What’s it like to be a summer intern at Chitika? A combination of challenging work, strategic thinking and TONS of fun!
Chitika’s summer internship program is nearing its end, and in this blog post, intern Rahul Vasudevan describes his experience interviewing and working at our Westborough, MA office. While we’ll miss Rahul and his amazing “get shit done” attitude as he heads back to UT-Dallas to complete his MBA, we’re already looking for interns and full-time staff for various positions at Chitika – check out our careers page for more!
My Chitika Introduction
Most people outside of the online advertising and technology space have probably never heard about a company called Chitika. Neither had I, until the day when the CEO of Chitika gave a presentation at our University (UT-Dallas) in front 60 Full-Time MBA students, of which I was a part. I had always heard people telling us that a good CEO is a good sales person. Venkat Kolluri represented the first time I was witnessing it. He was so passionate about his company, and was selling Chitika pretty well. His major points were about the company culture and challenging work. Today, sitting here and experiencing it, I have to tell you that everything he said was true. Chitika is more like a family rather than a workplace. You are never alone at Chitika whether it comes to tackling your everyday challenges or having fun. In the three months I have been here, I have never had the feeling that I was someone unimportant or was doing something unimportant. Every single day has been loaded with challenging and exciting work.
Interview Process
After that presentation, I kept reading lot of cool things about Chitika on a variety of job forums. Just like everything I heard, the interview process was very unconventional – in fact it was the most unconventional interview I have ever attended. My first round interview lasted just about 10 minutes, and I had no idea what they were testing me on. The most exciting thing about the interview was that the process itself ended up being so much fun in itself – and this carried over to just about everything at Chitika itself. But despite the brevity and strange structure, having been here for several months, I can say with absolute certainty that people at Chitika spend lot of time designing the interview process. For future candidates, I feel that the two most important metrics that you will be gauged on are your determination to take up new challenges and your cultural fit (that is how serious they are about their culture). Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear the usual job candidate questions during your interview with Chitika, because I never got one and neither did my friends who interviewed along with me.
“Chitika is definitely not a place for someone who expects to cruise through every day without too many hurdles. People at Chitika keep innovating left and right and being part of the company one will be forced to strain their brain to its limits literally every day.”
There is much more than just free dry cleaning, food, Friday evening beers, and the other perks that you keep seeing in job forums which make this a wonderful place to work. A few things which made me feel so good during my internship at Chitika are:
- I never had a feeling that I was an intern. We interns were treated as any other full-time employee and we always had the freedom to come up with new ideas and take ownership of things we did.
- People at Chitika always foster thinking. I always felt challenged and had so many opportunities to learn and experiment with new things.
- Everybody in the company was very approachable. At Chitika, I can just walk into CEO’s office and talk to him about my ideas and suggestions. Most importantly, the management takes these suggestions seriously. In fact we saw some of our suggestions getting implemented!
Overall, my experience working at Chitika was amazing. If you’re someone who is looking for a good culture and challenging work, I encourage you to check it out!