A year ago, I was completely lost in my professional path. I wasn’t sure what to do, or how to start my career, or which career I even wanted to pursue in the first place. You’re probably thinking, typical millennial, right?
I spent my last year of college trying out a series of internships that made me question whether I had chosen the wrong degree in Communications. From fashion, to finance, to wedding planning etc., I thought I had seen it all. But all I really had was a resume full of experience that I would never use.
And then along came Vidyo.
The first time I heard about Vidyo, I was sitting at the table of the family for whom I’d been babysitting the past five years. The wife mentioned that her company was hosting a summer internship program and that, if I wanted, she would submit my resume. I was about three months shy of becoming a college graduate without a job like the rest of my struggling generation and I knew I needed to find something fast.
Of all the industries I saw myself heading towards, technology was definitely not one. As a woman in communications, I thought I might become something like a wedding planner or a badass celebrity PR agent, but I definitely didn’t think I’d be a part of something as exclusive as the tech industry. There were the Mark Zuckerberg’s and the Steve Jobs’s of the world, and never forget the Bill Gates’s, but I never pictured that there might also be room for the Paula’s of the tech world.
In an industry where household names like Google have a female workforce that makes up a mere “17 percent of the company’s tech jobs” or Twitter (which I spend most of my day on), where only a “laughable 10 percent” of the company is influenced by a female workforce, it’s easy to understand why young women like me might not see themselves in this industry. However, if you’re anything like me and this story seems relevant, go and explore tech. I promise you won’t regret it.
A year ago I walked into an internship program determined to check one more industry off my list of industries that I would probably never work for. I finished that same summer as a full-time marketing associate for Vidyo.
The department I work for is small and new, but it’s led by an incredible team whose chief is a powerhouse of a CMO (and who happens to be a woman). Here, I’m helping to build a whole new chapter for my company. That is the beauty of tech — change.
I work in an industry where I get to learn from co-workers who have built, and worked for, world renowned companies, ours included. I work in an industry where stagnation is the exception, not the rule, and where I’m expected to grow, learn, and build so that, when I’m ready, I can move on to my next chapter. I work for an industry that is on the rise but that continues to see a decline in the female workforce. So for those of you young, determined, millennial ladies who have not found their home in the workplace just yet, I dare you to take your shot at this male-dominated industry and let yourselves become the next Steve Jobs.
And to start…. Here’s my gift to you: Vidyo’s Internship Program
