(Analyst intern Ikthedar Chowdhury)
When a business wants to outsource their IT services, they go to Virteva. Virteva delivers IT and Customer Service solutions that help organizations do more with their technology. Part of that mission involves their Service Desk, which operates 24/7 from their Minneapolis headquarters and delivers support experiences to their customers by leveraging industry-leading technology such as ServiceNow, Cisco, Microsoft and Calabrio. All this is accomplished with the help of their IT professionals.
To help find and fund many of the IT interns that they hire, Virteva looks to the SciTech Internship Program, through which, the company has hired 13 Service Desk Analyst interns since it started using the program in 2015.
Abbey Nelson is a Recruiter for Virteva and has overseen the last few intern hires. To be a Virteva-quality applicant, she said, students require more than just an IT skillset. Nelson’s ideal candidate, “is someone with high tech capabilities and good people skills.”
“IT is a customer service industry,” said Casey Kussatz, a Service Desk Supervisor at Virteva. The days of isolated computer programming, with little human interaction, are over.
When hosting an internship, Virteva is dedicated to teaching its new recruits everything they need to know about the different programs and platforms required to effectively respond to their customer’s IT concerns. But, Kussatz said, the one thing they can’t teach is genuine customer service.
“So that’s a big thing we look for here,” said Kussatz, “especially when hiring for the Service Desk.”
Ikthedar Chowdhury, a software development and IT major at Mankato State with experience in the service industry, checked all the boxes.
The Takeaway
“Working at Virteva has been a great learning experience for me,” Chowdhury said. “I’m getting exposure to a lot of IT platforms while helping customers find solutions to their IT problems. And the best part is learning hands-on. There are a lot of platforms I can use while working here and that’s really beneficial to me. I couldn’t use those before when I was in school.”
By learning how to leverage his time on the Service Desk, and dealing with multiple programs and people a day, day after day, Chowdhury is developing his technical communication through his customer service experience.
Because of this internship, Kussatz said, Chowdhury is “now equipped with hands on, troubleshooting experience that will benefit him wherever he goes. Because no matter what he does after Virteva, in the IT industry, these are the skills and experiences that are going to serve him.”
Get Involved
Learn more about the SciTech Internship Program, apply online and create your own meaningful internships that support your company and Minnesota’s growing STEM workforce.
Small Minnesota companies receive up to $2,500 to help pay a STEM intern. At least 350 wage matches are available through August 2019.