The Experience An Intern Should Receive in a Hosting Company
If you are a computer science or computer engineering student, a web hosting company is one of the places to do your internship. Internship is about getting practical experience that will prepare you for the work place. Before you start your internship, you should at least have a basic understanding of the web as well as how it runs. You should for instance have technical level knowledge of:
- What a website is and how it operates
- Different types of websites
- Where a website ‘exists’
- What is a hosting company and why is it so important
Have an open mind as an intern
Though you might know a lot about how hosting services work, you need to go into your work place with an open mind, because every company is different. One company will be drastically different from another in terms of:
- Choice of hosting software
- Hosting Hardware specifications
- Types of hosting services provided
- Service delivery methodology
- Customer interaction processes
- Sales and marketing processes
Companies also have different policies of what an intern can and cannot do. This will greatly affect your learning process. However, a frank discussion with your internship supervisor should get you exposed to most of the company’s operations, which include the following:
Technical work (in the field or in office)
Different hosting providers offer different hosting services. The most popular service offered by the company is determined by customer demand and demand is dependent on the amount of effort the company invests in marketing its services. You will learn how to host different customer accounts on some or all of the following services:
Shared hosting: This is the most commonly preferred service by individuals and small business owners for the simple fact that it’s inexpensive.
Dedicated hosting: A customer who pays for a dedicated hosting service will have control of an entire server. This option is expensive and is usually preferred by large companies who not only want privacy and, but also quality performance.
VPS hosting: This is a form of dedicated hosting, only that the servers are virtual and not physical. Though the physical servers that host these ‘virtual machines’ are shared, customer gets more bandwidth and space than with shared hosting.
Cloud hosting: you will finally get to understand how the world of cloud hosting works in reality.
Customer support
An important service that keeps a hosting provider in business is customer support. If the hosting service has a 24/7 customer support line, you will be required to spend some time answering customer calls and responding to their queries and resolving their problems. You will learn how to interact with the different systems and software that the customer service department uses to deliver great service.
Sales and marketing
Even though your interest is in the more technical aspect of the company, you should spend some time with the sales and marketing team to understand how it generates demand for the company’s products. You will also learn how the sales team:
- Explain to customers the differences between each hosting service
- Helps customers decide the hosting plan that is right for them
The amount of exposure you will get during your internship will help you on your first job after graduation. You can check reviews of hosting companies to see which ones have a great internship program.
Author Bio:
Jayson Bryune is a freelance content writer. He has written many articles on different categories like Technology, health, travel, career, education, jobs, interview etc. He has experienced firsthand the need for a good hosting service and advises others to read reviews on Inexpensive Web Hosting before deciding on a hosting service.
