By Sinead Haley, Content Marketing Intern

The Zuora internship program offers endless opportunities to learn and network. As a college student just beginning to explore my career options, I could not have picked a better place to start.

Valuable Lessons

This summer I learned valuable lessons about work ethic, teamwork, and career exploration. In large part, the positive experience I had at Zuora can be attributed to the people I worked closely with. What I most appreciated about my boss was her constant effort to help me understand the company and the marketing field as a whole. She briefed and de-briefed me before and after every meeting, provided a thorough background on my assigned projects, and set up meetings with other employees to help me learn about their roles.

Mike Shelton, an intern on the legal team, feels that his boss has “done a great job of using every opportunity as a teaching moment. Nothing is ever too trivial.” For Mike and me, it was clear from the get-go that Zuora hires interns not only to work, but to learn.

Getting Out of your Comfort Zone

I was pushed out of my comfort zone on a daily basis. Prior to this internship I only understood writing and editing within the context of literary analysis in English classes. Producing content for the Zuora Blog, Zuora Academy, and third party publications challenged me to approach it with a different perspective.

As a data science major at Cal, Maria Sooklaris said that “in an academic setting you’re given very cookie cutter projects and problems.” On Zuora’s data science team, she was able “to dive into the nitty gritty of it and get a clearer sense of what practicing data science actually means.” We both learned that in real life we won’t always get handed a neatly crafted prompt with detailed instructions.

Team Integration

Personal growth comes not only from discomfort, but from learning from others. At Zuora, interns can “rub shoulders with people you wouldn’t normally get the opportunity to meet.” At Zuora HQ, Mike sat next to Jennifer Pileggi, Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary at Zuora. He found it very interesting to witness “her drive, focus, and punctuality. I don’t have to read about it in a memoir,” he said, “I get to see it up close and personal.”

Not only were we able to shadow seasoned professionals, but we were integrated into our teams as if we were full-time employees. I knew I was getting the full picture of what working at Zuora is like.

As an engineering intern, Béa Rose worried it would take too long to familiarize herself “with the code base and feel like [she’d] made a lot of change. But they assigned me tasks that a real software engineer would do and gave me the support I needed to do that work.” As she notes, “I’m really grateful that I am treated like a true member of the team.”

The ZEO Culture

Zuora offers a culture of kindness, mutual respect, and teamwork that extends beyond the workplace. Not only does it have a robust internship program — we had an ice cream social, a panel with Zuora employees who started as interns, a trip to Great America, and more — but it ensures all employees are happy and healthy. During the end-of-quarter chaos they offered free massages in the lobby and bought breakfast and lunch for the entire office. I also attended the marketing team offsite that included a graffiti workshop. Working at Zuora isn’t only about work. It’s also about having fun and building community.

Interning at Zuora has been a privilege. The experience transformed my career aspirations and expectations for the future in ways I hadn’t anticipated, and I feel extremely lucky to have had this opportunity.

Want to check out the experience of working at Zuora yourself? Zuora is hiring!