The Truth about Interning at SAP. My Past Intertwined with My Future

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In my first blog, I talked a bit about my first few months interning at SAP. I described my experience working out of the Palo Alto office and the different parts of SAP that I was involved in. Now, I will share a bit more about my professional background and what I hope to gain from this internship. Understanding my personal path to SAP, I will shed some light on my goals and aspirations for my time at SAP. Additionally, I hope with these blogs will be a resource for students who are interested in interning at SAP.

My recommendations for future interns

My advice for students interested in interning at SAP is to reach out to current employees at SAP. I tapped into every resource I had to meet people working at SAP from my school’s alumni network to family friends. To be completely honest, asking people for career advice and hinting at a job referral was terrifying to me. I reached out blindly to people that had graduated from my college and are working at SAP. At first, I was nervous because I didn’t know these individuals, nor did I know how they would react or if they would even respond. I took a leap of faith and it paid off. My networking efforts resulted in me connecting with an amazing alum who wrote me a wonderful referral and provided me with some career guidance. This experience helped me realize that everything will work out for the best. Taking risks and putting yourself out there is pretty scary at first, but you can build up some great relationships by just knowing that people genuinely want to help. And now that I am at SAP, I am still constantly trying to branch out even more. I am a huge advocate for networking because relationships are a key aspect to one’s professional career and development.

From reader to writer: the path of a marketer

I cannot remember a time when I did not love to read. This love for stories and words have manifested themselves in my passion for writing. I have always been compelled by the power of words and the influence writing has over society and culture. I knew that I wanted to pursue a profession where I could write stories, such as customer success stories and roadmaps, or share information that would make someone’s life easier or just enjoy their job just a bit more. These two professional aspirations made marketing and content creation, especially in the technology world, a perfect fit for my passion for crafting stories and my writing skills.

Internships from my past that affect my present

Over the last few years, I have really tried to work at a wide variety of companies to gain a deeper sense of what marketing entitles. During my first year of undergraduate, I interned at a B2B marketing start-up. The different number of tasks ranging from creating marketing campaigns to writing creative briefs to managing the company’s social media account helped me gain a diverse set of skills I carry with me until today. Working at a start-up compared to my position now at SAP are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. I would say working at a start-up my role was much more general while at SAP I have a much more specialized responsibility. I believe that my past internship gave me a great foundation and work ethic, but my position now is homing in on my communication and writing skills. Overall, I have found that I love the technology industry because it is constantly changing and there is always a new challenge waiting around the corner. Many of the skills I gained over these years are extremely valuable, but the relationships that I cultivated are priceless. I have really brought this mindset to my internship at SAP.

My goals to enhance my future

For this internship, which is my last undergraduate internship, I was very focused on developing goals that revolved around post-graduation. My key three objectives were:

• Building my network at SAP.

Networking is key at any company. At the end of the day, it’s not always what you know but who you know. Since SAP is so large and extensive, there are so many wonderful opportunities to reach out to individuals from different departments and some even working with different products. SAP really encourages its employees to reach beyond their teams and network by supporting a wide variety of coffee corners and events. So far, I have met lots of wonderful and successful individuals l which I hope will be long term friends.

• Improving my writing and communication abilities

I am always trying to work on my communication skills. I think there is always room for improvement and that writing is a process that takes effort and just putting yourself out there. I feel like in the past I have been very tentative and insecure about my writing but I know that my colleagues want to help me improve my communication skills. I discovered that SAP is a supportive and caring community which is based around hard work and collaboration which has inspired me to work harder. Their feedback is not criticism but rather a source of support and new perspective. Most importantly editing. Recently, I have been working closely with George, another member on our team, to edit blogs and content for TechEd and I have also worked on some blogs on the experience.sap page. Through these different project, I have been able to enhance my editing skills and in the process help other’s also.

• Having fun and being open to new experiences

This is my last internship before the dreaded job search comes. Having fun is very important to me. Having fun with my co-workers and enjoying the experience seems like a silly goal but I think sometimes it does take a bit of effort to take a step back and try to keep things light and breezy.

Even though these are three sperate goals, I found that they are much more inter-related than one would expect. My experience and growth are a combination of all three of these goals.I find that with hard-work and an open mind, the opportunities are endless. I am so happy that my journey has led me to SAP.