A quick story into my experience helping our team run the 2018 Blizztern program!
2017 - a year that I will never forget. January 2017 was when I filled my very first internship role for a major Hollywood studio (take a guess at which one!). It was also the very same year (December) where I was provided the amazing opportunity to join Blizzard Entertainment as a recruiter for the University Relations team.
To be honest, I really didn't know what to expect when I first arrived... I was so excited, so motivated, so ready to take on the world of gaming. Having been a "nerd" my whole life - for real, I used to spend my high school lunch breaks reading Dragon Ball Z manga in the library and playing Magic the Gathering in the hallway outside Ms. Bishop's science class. I was also trying to "git gud" playing Starcraft on iCCup (an amateur international ladder). Needless to say, I finally felt like the people around me would understand the passions I had for the gaming and entertainment industry.
The journey was only about to begin and little did I know... It was going to be the start of one of the most enjoyable years of my career (and with many more to come!). Who would have thought that helping others achieve their career goals and dreams would be so fun and meaningful? #blessed
1. "Carrier has arrived."
The Level Up
24,000 applications and 93 interns. Those are the final numbers from our 2018 class. All I could think after receiving the statistics for our summer interns was, "Wow, this is going to be one heck of a busy summer!" Why? Because we already had a plethora of ideas of what we could do with a class of this size. Knowing Blizzard, I absolutely believed that we would do our best to make sure our interns had an epic experience across the board. Not only did we want to make sure all interns were working on meaningful projects within their own teams, we also wanted to do everything we could to make sure they had an amazing experience with our extracurricular events. Thus began the epic planning for some of the most epic events I've ever seen for an internship program. And it all starts the day they arrive.
The Fun Begins
I think one of the coolest experience as a university recruiter at Blizzard happens when the interns arrive on their first day. You get to see the excitement in their eyes, you feel the energy in the air and some come in late because they were too busy taking pictures with the Orc statue in the middle of our campus - but that's OK! The party is only about to begin with our very first event usually being the intern mixer where all our interns come together with their mentors to enjoy some contests, free food and a chance to mingle with all their peers.
Not only does our team makes sure our interns have a chance to connect with all their peers, we also make an effort to put together events that are beneficial to their careers and personal growth. This includes our weekday lunch series (essentially lunch and learns) with various speakers and managers from throughout the company along with an executive speaker series (among many other events).
Ultimately, we really like to encourage our interns to not just hang with their teams and roomies (we house all our interns in some pretty nice apartments) but to really go outside their comfort zone in order to learn the rest of the business. Why? Because it takes all of Blizzard to make Blizzard. Our interns ARE Blizzard and now it's time for them to experience what it's like to be a part of this family by learning and growing through interactions with other teams throughout the company. We truly believe that in order to foster an environment of growth and understanding you have to connect with other areas of the business. Heck, we've even seen some interns who came in for one role in the summer, hit it off with someone on another team and by the end of their internship, got offered a job on that other team with the full support of their previous mentors. That's amazing and that's what it's all about!
2. "Ready to work!"
The BIG Decade
Little did I know that when I started with our internship program in 2017 that we were immediately going to start planning for our 10 year anniversary. A bit of a history lesson for ya: Blizzard started its internship program in 2008 and over the years has slowly grown it to what it is today and going on 11 years in 2019. Ten consecutive years is a pretty big deal because it shows that our leadership is committed to what the internship program does and it shows that there has been a very strong return on investment from our intern talent pipeline. Suffice to say, some of our most talented leaders and individual contributors today were at point an intern.
So not only did we throw this crazy cool party in the middle of the campus for all our interns, new grads along with their managers and mentors... We also got them some really cool patches with our new university relations team logo designed by someone on the World of Warcraft team! Come to think of it we gave our 2018 interns a lot of swag (Blizzard-themed backpacks, sweaters, Legion green t-shirts, game codes and lots of free food.) But hey, no one ever complained about having too much swag, right?
A Very Hot Summer
I also wanted to note that the summer of 2018 was legitimately very hot. Since most of our events kick off in July we really had to account for the insanely hot and humid days. Cue: ice cream trucks and tiki boat cruises! Yes, that's right - we give our interns and managers lots of ice cream and we take them on a tiki boat cruise around Newport Harbor in Newport Beach, CA. Just because it's hot doesn't mean we should skimp out on any events! There is always a creative way around what nature throws at us. However, because we knew the interns were going to the beach or going on hikes on their own time already - we didn't feel the need to have to re-create many more "beach days" for them. Instead, we tinkered around with other types of events like: indoor bouldering/rock climbing, high ropes courses to build teamwork and escape rooms (which we actually did for our interns based in Austin, TX). I was even coming up with wacky ideas like relay races (in the middle of summer), martial arts classes and paintballing over a weekend. Of course, as fun as it is to come up with ideas we really had to strike the fine balance of making sure events would celebrate the intern program while providing more value for their lives and careers.
3. "The World Could Always Use More Heroes"
Putting it all Together
At the end of the day, the 2018 intern program came and went so fast that I personally didn't even get a chance to really record all the awesome events and moments. I do know that our entire organization worked really hard to make sure all of the amazing talent that joined us had a great time and hopefully left with an amazing experience that gave them the skills to jump start their careers. Many of these interns would later accept our offers to return to Blizzard full-time as employees once they graduate college in 2019, yay! So mission accomplished, right? Not quite! We still have 2019 to prepare for and we are looking forward to another fun-filled year.
Final thoughts: If you happen to be a college student and are interested in joining us, please make sure to browse Blizzard's careers page during Fall of every school year. We typically post our internships around that time and it's worth it to get your name in the hat early - you don't want to have to cram and rush at the last minute. Our talent acquisition team is always on the lookout for our next amazing heroes so join us on this great adventure into the future of gaming and entertainment. So until next time...
Stay fresh, future interns of Blizzard!
