Progressive Insurance’s Post

Transcript

Welcome to Progressive's Intern Roundtable. This is our inside look at our summer internship program through the eyes of those who lived it: our interns. I'm Christian, a recruitment marketing specialist with Progressive, and I'm joined by 5 summer interns who are here to talk about their Progressive internship experience. But before we dive in, let's start with a round of introductions. Hi, my name is Joe. I am an accounting intern and I'm a part of our accounting rotation program. I go to Youngstown State University and I am majoring in accounting. Hi, I'm Claire. I am an IT intern. I'm part of the ENTAC data team working on routers, switches and other networking devices and I go to the University of Akron majoring in computer information systems, cybersecurity as well as political science, national security and intelligence studies. I'm Sophie. I'm also with ENTAC data and I also go to the University of Akron studying cybersecurity. Hello everybody. My name's Ian. I go to Case Western Reserve University here at Progressive I am a data analyst intern and on top of that my major at Case Western Reserve University is in data science and analytics. My name is Federico. I'm on the data prefill team as an IT systems test engineer. I go to Florida International University and I study computer science there. Let me just start by asking this first question. What led you to apply to an internship with Progressive? So I've always been a little bit familiar with Progressives internship program. Back when I was in high school, my school actually got a tour of Progressive through used to be called the pet program when they had high school interns. So I always had it like in the back of my head. And unfortunately, due to 2020, I didn't really get to participate in the program as high schooler. But then a couple years later, Progressive actually showed up at a career fair at the University of Akron. And I thought, hey, why not? Like, I'll give them my resume. And within a couple hours I got a call back and here I am now. Wow, couple hours. That's pretty good. Claire, let's go to you next. Yeah, so the um University of Akron has that career fair. And immediately I was drawn to Progressives booth. Everyone was so engaging and it was really easy to hold a conversation with the recruiters there. And obviously I just felt kind of pulled in. I gave them my resume and then just like Sophie said, I got an interview very shortly after and here we are now. Back in the Fall of 2023 you know, I was really looking for a way to really apply what I learned in school in data science and analytics and you know, I was going through Handshake really trying to find something that really stood out. Just reading the description, a lot of the tools that they mentioned of using stuff like Tableau, Python, R you know stuff like that. It's a lot of tools that I was familiar with. But on top of that, a lot of stuff that I also wasn't familiar with. So it really felt like a great way for me to utilize what I've learned plus learned a lot of new and amazing things. I actually had a very unique experience uh, so I spent my first three semesters at Youngstown majoring in electrical engineering and I kind of just didn't want to do that. So I switched Spring of my sophomore year and immediately after switching, I got a Handshake message about a new Accounting Aspiring Leaders Program for Progressive and I was like, well, I mean, my aunt works here. I know that she loves working for the company, it seems like really welcoming environment. So I said why not apply, see what happens. So I ended up getting a phone interview and being a part of the first class of our Aspiring Leaders Program, which was awesome. We got to spend 2 days on campus in May of 2023 and we got to tour both Campus I and Campus II, learning about the companies, speak with John Sauerland, our CFO and it was a great experience. And immediately after we got our two interviews to become an intern, and I had the joy of starting in December, and it has been such a great experience. Well, moving on to my next question. We'll start with you, Federico. What was the like when you found out that you actually got the internship? What was your reaction? Yeah. So I was working as a researcher in a laboratory on campus, and I remember getting a call from my recruiter, and when she told me I got the offer, I was so excited. It was a dream come true. Really, everything I've heard during the interview process really drew me to Progressive. The opportunities to work on different teams, work with different technologies really made it seem that Progressive was the right choice for me. I was so excited. Coming from an IT perspective as well, being able to work for a company like Progressive, I knew I wasn't going to be working with, you know, dusty old equipment that hasn't been seen for ages. So I was really excited to see and kind of get to interact with newer technologies out in the field and see how what I'm learning is actually being applied in bigger businesses such as Progressive. So it was awesome. I was so excited. I'm going into my last year of school and you know, I got the call as I'm walking to work actually, and I was like, oh my gosh, like I'm finally going to get to apply all these things I've learned for like the past like several years, like at a job, like that's really exciting. I remember getting the phone call from my recruiter letting me know that I got it and it was funny too, because it was like ever since I was in elementary school, you would always be watching stories about like you'd be watching YouTube videos of NFL players getting the call that they got the draft and the whole family, like breaking down with them. I don't know, it just felt like that was my moment too, you know, getting that phone call that I, you know, like you said, Sophie would be being able to apply what I've learned for the past three years into, you know, an actual business setting, which was so amazing. Being a part of this internship with Progressive, you know, the projects you get to do are actually related to business and are truly hands on and really have a big impact. I'm curious, once you got here, what would you say surprised