Audible’s College Internship Program Cultivates Tech Talent

Senior Recruiter Kate Byrnes heads up Audible’s college tech intern program, which launched in 2014 (she joined us in 2019). She’s responsible for identifying, recruiting and onboarding our new tech talent, ensuring their experience is seamless and rewarding from the start. Here she shares what we look for in our college intern candidates and why Audible is a great place for emerging tech talent to work.

What do you love about working with interns?

There’s so much excitement, throughout Audible, around working with interns—and the interns are so energetic and enthusiastic. We have such a strong culture of mentorship, so I know that they’re going to be surrounded by people who genuinely care about their development and their growth—both professional and personal. I love knowing the life-changing impact we can have on them, that we’re laying the building blocks for their careers here, or wherever they go. At Audible, the internship is just the start of a long-term relationship with us, and many interns have been invited to join us as employees!

Why is Audible an awesome place for interns?

Our internship is renowned for being a unique and top-tier experience, and that’s thanks in large part to the collaborative and supportive environment we offer and the genuine care we show for individuals. Also we get the best of both worlds: being part of the large, Amazon ecosystem, with Amazon’s amazing tech capabilities, but with Audible’s smaller, more start-up-esque culture. There’s a real sense of community across our tech teams.

I think it’s exciting and rare that, in addition to each intern getting both a manager and mentor, they also have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with executive leadership at Audible. During orientation week, we have a welcome event with the Chief Technical Officer, Tim Martin, where he gets to know all the interns, and interns get to have a fireside chat with him and our Chief Executive Officer, Bob Carrigan, to talk about career journeys, the future of tech, and so on—they even have an “ask me anything” session. I’ve also heard of interns following up and having one-on-one coffee chats with executives.

Also, the product is so exciting! Audio storytelling is constantly evolving, and we as the pioneers in this space get to innovate and delight listeners around the world. Interns aren’t just given theoretical or R&D projects; they get to work on projects that affect very real business needs in real time.

Finally, our tech interns are offered housing over the summer, which is helpful since they come from all over the country, and sometimes from outside of it. We also offer them some of the perks and benefits full-time employees love, like lunch every day.

What’s new in the internship recruiting landscape for college students? What has Audible done to adapt to this?

Covid-19 changed the way we did everything—our internship program went fully remote and virtual for two years. Since 2023, we’ve been in a hybrid model, much like our Hub+Home way of working, with a mandatory two days per week in the office. But a majority of our interns are in the office much more than that, because they really want an in-person experience to help process all the information they’re receiving, the things they’re learning, the people they’re meeting and networking with, and so on. Those 12 weeks go by so fast, and so does the opportunity for face time and for absorbing our work culture and community. Plus, we have some pretty awesome office spaces—they’re so aesthetically pleasing, people love being here!

What kind of students do we look for?

Our Spectrum & Belonging initiatives mean we’re very deliberate about our hiring, and that includes our intern hiring. So that requires us to have a long ramp time: our interviews start in August for the following year internship.

Our college tech interns need to have strong technical skills and coding backgrounds, with an emphasis on computer science fundamentals. We don’t necessarily require experience coding in a certain language, but interns need to have exposure to object-oriented programming. We’re not overly concerned with GPA; the coding test and interviews hold more weight for us.

We also look for interns that exemplify Audible’s People Principles. Those will be a cornerstone of our interview process. As a company, we live and breathe those principles, so we have managers talk with interns to see how well a candidate will embody them here.

How do we find our interns? What should students do if they’re interested in working with us?

To find our college tech interns, we rely on conferences like the Grace Hopper Celebration and Afrotech. We also find and connect with talent on Handshake and Untapped, which are like college campus versions of LinkedIn (which we also use).

We don’t expect a lot of internship experience, and we know resumes will be light, so just highlight recent projects and make sure it’s well-organized and neat. But again, we are looking for examples of things candidates have done in school and in their communities, people who put themselves out there and try to drive change.

Our one eligibility requirement is that tech students have at least one semester left of a formal degree program, whether that’s undergraduate or graduate. That said, in the age of tech boot camps and being self-taught, we are open to talent from non-traditional paths.

I talk to thousands of interns, and each year we carefully select a group of talented individuals for our internship program. What stands out to me when I’m meeting candidates isn’t the quantifiable stuff, like how many lines of code they’ve written—it’s when they show their true selves and their enthusiasm for Audible, asking questions about challenges we’re working to solve or how we continue to innovate in the space.

Click here to learn more about our tech internships.