Our 'Diary of a Business Associate Intern' series is designed to give you an inside look into the life of Google interns based all over Europe & Africa. Today, the spotlight is on Dennis Ernest Ssesanga from Uganda, who is a Business Associate Intern with the LCS (Large Customer Sales) team in Google Kampala.
I am proudly Ugandan and my background is in
IHSU (International Health Sciences University) where I got my diploma in healthcare leadership and management then studied for a bachelors degree in public health. I served in the student guild leadership once as a member of parliament, then as a minister for sports and entertainment and later as minister for information, internal and external affairs. I taught my classmates how to use Google docs for group discussions and it brought a new revolution to their revision. I advocated for the deployment of Google apps for education at
IHSU and founded the Google student club. I was the pioneer
Google Student Ambassador for my university and the first non tech student to intern at the Uganda Google office. I love spoken word, photography, technology, health, business and playing rugby. I started up a Latino and ballroom dancing club at my university for leisure and student networking. I am a proud blogger, and co-organizer of a spoken word platform called
Open Mic Uganda.
During the
Google Student Ambassador Summit 2012 in Kenya, we learnt many things including “opportunities with Google.” I then applied to become an intern after my ambassadorship because of the forecasted workload of introducing students to Google apps and going Google at IHSU.
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| The SSA Google Student Ambassadors 2012/2013 |
Google never forgets!! One month to the end of my final semester, I was called up for two interviews and luckily I made it. I'm a Business Associate Intern working with the Google Outreach team for Sub Saharan Africa where we help with the promotion of Google Developer and Business group communities, and worked with Google Student Ambassadors.
As a Google intern, I have learnt to have an idea of what success looks like even before I start a given project. I have learnt that my team’s performance is highly dependant on my input which is why I always held myself accountable for every day that passed, so to have an update to them before end of the week. My main project as an intern was web academy, where I trained 38 trainers who later trained 1200 students on Google apps in various high schools. I worked mainly with Aiesec Uganda.
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| Me and the Aiesec web academy trainers at office for the certificates award session |
My typical day: I wake up at 6am, shower and pull out my jeans plus a matching shirt. I always have breakfast at the office and sometimes work late to beat deadlines.
- 8am- Breakfast
- 8.30am- Check mails, calendar and social network updates,
- 9:00am-
Confirm my day’s meetings on phone
- 9:30am-
Project web academy: I call up the Aiesec trainer for updates and review feedback
- 12:30 pm-
Make a final update on the project for my team
- 1:00pm-
Lunch time: meal time and music time (catch up with some youtube videos!)
- 2:30pm-
Intern talk time or speaker series(learning & sharing ideas from Googlers and interns)
- 4:00pm-
Self evaluation on work projects and follow up on projects
- 5:00pm-
Leave office on condition I’m done with the day’s urgent projects, if not I camp further....
I was also lucky to have met some other Google interns at the summit in Kenya but also met a few on mail and Hangouts.
My advice to interns? It’s not how long or short you work but the beauty of the results you achieve from the set objectives. Always recall that your team’s success is highly reliant on your input so try to beat the objectives. Never underestimate the project you are working on because it’s output will be highly effective.
Pay attention to detail because with this you will be able to draw up a clear plan of achieving your goals. You have got to have an idea of what success looks like then work backwards even before you actually start working physically.
Be confident in your work and don’t undermine yourself because you are young but rather respect your skills and talent and believe that you have got the potential to contribute to your team.
Lastly, respect everyone irrespective of who they are, age and team they belong to.
My future is bright and interesting. I am going to preserve and use the Googleyness gene I have acquired through association with the Googlers in my work. When I finish writing my thesis, I am going to focus on my business projects and will use the skills that I have learned to see them flourish!
I’m going to keep partying every Friday as it’s been at the office. (TGIF)
A Google fun fact! My team planned and organised a
communities summit for sub saharan africa where we flew 150+ people to Kenya for a 3 day summit.
At the summit, I taught the attendants some bachata basics and they loved it.
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| Teaching bachata at the SSA outreach communities summit; they loved it! |
Interested in becoming a Google intern? Internships are now open! Please visit www.google.com/students/internseurope to apply for new roles.
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Posted by Sarah Henderson, Student Development