you the most about interning with an insurance company like Progressive? Getting to start those first couple of weeks, I immediately saw that it truly is the best work culture I have ever had. I immediately felt welcomed and I didn't feel like I was just a number even though we are part of a massive company. I felt like I was truly valued in my opinion and I felt like I was doing meaningful, meaningful work. And I just, I feel so welcome here and it's indescribable what the culture is like at Progressive. I personally was a little bit nervous about getting stuck in a position where I wasn't really getting to do something that was really expanding my knowledge or helping me grow. And immediately upon kind of getting started at Progressive, I could tell that that was absolutely not going to be the case. Progressive, they put you in with, you know, the full time staff doing so much more than I ever would have imagined and all of it has been so useful. I remember the first day with my business team, ohh, we did our biweekly business meeting call and then we got off and then almost instantly, every single person on my business team personally reach out to me on Teams asking me, hey Ian, if there's anything you need let me know. If there's any help you need with this project, let me know. And you know if it's too much or too little or if you need anything along the way, just let us know. And just getting that instant feedback and just kind of that instant like assurance was really amazing. There's a lot of technology that I've gotten to learn and then actually apply and push code to is extremely relevant. So I'm really happy I took this internship because it's giving me the skills I know that I'll be able to leverage throughout my career, especially as an intern. It's been a great place to start my career. Well, one highlight of the summer internship program is Immersion Week, where Progressive summer interns come from across the country to meet with their teams, interact with each other, and also connect with senior leaders. Tell me, what Immersion Week was like for you? Immersion Week was awesome. Uh, we obviously got to do a lot of really unique things. We got to go to a Guardians game, We got to make, uh, tie blankets for military families, had our intern picnic at the end of the week, and we got to meet Tricia. But one of my favorite part was just getting to network with other interns and learning about what's going on with other business areas and just having that time to really connect with people. Going off of that, what I really liked about Intern Immersion Week was the fact that we were able to build bonds with other interns in ways that were so seemingly simple. Like my favorite, like core memory of internal version week was playing corn hole with some interns that I had never met and it was still so much fun just being able to connect with other interns in that way, in a way that's just seems so seemingly simple but yet so effective because we were able to just make those memories with the simple things. I think my favorite experience was just kind of getting to meet my coworkers finally in person. So actually Federico and I are on the same intern project team, like we all got to like sit in a room together for the first time, like in person, like really like work on our project and it was just like a really cool experience. Yeah, it was great meeting Sophia in person. Love the collaboration we had. It was really productive meeting all the other team members on our collaboration project was really useful use of our time. And then getting to meet interns who I hadn't met before was a blast, honestly. We all got dinner, lunches together. It was a great week just to network, get to know each other personally, and I had a lot of fun. Well, just to wrap things up here, let me ask just one last question. What do you think then is the most important thing that you've gained from your Progressive internship? Obviously, big shout out to the skills you learn, right? You know, it's important to learn those skills to be able to prepare you for industry. But what I would say is even more, even more importantly is how to interact with your coworkers in a business setting, right? And Progressive's environments specifically just caters so much towards really like being able to teach you so that when you know, when you're working your internship and going forward, you'd really have those skills to be able to interact with coworkers and other people in a business setting. Just something that's super important to learn for everybody. With IT at least, you know, there's so many different branches you can kind of follow. And now that I'm in my second internship, I really narrowed down the scope of and kind of gotten a general game plan of where I want my, you know, eventual career to kind of go and where and how I want to get there. I learned that I truly want to stay at Progressive for as long as I possibly can. And I look forward to looking into what I can do to stay here, either extending my internship or coming back for a second one much like Claire did. And I just look forward to seeing where that can go. Progressive has done a really great job of helping me become more efficient in writing code, in uh, managing problems, talking to team members, and those are skills that can only really be gotten doing the work rather than just in theory in the classroom. I would say leadership skills. I was very pleasantly surprised of the opportunities I got as an intern. I've personally gotten to like work on like very important, like business things. Like there's sometimes be like something important going on. And like one of my mentors would be like, hey, hey, Sophie, do you wanna like join this Teams call and like shadow or like ask questions? And like, I feel like I'm like learning so much and getting to apply myself. It's not like that, you know, intern stereotype at all. Like we're really getting to apply ourselves here and it's very exciting. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate both the time that you spent as well as also just sharing your experiences with us. And of course, if you are interested in learning more about a Progressive internship, visit progressive.com/students.