Join the Cthulhu Corps! (original) (raw)

So, since last updating this thing in May, I obtained, served, and left an internship with Quicken Loans, the top IT company to work for according to Computerworld Magazine and #5 on Fortune's list of Top 100 companies to work for in the United States. And it deserves every one of those accolades, without a doubt. I was there for approximately 3 1/2 months and I had such an amazing experience. I learned so much, made new connections, and got to explore the city I've called home my whole life, to a degree I've never imagined.

My internship started fairly uneventfully, with a phone interview back in September. As normal, I was completely convinced I had flubbed the whole thing and wrote it off without much thought. My cynicism was confirmed when I didn't hear anything for several weeks after. QL's hiring process, in most cases, involves a phone interview, followed by an in-person interview, followed by a job offer, if you're lucky. Much to my surprise, I received a call from the recruiter I had spoken to on October 1st, offering me a position with Amaze U, the internal mortgage banking training team. I was ecstatic!

My first day with Quicken was October 14th, a sunny, decidedly average day in downtown Detroit. I was told I had to arrive for my first day of "company mandated training" at 7:45am. The words "company mandated" and "7:45am" were definitely a bit out of the norm for me, but I dragged myself downtown for it. And I was amazed. I was offered breakfast, coffee, Red Bull, soda, juice, the works! It started off with the basics of using the technology systems in place (setting up email, voice mail, etc.), followed by a presentation about the history of the company, and finally, a tour of the Quicken Loans "campus" downtown. For those not in the know, QL spans several buildings in and around Campus Martius Park in Downtown Detroit, an absolutely beautiful setting for the following months of my life, especially around Christmas, when the Christmas tree was lit and I could sit and watch the ice skaters on the rink from the window of my office. The end of my day was meeting my team lead (non-corporate lingo for "boss". Corporate jargon didn't fly at Quicken.) and my fellow intern, as well as my first glimpse of my penthouse suite in a building they called Chrysler House.( Mooovin' on up...Collapse )
Yes, this was my desk. The lowly intern got this kind of setup.

As the Lovable Red-Headed Intern of Amaze U, I was tasked with rebuilding their internal training website. Unfortunately for me, I had to do this using SharePoint. For those of you that don't know what SharePoint is, imagine trying to build a website in Microsoft Word. Yeah, it's kind of like that. If you're a web designer and you go to Hell, you're forced to build SharePoint websites for all eternity. "But (team lead)," I protested, "I've never used SharePoint before!" My complaints were greeted with a 2 week pass to Lynda.com, where I learned everything I knew about SharePoint in the span of a day, and I was off to the races.

When I took the job, I wasn't expecting the workload I had. It didn't sound too bad until I realized there were at least 200 pages that had to be rebuilt, as well as document libraries, forms, and the like. I was convinced I'd finish it within a week and spend the rest of my time staring at the walls. On the contrary, rebuilding and launching the new site took us up past the new year, with edits still being made constantly.

When I wasn't trying to stab out my eyeball with a Sharpie at the dis-ease of use that SharePoint offered, I was tasked with rebuilding certification materials for each of the training teams. Which wasn't awful, apart from the team leads having a case of what I like to call "it's great but" syndrome, wherein they tell you your work is fantastic, but everything needs to be changed so that it looks nothing like what you came up with. Once I had those finished and the site wasn't going down in flames, I then had the joy of printing upwards of 700 of these things for each team, upon filling out names, double checking, sorting, and the like. That was largely how the last few weeks I spent on Fort St. and Griswold went.

Outside of the daily grind, Quicken was awesome to their interns. There were endless events, volunteer opportunities, and the like for us to partake in. I was paid to go to dinner with my fellow interns, as well as a Red Wings game thereafter. I toured Ford Field, I went ice skating in the park, and even got a tour of the city, all while being paid for it (did I mention it was a paid internship? Because this was a paid internship.) I was also greeted with more "company mandated training", ie free food, Red Bull, and presentations and speeches from the company big-wigs, plus goofy pictures and videos, which made the days seem like a blur. Or maybe it was just the Red Bull.

I made some awesome friends in my time on the 20th floor, both among my team members and my other interns. Going down the elevator for the last time was incredibly difficult for me, but I learned, laughed, loved, and created more in those 103 days than I could have ever imagined possible.