Snyk kicks off Community Outreach Internship Program

Last fall, we made the decision to launch a Community Outreach Internship Program at Snyk.

Like many across the globe, we at Snyk were troubled by how the economic impacts of covid-19 are disproportionately affecting women and underrepresented minorities, and wanted to ensure that Snyk was playing a role in being a part of the solution.

In addition, it has at times been challenging to balance our priorities around rapid hyper-scaling with our goals to increase the diversity of our workforce, and launching this community outreach program was an investment designed to deliberately bring together our values as a company, our growth goals, and our social impact priorities.

So, we designed an internship program consisting of select roles across all our departments and offices, reserved specifically for women and underrepresented minorities. In November last year, we opened 15 internship positions, and received an amazing response of over 1,500 applications. The responses around this were overwhelming and inspiring—a big thank you to everyone in the community for sharing across social media.

We received a diverse and compelling array of applicants, and one of the hardest parts by far was being forced to select among this pool of incredible talent for the few internship spaces we had available. We met many, many talented candidates who left us inspired, and renewed our conviction in the purpose this initiative served. And so, it came to be that on Feb 1 this year, after a grueling selection process, our first class of interns joined our Snyker family.

I had the opportunity to meet our interns during their induction last week. As I heard their feedback and questions, it occurred to me—we started the program with the simplest of intentions, to do our part to help during the pandemic. But as it took shape, and transformed from a theoretical plan into our group of newest Snykers, it took on a whole different largesse I had not sufficiently anticipated—the richness that they bring to the fabric of the Snyk community. Our interns come from all walks of life. They cover the gamut of several countries and many more nationalities and cultures. Many of them are using this as an opportunity to embark on entirely new careers, having worked previously in vastly different fields like law, music, or psychology.  All of them bring curiosity, enthusiasm, and tenacity that leaves me in awe.

We designed the program to provide a relatively inexperienced talent cohort with the opportunity to develop in their fields. But in fact, this class of interns has proved the ability to jump in with both feet first, having immediate impact on the business with their astute questions, sharp observations and meticulous execution. In contradiction to generational stereotypes, I often find myself awed by the youth of today—their passion, conviction, tenacity, and savvy. Our first intern class has taught us how to truly incorporate this pipeline of energy and talent into our overall talent strategy.

We had started the internship program with the intent of giving back to our community. But in fact, having met our interns, I realize that it is the strength of our community, giving once again to us.