Now that I’m back at Arizona State University for my fall semester, this seems like a good time to share my Summer 2019 Internship experience with everyone.
I decided to write this blog for anyone interested in applying at Walmart Labs for an Internship. The whole experience was full of learning and fun and I’ll always be grateful for this opportunity.
I applied online and after my resume review, I went through 1 on-campus interview. The process varies according to team and position.
My internship started on June 5th and ended on August 16th. I worked at the Davis Glass Technology Center at Bentonville, Arkansas as part of the Supply Chain Technology Tech group.
Now to the fun part:
What I learned
As I was a part of the Outbound Process team of the Supply Chain Tech group, our team developed applications (Native Android and Hybrid) for processing cases in Walmart Distribution Centers.
On Day 1, I was paired up with a mentor who made sure I don’t face any issues and maximize my learning.
As part of the team, I got an entirely new project to work on. I can’t share the details here due to obvious reasons but the work was exciting and solving an important problem. I researched a lot of solutions before designing and finally implemented the application. We tested the solution and kept iterating until we got something production-ready.
I got a lot of support from the seniors in navigating the project, but they made sure I am making all the decisions. This kind of independence helped me in exploring different solutions before coming up with the optimal one.
I also worked with other teams for some aspects of the project which helped me in witnessing the culture across the department. I learned about Internal applications and systems used in Walmart Distribution Centers (DCs) and how these interact with each other to manage World’s largest (whaaa..) Supply Chain.
We also had weekly talks from Industry leaders like Greg Foran, Mark Lore and our CEO Doug McMillon (:D) where they enlightened us with their wisdom. They answered all our questions ranging across startups, businesses, career paths, Walmart and life.
We also had regular “Lunch and Learn” events where we got to learn about topics like Agile, Product Management, Public speaking etc over lunch.
From stakeholders meeting to Supply Chain town hall, everybody made sure the interns get full exposure and get to meet everyone. I can’t stress this enough, everybody was doing everything they can to make the internship experience awesome for us!
Work hard, Play harder!
From the beginning of our internship to the end, we attended some awesome events organized specially for us.
The Internship Experience team made sure we aren’t just working hard but partying hard as well. Every few weeks we had fun events organized for us. Let me just show you how it was:
Bite Festival – Northwest Arkansas
Wine tasting organized for the Interns 😀
Annual Walmart Shareholders event
The one with the CEO Doug Mcmillon!
A talk with Trevor Noah!
Intern Welcome Party
Overall Experience
I worked on interesting problems and made some lasting relationships. What else can you ask from an internship? Walmart is really that place where you can do both.
My experience was fun and hopefully, someone reading this can use this information.
Lastly, Arkansas is a really beautiful place with lots (and lots) of trees and nice weather. It also has a range of hikes and trails. Coming from Arizona, I loved spending time in nature and going on hikes. It was a surreal experience.
Enjoy some pictures:
Thank you for everything Walmart!
Oldest comments (1)
Great article, very inspiring. Before this article, I had a different relationship with Walmart. After reading it, I decided to find out more about this company and found an excellent collection of walmart essays on the student site. It is also full of stories of successful internships and how young students find their place in this huge company. You know, I'm an experienced developer. I was thinking about going on an internship. Sounds like a good idea.