Hear from our summer interns as they reflect on their time at Scarlatti, and from Scarlatti director Adam Barker on how to unlock an intern's potential.
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Superpower: Ability to take naps anywhere
Fixation: Trying new hobbies
Grace started as a summer intern at Scarlatti, and continues to work for us one day per week.
She works across many of our work areas including extension programme design, organisational wellbeing, and impact modelling .
Grace Zhao is studying a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Psychology and Sociology, at the University of Auckland.
Internships are a win-win for both interns and businesses; companies benefit from interns’ contributions and innovative ideas, and interns can gain real-world experience.
In the summer of 2022, we had three lovely interns join the team.
Grace Zhao
Declan Barrett
Hannah Hittmann
Scarlatti aims to foster a healthy work culture supporting critical thinking and problem-solving. Interns are encouraged to participate in generating new ideas and contributions.
“A lot of the work at Scarlatti is centred around approaching problems and projects from different angles and developing effective strategies to work through them,” says Declan. As an intern, I was always encouraged to contribute my ideas and gained valuable feedback from others in the team.”
Much of the work Scarlatti does relates to the idea of social and behaviour change and helping diverse communities. “The more diverse the set of experience and perspectives we have in the team,” says Adam, “the better we are able to meet our client’s needs.”
An internship can help create professional networks; interns can meet people who have been in the field for a long time and gain advice which can lead to further opportunities.
“Scarlatti supports networking by giving the opportunity to work with different associates, research managers, and senior research managers across projects,” says Hannah.
Grace enjoyed the biweekly associate workgroup. “Associates get together and either showcase what they are working on, or we learn something together. It’s always very fun!” says Grace.
The academic and personal connections that interns bring often benefit companies like Scarlatti. “We are often seeking to interview young people and interns’ networks often allow us to do that,” says Adam. “And, we regularly collaborate with academics including those that our interns have studied under”.
People fresh to the working environment are often unaware of the skills needed in the field and how they differ from those needed in academia. Within companies, interns can complete tasks that make use of these skills, prepping them for their future with support from experienced people.
Hannah found that she learnt different skills from every person she worked with. “The team at Scarlatti are from a wide range of backgrounds – both quantitative, qualitative and a mixture of both,” says Hannah. “I learnt something from everyone.”
Some of the team members have very impressive backgrounds in academia and professional circles yet are always approachable and seem to actually enjoy teaching you things,” says Declan. “I think probably the most exciting thing has been seeing how development is encouraged from all angles.”
One of the key benefits of an internship is that it is a gentle pathway into the professional working experience. It is a great way to try different jobs and tasks without the pressure of permanent commitment. Interns gain valuable exposure to business operations and everyday tasks in a realistic environment.
To emphasise this at Scarlatti, we gave our interns a variety of tasks and projects to help them to explore and find their passion and what their work style is.
There is no typical day at Scarlatti; every day is quite varied. “Some days you’re working on one project for the whole day, and on others you’re jumping in and out of multiple, doing a wide range of different things. It keeps me interested and suits my personal working style,” says Grace.
Hannah was looking for something that would take her out of her comfort zone. “My internship at Scarlatti has allowed me to experience a range of work; I have never worked in or studied monitoring and evaluation, so I was challenged there,” says Hannah.
Scarlatti interns are often put in the deep end and must figure out what to do. However, Adam says that Scarlatti "also provides the right balance with support and deep-end opportunities to show what interns are made of.”
Adam’s internship – many years ago – provided him with a range of valuable experiences. “My internship was about adapting academic learning to a workplace context; I was working on a project without context and with varying levels of guidance. I was working in an academic engineering department some days, or a workshop or on a factory floor; so a diverse range of skills were asked of me. It was my chance to sink or swim.”
Not all internships result in employment, but when they do, it’s important to remember that employment is a two-way street with both parties having ability to make employment decisions.
“To me, an internship is (among other things) a good chance to see if you like working for an employer and equally a good chance for your employer to decide if they like the cut of your gib,” says Declan.
Hannah and Declan had finished their degrees when they applied for intern roles at Scarlatti. Coincidentally, both had decided to divert from what they had studied and try something different. Declan holds a Bachelor of Science with majors in Mathematics and Actuarial Science, and Hannah holds a first-class honours degree in Psychology and a major in Education. Both now work as Associate Researchers at Scarlatti. Grace is working part-time with Scarlatti, while she completes her Bachelor of Arts majoring in Psychology and Sociology.
We are looking for a data and modelling analyst intern to join our dynamic and innovative team in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington or Christchurch.
