Introducing the Two Barrels Paid Internship Program

Over the past few years, Two Barrels has grown by leaps and bounds. As we’ve opened more locations and increased our revenue streams, we’ve been looking for ways to give back to the Spokane community. Since its launch in October 2021, we’ve helped sponsor the Gonzaga Hackathon—an annual social coding event held by the Computer Science Department of GU’s chapters of Women in Computing and Association for Computing Machinery. We also plan to send members of our recruiting team to local colleges and universities to offer soon-to-be graduates tips on writing resumes/cover letters and navigating job interviews. But we want to do more, so we created a paid internship program.

What Does Our Paid Internship Look Like?

What Two Barrels offers is not your average internship program. Aside from being paid, interns work on real company projects with real results alongside in-house talent. Our interns don’t fetch coffee orders or stand mindlessly in front of a copy machine. Two Barrels interns work on projects that directly impact the company—adding and improving features to internal and customer-facing websites. They solve problems. They are working with our products and can see results in real-time. Each intern is paired with a mid-level/senior software engineer mentor. Sometimes mentorship means one-on-one instruction and teaching. Other times, it means working collaboratively. No matter what, our mentors are always eager to help.

Two Barrels also cares about our interns’ long-term success. As part of our internship program, we offer job material workshops. Each workshop is about an hour long and gives interns a chance to sit down with a member of our recruiting team to fine-tune their resumes and cover letters and practice talking to a hiring professional. After our program, interns will have on-the-job experience and polished job materials in hand.

What Did We Look For?

As we said, this isn’t your average internship program. We wanted to find students who could get the most out of their eight weeks here and benefit from our first-ever paid internship program.

So, we looked for applicants with the following qualifications:

• Completed one full year of college—either at a community college or four-year university
• Majoring in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a similar field
• Previous experience in software development (such as designing a video game or app)
• Actively involved in extracurricular clubs or activities related to Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a similar field of study
• Ability to physically work in our Downtown Spokane office

As we would with any paid position, we sought applicants genuinely interested in their field of study. In this case, we looked for students who were passionate about software engineering.

The response we received exceeded expectations, according to Noah W., our Junior Technical Recruiter. “The amount of interest was outstanding,” he says. “We received many talented applications, and the interviewing process was fun, as many of us attended college locally, so it was great to connect with applicants over teachers, school projects, and clubs.”

Will There Be Future Paid Internship Opportunities?

At the moment, the internship program is being piloted with our Software Engineering Team. After the program is completed, we will assess what worked well and what needs improvement before expanding internship opportunities to include departments such as Marketing, SEO, and Products. However the program grows, Noah says, “Our team will remain committed to providing an experience where interns are able to make new connections, learn new skills, and enjoy every second of their time at Two Barrels.”