Week 3: Personal Contributions at Avascent
My first two weeks of my internship have been comprised of exclusively training. Avascent doesn’t discern between their new hire analysts and their interns (summer analysts), so I have received Avascent’s onboarding training on the various topics and skills I’d need to perform successfully on a project this summer. Therefore, no major personal contributions to the firm at that point.
This week, however, I was finally staffed to a live project where I am functioning as one of the analysts on the team. Our team (4 team members) is tasked with helping our client win a major Navy contract for an antenna which will allow for the Navy to synthesize all the data from their assets in the field into one clear picture of the battlefield. My role so far has been research and data collection. Earlier in the week, I was asked to learn how to build one of these antennae, so the team could figure out what components the antennas are made out of and then figure out how much one of the antennas should cost, to allow our client to give a competitive bid price on the contract. Then I was asked to perform research on our client’s competitors, the other companies also submitting bids for this contract, in order to provide insight to our client regarding their competitions behavior.
Although this week has been a lot of work, I appreciate how much my project manager and team as a whole trust me to complete these tasks. I feel as if my efforts definitely play a role in driving the final client deliverable forward.
How cool – sounds like interesting and exciting research that will contribute significantly to the client’s bid. I’m so pleased you’ve been given such great opportunities to participate in the work of the organization. Perhaps in the coming weeks you’ll have opportunities to provide insights garnered from your leadership studies with your colleagues that may assist the team in its work – who knows. If not, would encourage you to think about how your leadership studies has informed (if it has) the work that you do for the team/organization.