So I’m seated in the library working on my CV, which I haven’t worked on in 2 years, since the end of second year – the last time I actually applied for an internship. I got the internship but couldn’t go because they got back to me late and needed a commitment of 4 months that I couldn’t do because I was going back to school.
While I was doing the updating, there was so much I had done that went down into simple statements like the one below:
Some experience in custom software sells gained from pitching Selcos SACCO software to various SACCOs.
A single statement that shows little of the 3 months I worked as an unpaid intern testing this software for bugs(there were several which the developers where slow in correcting, I was always pointing out several that survived every version review) and finally being given the vague task of going out to pitch this software to potential customers.
“Today I want you guys to go out and pitch Selcos to people today” my immediate boss said to us, the two interns, one morning after our daily office prayer. The owner of the company was standing beside him.
“Who do you want us to pitch to?” me hopefully, there’s only so many times you can point out the same bugs to people; I was bored of being in the office.
The owner “You should just walk around town, there are several SACCOs around”
“What the fuck? Just walk around?? What type of marketing plan is that?” I shouted out internally, out loud I said “Just walk around town looking for SACCOs?” a little incredulously.
My immediate boss, perhaps because he caught the incredulity, ”Use Google”
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At that the meeting was over and the owner walked off to his office. The rest of us working in a room that was pretty much and open floor plan, everyone had a desk with a computer that then worked on, we the interns would use which ever machine was free for the day and could be kicked off people who were more senior than us, which was everyone.
I set about looking for a way to find a list of SACCO around town using a combination of Google maps and Mocality, at the time Mocality had far better data than Google. I finally had a list that I could use. I’ve talking about this interning experience, the first few weeks anyway, here.
There are other adventures from this one incident of going to pitch software but I really have to head out for my daily run.
I think though I need to do a blogpost on every single entry in my CV. Just in case recruiters actually click through to my website. Peace!!!!
Hi Sid. First of all I think unpaid internships should be illegal. For what it's worth both of us know we are the future bosses of tech company X and Y. For now could you please promise me that when that happens, we will be paying our interns a princely sum just to ask up painfully obvious questions while at the same time trying their best to improve our miserable existence as company X and Y. Could you do this Sid?
Amen to that Lex