15 Mar Mentoring Interns to Create Future Employees

“I created a Python script, running on a Debian-based Linux server, that executes every Friday at 8PM, “ said Slayde Kerner, an intern at All Points. Slayde is a college student at Florida Institute of Technology (FIT)  and has been with All Points for more than a year. He created this application to make the workload easier for one of his supervisors. “ The app makes it a lot easier for him to just have all the data he needs in an email for him to write his weekly report,” boasted Kerner.

At All Points, we believe our staff is among the most talented, effective, and productive in the industry—so much so that we dedicate a significant effort to learning, personal growth, creativity, and innovation among our veteran staff, interns, and new hires alike. One way that All Points cultivates and expands its employees’ skills is through mentoring interns. Through assisting college-age employees with hands-on opportunities to contribute to a corporate bottom-line, All Points employees hone their skills in mentoring, coaching, leading, and addressing industry problems with innovative solutions. Through these mentor-intern relationships, All Points helps younger employees avoid some of the pitfalls of entering the corporate world, while All Points’ leadership continues to offer its employees opportunities to grow a nd learn. As with the app that Slayde developed for internal corporate use, our interns contribute to corporate innovation, as well.

Interns Slyde Kerner, standing, and Jacob Denick, repairing a company laptop

Activities necessary to develop individuals with essential skills and capabilities that can be used to support not only ongoing corporate activities, but also prepare the young employee for the future,  are foundational to our program, providing opportunity to manage a complete small project. Our vision is to identify, hire, and train interns by providing the experience and mentoring required for each specific position we foresee, which suits both our company goals and the individual’s development. Our goal is to help our interns grow into productive, capable individuals and to support the industry, not just All Points.

The objective is to staff our program with early/young career professionals by offering training and on-the-job company experience, resulting in opportunities for permanent employment. By mentoring and growing the interns with the experience and expertise needed, they will more likely transition into an effective permanent employee. Initial areas of focus are code development, development of simulation and training skills, support for sustainment and deployment of software used by the company,  hardware and diagnostics repair, internal IT activities support, as well as IT support for external contracts, where appropriate. “Interns could be working on an internal project one day and a customer project another day,” explained Steve Lloyd, All Points’ Chief Development Officer. “Slayde’s multiple contributions to the company have encouraged All Points to expand its opportunities to more students,” Lloyd added.

Kerner explained how the app works and the decision process he used to develop the final product that is now used on a weekly basis. “The Python script uses Selenium to automatically navigate a browser to the inventory website tool that Jeremy Leon and I designed last year. The app takes screenshots of inventory status and stores screenshots.  Within the same script, the screenshots are then automatically emailed. This app saves approximately one hour of work on a Friday afternoon, “ said Kerner. Developing thought leaders is an All Points goal. Kerner went on to describe other methods he could have used as he developed this solution. The method he provided added graphical displays, which improved the ability to differentiate the data. Kerner was thorough in the final development of the app, “ The coolest thing is the way I set up the automated browser, since it can be used for any of our corporate projects without being rewritten or rescripted. All Points can use it for testing anything we develop that is web based, and it can test multiple platforms – FireFox, Chrome, IE, etc., “ said Kerner.

Interns Jeremy Lyon, standing, and Slayde Kerner discuss and test software code.

All Points is a mid-sized, dynamic, award-winning company with a successful track record of support to our federal and commercial customers. Some of our accolades include NASA Subcontractor of the Year, Boeing Supplier of the Year, Motorola Supplier of the Year, NASA KSC Subcontractor of the Year, and NASA KSC Small Business of the Year. All Points was named Lockheed’s Orion Program Rigel Awardee for 2019. The Rigel is Lockheed’s Orion Supplier of the Year award, conferred to a supplier that performs above and beyond contractual commitments. All Points maintains certifications and appraisals, such as ISO 9001:2015, AS9100D, and CMMI-DEV Level 3. In summary, All Points maintains quality certifications, has previous success assisting emerging businesses deliver solutions to DoD, and values small business development efforts.

Established nearly 25 years ago as a Merritt Island, Florida-based service-disabled veteran owned small business (SDVOSB), All Points Logistics, LLC today has operations in 18 states and has grown into a leading solution provider to a diverse array of government and commercial customers. All Points offers solution development and systems integration in mission critical domains such as space, defense, and cyber. Our dedicated and diverse team has award winning expertise in software development, IT services, modeling and simulation, integrated logistics, and other specialties. Additional information can be found at www.allpointsllc.com.