaches to grow Kahua’s director-level audience on LinkedIn.
No two days looked the same, and I loved that.
Give interns real things to accomplish, not just busy-work.
One of my favorite accomplishments is learning new video-creation software that allows prospective customers to explore Kahua’s capabilities through a self-guided experience. I was given the freedom and responsibility to create something that would be used by the business and generate leads! (which seemed pretty sweet to me!)
Take a tour of Kahua and see what I accomplished!
That trust has taught me more than a hypothetical project ever could. I gained one of the skills I had always needed more of: confidence. This internship showed me how much you can learn when you are given a real opportunity to contribute to something great.
Rilla’s Intern Lessons Learned
This summer, I got to intern with Kahua’s product marketing team. We identify how our product fits in the market, and act as the mediary between product development and selling.
Before this summer, I had hardly a clue what any of that meant.
Now I can confidently say I contributed to the team’s goals and the goals of our company through meaningful work. What about my internship made that possible? What lessons can employers draw from it?
Facilitate a learner’s mindset across the organization
What made my internship a stand-out experience was the encouragement I received, from everyone, to ask questions. An intern’s natural positioning is curiosity. We want to know what our co-workers are up to, how we can contribute to a project, what works, and what doesn’t.
A question is simply opening a door to understanding. As an intern, knowing that no one would shake their head when I asked a question allowed me to walk through lots of open doors. When our understanding grows, we become even greater assets to the team.
But an employer’s invitation to ask questions should not be restricted to the program’s first week. Nor should it just extend for the internship’s duration; ideally, it exists for the whole company, all the time. Walking into a work environment where leaders and those who report to them ask each other questions—to clarify, introduce an idea, or ask for help—sets the expectation for a learners’ mindset.
As an intern, this mindset paid off, both for me personally and the projects I worked on. Asking questions raised my confidence; when I was humble and curious, I got rewarded with more insight. This enabled me to solve the challenges of my workday in innovative ways.
Encourage collaboration between interns and the rest of the organization
Just as with asking questions, everyone wins when an organization encourages its interns to collaborate with their co-workers. The organization gets lasting, innovative solutions quickly; the intern gets experience contributing to a bigger purpose.
What’s more, everyone gets to see their colleagues’ unique skills and ideas in action. We are each an expert in something; none of us are an expert in everything. Collaboration allows more creative problem-solving to take place, like overcoming a marketing challenge with the tactics of a product developer.
Both collaboration and getting interns to ask questions happen naturally when fulltime employees, from the top-down, lead by example. This facilitates an environment in which interns will both deliver meaningful work and thrive. We get to see our place on a team working towards something important. Like many industries, construction runs on teamwork. This summer, I learned to see myself as a team player, contributing to a larger project, impacting a whole industry.
An Experience to Build On
We walked out of that same building on the last day of our internship, having tried on more hats than we knew existed.
In an industry that is nothing if not collaborative, we were given the opportunity to work across departments, alongside hard-working, expert colleagues. At the end of the day, we got to help people build better.
Before this summer, construction was not on our radars. Our internship experiences in the construction world have opened our eyes, both to new possibilities, and to the kind of careers we want to build.