The life of an intern at Koos

Portret Matilde
Written by
Matilde Cantinho
Digital Content Producer
Jan 15, 2021 . 9 mins read
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A glimpse in the journey of an intern and tips on how to make the most of it.

 

Koos offers internships too! For both bachelor and master students of all kinds of study programs Koos offers internships that last one semester that are both extremely helpful and fun! We (Niek and Ruben, the current interns) will take you through what it is like to be an intern at Koos, what responsibilities interns at Koos get and how Koos helps interns to get the most out of their internship (even in a remote setting).

Entering Koos 

Your internship at Koos starts with a warm welcome. Being excited and a tad bit nervous you will be greeted with open arms by the Koos team. The onboarding of interns at Koos is well arranged, which makes it easy for you to get into the workflow of being an intern in a completely new setting.

Koos has been growing a lot in the past couple of years and has had interns walking around for quite some years now, which you notice! As an intern you get a fixed working spot in the office with your own desktop computer which is nicely presented to you with all the stuff you need to get started. From a notebook to a party popper, everything is there.

As an intern you get plenty of time during your first days to browse through the Koos way of working. Especially helpful is the fact that the previous interns are responsible for arranging and updating the intern onboarding documents. Having a meeting with the previous interns is something we would recommend greatly to share experiences and receive useful tips!

Setting goals and expectations

Once you’ve entered Koos and have been submerged in the Koos working life, you get the chance to set your internship goals. Koos provides you with an internship booklet which you can look back upon at any moment. It contains internship goals, learning points and a moment for a midterm and end evaluation. This is extremely useful to fill out, because you have the things you want to learn in one place.

You are then encouraged by your internship coach to reach these goals by doing the following:

  1. Learn by doing – Try and be proactive and reach the goals you set by actually doing the tasks you wrote down.
  2. Communicate to your colleagues and team members what your learning goals are and where your interests lie.
Illustration made by one of our interns.

Becoming part of the team

Becoming part of the team is something that goes without saying at Koos. You will recognize everybody is open to get to know you. You will get the time and opportunity to know every single one of your colleagues, even in a remote setting. At Koos there is a habit to have coffee dates with other colleagues. Interns and new employees are encouraged to plan these coffee dates of half an hour or more with everybody at Koos to get fully submerged in the team as quickly as possible. 

You will get to know what your colleagues did before working at Koos and what they are interested in. Plus they inspire you with past projects. By doing so, you will get to know Koos even better. At the same time you will get the chance to explain your learning goals and interests. As a result you will recognize that colleagues will approach you with projects and tasks that might be interesting for you to take on!

Intern(al) role

While getting to know your colleagues you will be placed on one or more projects. At Koos, you will not have a strict role as an intern: repetitive tasks, working on one project description or cleaning the office are barely part of your work. Instead, you will be an actual part of the project team. As long as you communicate what you want to learn you will get the opportunity to actually do these tasks yourself.

For example, if you want to do interviews, you may very quickly be interviewing yourself. If you want to learn and facilitate a part of a session, you may do that. Of course, being part of the discussion and creating the deliverables at hand is something you do every day. Coming up with your own ideas and expanding on them is also highly appreciated. At Koos you’re treated less like an intern and more like an employee!

Intern(al) role

While getting to know your colleagues you will be placed on one or more projects. At Koos, you will not have a strict role as an intern: repetitive tasks, working on one project description or cleaning the office are barely part of your work. Instead, you will be an actual part of the project team. As long as you communicate what you want to learn you will get the opportunity to actually do these tasks yourself.

For example, if you want to do interviews, you may very quickly be interviewing yourself. If you want to learn and facilitate a part of a session, you may do that. Of course, being part of the discussion and creating the deliverables at hand is something you do every day. Coming up with your own ideas and expanding on them is also highly appreciated. At Koos you’re treated less like an intern and more like an employee!

Learning curve

As Koos is a Service Design consultancy, and you are maybe not very familiar with Service Design yet, you will follow a masterclass of two full days teaching you the ins and outs of the Service Design process and methodology. This masterclass is a regular part of the onboarding for everybody at Koos and gets you up to speed regarding your knowledge.

Within projects, you get the real hands-on experience of practising service design methods, taking on responsibility within a professional setting and working with real clients. While you develop your skills you can be of great value for your team, but since you are an intern you get the room to make mistakes, which is a comfortable position to be in.

Besides the projects, interns are also encouraged to develop themselves outside of projects. For example, Koos offers a UX-academy which is a 4-week crash course to learn the basics of UX-design. All colleagues are very open to mentor you in a specific thing you want to develop. Learning how to make visualisations and illustrations is a good example.

Being part of Koos

Koos is a close team that collaborates with each other in an informal way. This is no different regarding the interns. You become part of a close community and feel connected with the company and its people. Koos puts energy in making Koos a fun company to work at, even remotely. Every once in a while there is some initiative to boost your mood/work ethic and as an intern you can of course also make your contribution. 

When your internship is over it’s often not a farewell. Often times, past interns stay in touch with Koos and you become part of their network. This shows through the fact that multiple current employees from Koos have done an internship at Koos in the past.

Tips & Tricks for interns

Considering all the support you get from Koos during your internship, having a meaningful and useful internship is, in the end, mostly a result of your own attitude. Therefore, we have four tips for you to get the most out of your internship.

  1. Take initiative: First and foremost, take initiative within projects. Show and let others hear what you want to learn. Take the opportunity yourself and ask project members if you can take on a task.
  2. Ask for feedback: Ask for a lot of feedback from everybody you’re working with. This will greatly help you to improve your skills and way of working within Koos. Plan in feedback meetings but also try to create a constant feedback loop by asking feedback directly during your project.
  3. Give something back to Koos: Koos isn’t perfect either, as an intern you have a fresh perspective on the things done within the company. See if you can organise fun activities or improve the Koos way of working. Proposing these ideas is always appreciated. This blog itself is a good example. Koos can and is willing to learn from interns too!
  4. Be social: This one is especially relevant for remote work. Try and have as much social contact with colleagues as possible and be present at a lot of Koos activities. In this way you become part of the team real quick. Your internship is shorter than you think, so this will help you a lot in getting the best out of it. At the same time you will build up a network of people you know. Both during your internship, where you will discover who can teach you what, and for after your internship where you will know a variety of awesome people working in the field of Service Design.

We hope you will have some idea of what an internship at Koos Service Design is like after reading this blog. You will of course only really know what an internship at Koos is like once you experience it yourself. Koos offers 5 month Service Design internships each semester, starting in September or February. Keep an eye out for the Koos social channels in December and May for the internship vacancies!

Thanks for reading,

The Koos interns

Want to know more about an internship at Koos?

Portret Matilde
Written by
Matilde Cantinho
Digital Content Producer
Jan 15, 2021 . 9 mins read
Share this article