Does the UX department at GitLab offer internships? (2021-04-05)
About internships
Internships offer many benefits to an organization and for people starting in their career:
- For the intern, it's an opportunity to try a position for a set duration (2-4 months)
- For the company, it provides a complete view of a person's work style and skills
- For employees, internships provide mentorship and leadership opportunities
Most often, internships provide a recruiting channel for a company that quickly fills open positions with qualified individuals.
UX internships at GitLab
Presently, we do not have an internship program in the UX department at GitLab. We source qualified candidates with our recruiting team and referrals from employees.
Mentorship opportunities are currently plentiful at GitLab. UX is a wide-open field with many skills that we can all learn from each other. While we skew heavily toward user interface and interaction design, there are individuals in the UX department with strengths in visual design, copywriting, strategy, facilitation, and user research that would love to mentor others who want to learn.
When we do organize an internship program in the UX department at GitLab, we will make sure teams are structured to accommodate interns. Under our current organizational model, an intern would have to act alone on a team. They would have to perform at a level beyond their experience, which would be unfair to ask of them without support from a senior person.
Stay engaged
Please use this issue as a container for a conversation about UX internships. Things change, and we could find a need to start a UX internship program in the future.