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A Look at What It’s Like to Go from Health Information Services Intern to Full-Time 3Mer
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At 3M, we're all learning, discovering, exploring and innovating together. Our internship programs allow for students to join other 3Mers on their career journey. Here’s a deeper look at the Health Information Systems (HIS) Internship program from a past intern who was hired on full-time.
Intern: Shayla Gale
Title: Data Engineer
Number of years at 3M: Two years, including internships
Internships held at 3M: Business Intelligence and Data Engineering internships
Education: Bachelor’s and Integrated Master’s in Information Systems from Brigham Young University
Current Location: Murray, Utah
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Why were you initially interested in working for 3M and HIS?
My best friend and roommate had done an internship with 3M and had a very positive experience. She encouraged me to apply for a position on her team.
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What made you want to stay with 3M after your internships?
I really enjoyed the teams I worked with both summers. It’s also just an appealing company to work for because it’s established and stable.
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What types of projects did you work on during your internships? What does your role entail today?
In my first internship, I was tasked with building out reporting systems for 3M’s Coding and Reimbursement System Plus software (CRS+). It reflected what I was learning in school, but at 3M, I could see how my work had real-world impact. It was super cool to build databases from scratch and run reports in Excel and automate those. I was amazed at what they trusted an intern with. I had 1:1s every week with my manager, so I felt like I had a great balance of support and autonomy.
In my second internship, the team I was on was building out algorithms to help software predict the severity of a patient’s condition. They were hosting the software one way, but they wanted to explore a different way of hosting, so my role was to determine if they could or not. It was interesting to be part of a “Can we do this?” scenario, and really help the team determine what was possible.
My role now is very similar to both of my internships in that I am given small problems the team has been working on and then use programming language to figure out ways to solve them. Right now, I’m exploring how to switch a local database to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
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How did this program prepare you for a full-time career with 3M?
Through these internships, I learned how important it is to interface with other teams. It’s easy to program in a way that doesn’t really make you think about others around you – learning those other things to think about helps me be a better programmer. Also, I learned that you aren’t discrediting yourself by asking questions. It’s ok to need help if you’re willing to learn.
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What advice do you have for those interested in a career in this area at 3M?
Intern if you can! An internship is a great way of understanding this field and company is a fit for you. Also, don’t automatically think a large company is going to be old-school.
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Interested in an internship with 3M? Join 3M’s Talent Community and learn how your skills might be a fit at 3M when an opportunity opens up.
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