This summer, Aversan created 3 summer student internships within our Business Development department. The internships were 10 weeks in length, beginning in May. Now that those 10 weeks have gone by, we sat down to interview this year’s interns for a little perspective on how they felt about their experiences and Aversan in general. We hope that this article will help students and new graduates (and beyond!) gain insight into what it’s really like to work at Aversan, as well as a snapshot of our company culture.
Before we get into the details, let’s get to know the Aversan summer interns!
Avinash P. 
is attending Queen’s University as a student in the Chemical Engineering program. In the future, he hopes to find himself in a career related to the oil /gas industry or consulting.
Wajahath A.
is currently a student at Ryerson University enrolled in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Mechatronics. He is interested in pursuing a career in Robotics, along with some coding and hardware applications.
Steven S.
is a student at Ryerson University, and is currently in the Aerospace Engineering program. He eventually would like to pursue a career related to his school program in the Aerospace industry.
As Research Analysts, our main duties included market research and reporting for the various industries Aversan has presence in. Every so often we were also given the opportunity to work on ad-hoc projects around the office such as user guide reviews for the health team, programming assignments for aerospace, and trade show preparation for marketing.
At various points throughout our internship, we also received career training from the HR department. Throughout the past ten weeks, we were provided lessons in resume building, interview preparation/execution, as well as job search tips. Aversan’s Human Resources Manager sat down with each of us to work on optimizing our resumes and making them stand out more. The Recruitment Team also sat down with us for mock interviews, providing helpful feedback and tips for us to improve on. We also learned that there was a technical approach to how to answer each interview question, how to use body language and much more. These are lessons that will be helpful in whatever career path we choose.
All of us agree that this is certainly a fun and easygoing environment to work in, making it easy to transition into your career after school. The employees are extremely friendly, helpful, and most importantly, relatable. The social atmosphere of Aversan was very positive and welcoming. Among the list of our favourite things were the pool table and video game consoles (like the Wii) in the lounge. Others included company provided food – snacks during World Cup games, pizza, and themed lunches such as Mediterranean. We were even invited to their summer work party which took place at the top of the CN Tower.
Definitely Wajahath. Avinash had some good games too, but had a habit of getting the black ball in at the last second.
Our list includes things such as good friends, improved time management skills, coding and programming skills (one of us hadn’t done this previously!), Visual Basic knowledge, and most importantly, a solid understanding of how the industry actually works. Each of us also got the opportunity to speak to and interact with the senior management team multiple times throughout our 10 weeks here. It’s cool that we can be on lunch and the COO or top Project Managers just come up and engage in conversations with us. It is such a friendly environment.
Our internships at Aversan have encouraged us to go back to school with a completely new attitude. We’ve seen how the industry works now – and now we are going to understand how our programs and learnings can be applied to the real working world.
[Wajahath] I am personally coming out of it with a sense of professionalism. Our experiences with talking to senior management can be transferred to how we approach professors. Instead of hesitatingly emailing them, we look forward to engaging conversations to learn about their own experiences and applications in the real world. Overall, we will go back to school in a serious mindset, understanding that we should take what we learn seriously as it can help us in our careers.
[Avinash] Although I am in chemical engineering, this experience helped me in shaping my career path. I’ve always had a hard time on deciding between the Oil and Gas industry and consulting. The skills that I’ve defined here, the assignments that I had worked on and the observations that I have made definitely made me realize that consulting is my strong suit and something that I would enjoy.
Although we are used to working in teams from school (for every group project), this was different because we had to do so in a professional setting. Looking around us, everyone was so good at collaborating and working together to solve problems. If a person needed help with something, someone would simply roll their chair over to their desk and they would tackle the problem together. It was great seeing how productive people could work as a team and how the open concept design in the engineering department was utilized.
[Steven] When we were given a project, we had to play off of each other’s strengths. In one instance, we were given a programming assignment, and as a result divided up the work based on our knowledge and experience. In this case, I had the most knowledge in C/C+, and therefore did more of the programming and coding whereas Avinash did more of the reporting.
We all agree – yes! Our experiences at Aversan have definitely been worthwhile, and we have learned so much in this short period of time. We wish our positions extended further than the first half of the summer. Now that we are used to working as a team and understand the culture of the company, we want to show how efficient we can be and make a difference.
When going into the interview, be relaxed – the Recruitment Team is very friendly. Some positions may seem intimidating, but don’t let that get in the way of having a good interview. If you feel good, you’ll do good.