Behind the Scenes of Instabug's Internship Process

Ever since the Instabug internship program started in 2016, it has been continually growing and evolving and we view it as a crucial part of our success. It is of course a great way for us to discover and invest in young talents, but more importantly, we view it as a way to give back to the community and spread the knowledge and learnings we have accumulated over the years.

Currently, our interns make up around 15% of our team, while a little over 10% of our full-time team started out as interns. It has been a true pleasure for us to have them as part of the BugSquad and watch them grow into senior roles and team leads.

In this post, we are going to take a deep dive into Instabug's 2022 summer internship process, including selection, assessment, interviews, and the internship program.

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At Instabug, we embrace openness and transparency as part of our core values. Before we dive into 2022's iteration, we want to share with you a quick overview of the Instabug internship program in numbers since its conception.

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Phase one: Applications and Selection

We announced the kick-off of our 2022 internship and opened forms from the 8th of May 2022 to the 18th of May 2022, with openings in Android, iOS, cross-platform, infrastructure/DevOps, QC, frontend, backend, squad management, and product design.

Each applicant had to fill in a form requesting their name, email, phone number, previous internship experiences (if any), LinkedIn profile, and GitHub account. To check if the candidate had the required knowledge and projects for each track, we put more weight on the candidate's LinkedIn and GitHub information.

We received a total of 7303 applications and due to this massive number of applicants, we had to follow a strict filtration process. For each role, we started by focusing on fresh graduates and undergraduates followed by the applicant's skillset for each role. Here's a quick look at the skills we were looking for in candidates for each track:

• Android: basic knowledge of Java/Kotlin and implemented at least one Android project on your GitHub account.
• iOS: basic knowledge of Swift and implemented at least one iOS project on your GitHub account.
• Cross-platform: basic knowledge of React Native and implemented at least one React Native project on your GitHub account. Basic knowledge of Flutter is considered a plus.
• Frontend: basic knowledge of Vue JS and implemented at least one frontend project on your GitHub account.
• Backend: an understanding of database, SQL, and basic problem-solving. Conducting at least one backend project was mandatory and basic knowledge of Ruby and GoLang is considered a plus.
• QC: basic knowledge of Java.
• Infrastructure: basic knowledge of Docker, Jenkins, and Kubernetes.
• Squad Management: basic knowledge of Agile concepts and methodologies.
• Product design: Behance profiles and the candidates' work samples were reviewed by our product design team.

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Phase two: Assessments

Assessments varied from one track to another, with some tracks needing two challenges (multiple choice question evaluation and a technical challenge) in order to give everyone a fair shot.

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Phase three: Interviews

The interview stage consisted of an interview with our people development team (aka HR) and from 1 to 2 technical interviews, depending on the track. We kick off with the people development interview, followed by technical interviews with the relevant team.

We would like to take a moment here to stress that due to the huge number of applicants, there were a lot of candidates who met and exceeded everything we were looking for and we would have loved to welcome them on board. Unfortunately, although we have increased this year's intake of interns by 75%, we just did not have enough capacity.

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Phase four: Onboarding and kick-off

On the 3rd of July 2022, we welcomed 35 interns to the BugSquad for 2 to 3 months. The first week of the Instabug internship was onboarding week where they get introduced to their teams and fellow interns and take an in-depth look at the product to familiarize themselves with it. In the second week, our interns were handed a mini-project to get acquainted with the processes and tools used by their teams.

From then on, interns are treated just like full-timers, taking part in the actual planning cycle and working on projects from ideation to release.

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We really appreciate the time invested by every person who applied for the Instabug internship program and we're truly humbled by the quantity and quality of applications we received. We do our best to communicate feedback in each phase, even though sending personalized feedback to over 7000 applicants was a huge challenge. It might have taken us longer than we hoped, but our small team worked hard to provide each and every applicant with helpful feedback.

In every phase, we sent feedback via email about our applicants' performance and recommended resources and study material that could help improve their skills. One piece of advice we would like to give all our future applicants is to always try to showcase your talents and any projects you worked on your LinkedIn and/or GitHub profile.

Lastly, if you did not make this year's internship program, please don't be discouraged. We want to reiterate that there were many applicants who we would have loved to welcome to the team but did not have the capacity. We sincerely hope we can see you in next year's program.

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We've had a lot of feedback from previous interns and we're glad and more importantly proud that they felt Instabug provided a healthy environment for them to learn and grow, where they are treated as equals and assume real responsibilities. We will do our best to continue providing our interns and applicants with the support, guidance, and mentorship that their world-class talent deserves.

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