It’s internship season, and with that usually comes a conversation or two between friends about the company you work for and what they do. Once I’m done sharing about my experience, there are typically a couple follow-up questions, the most popular one being: “It’s based out of where?” If there is anything I have learned up to this point, it is that to make an impact, it doesn’t really matter where you are. In fact, I think it’s a little more enjoyable to make that impact in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

My Journey

Let me introduce myself and share how I came to be an InterWorks intern. My name is Ben Calder, and I just wrapped up my junior year studying finance at Oklahoma State University. Before this summer, I worked a few different positions, including at a country club in high school, running a budget for my fraternity and, most recently, working in the InterWorks accounting department part-time. So how did I manage to wind up in my current role as a BI intern?

During my time with InterWorks accounting, I started to pay close attention to how satisfied our clients were after projects finished. I noticed shoutouts from our clients to specific consultants in Slack channels saying how happy they were to work alongside our team. I was immediately drawn to this company whose clients are excited about not only the product they receive but also the people with whom they interact. Shortly after I realized the potential opportunity to learn consulting from the best, I wanted to waste no time jumping in. I learned the basic foundations of Tableau from one of our consultants on a local client project and was able to transition into my summer role.

Life as an Intern

Life as an intern in 2020 is a little different than it would normally be due to the pandemic. One of the positives I’ll take away from this summer will certainly be my level of comfort with remote work. Many of the projects InterWorks participated in occurred remotely before the pandemic hit, so I really feel like I am learning from the best in that regard. I certainly miss being in an office environment, but modern technology and video conferencing have allowed us to interact with others in a mostly normal capacity.

Internships are a great way to gain real-world experience as well as be exposed to new skills. I feel that I am in a great environment to learn those skills due to the quality of people I get to work alongside. Folks from our HQ in Stillwater all the way to those in Singapore have reached out and made themselves available for conversation. There are only three interns this summer (shoutout to John and Henry), and we are quickly learning a lot about career paths.

Above: Henry, John and I eating breakfast at the Stillwater office

The Data Viz

Let’s re-visit the beginning of this blog. I mentioned how this time of the year usually brings conversations about the company you are interning for and what they do. It is easy for me to believe that InterWorks is the best people-focused tech consultancy in the business, but I wanted to find a way to illustrate InterWorks to others outside the company. What could be a great way to show this? You guessed it: a data viz.

I am glad I was able to share my experience up to this point with you. Check out the viz below to learn a little about our team and what we are about. If you’d like to have a conversation about your data and tech challenges, reach out to our team today!