The software engineer laughs out loud when asked about the highs and lows you can experience as an ambitious university student looking for an internship and a potential career path in Australia’s competitive tech industry.
The year before Hayley interned at Amazon, she dipped her toes in the job market with an internship at a start-up that left her feeling alienated and unappreciated.
“It wasn’t a good fit for me,” she said.
When Hayley saw an advertisement for Amazon Australia’s internship program a short time later, she jumped at the chance to work in a different environment.
She has nothing but praise for Amazon’s ‘peculiar’ interview process which after a phone screen, involved in-depth hour-long interviews with stakeholders from across the business. She welcomed the opportunity to engage meaningfully with her interviewers, especially after the more aggressive interview style she’d experienced at other companies she had met with, which left her feeling like a candidate on a conveyor belt.
“I applied for a three month software engineer internship at Amazon, got the internship, got the experience and at the end of it I was offered the chance to come back as a graduate after I completed my university degree,” she says.
Hayley studied a software engineering degree at the University of Queensland where she discovered the joys of problem solving using computer code.
“I would definitely recommend the Amazon intern program,” she says.
“I’ve done other intern programs and I really think what I found most impressive was the impact that you can have as an intern at Amazon. It was so cool that something I worked on during my internship could have a direct impact on the business.
“I know that some of the other students who interned with me were actually launching features that went out to Amazon customers. Mine went out to employees. That was really cool – to work on real live projects as an intern and it wasn’t something I expected to be able to do.”
Hayley joined the same team she interned with when she took up a fulltime role with Amazon Australia as a software engineer, and says the transition was seamless because she knew the team and the requirements of the job.
“I was really supported by everyone and I never felt like I couldn’t go to someone for help,” she says, adding that being allocated a “buddy” in her team and an advisor who was not part of her team, provided valuable additional support.
She has now been pro
moted and also switched teams to challenge herself in a different environment. She said she loves the flexibility of being able to significantly change her role without seeking a new job with a different employer.
“I think one of the opportunities Amazon provides, because it’s so big, is that you can move around to a different part of the company and it feels fresh, and because of that I feel like I could stay with Amazon for a long time,” she says.
Amazon Australia currently has openings for its 2022 internship program. There are opportunities around Australia in roles ranging from retail, engineering, operations, management and business development to software engineering, and cloud support. Interested students can head to https://www.amazon.jobs/en/business_categories/student-programs to find out more and apply.
