Meet Brittany Kilpatrick. She is a Coquitlam native and a student here at SFU in her fourth year of Communication studies. Brittany spent six months working at SAP, a multinational software corporation as a Communications Specialist Intern. In this interview, Brittany opens up about her experiences, challenges, and takeaways from SFU’s Co-op program and working at SAP.
What influenced you when deciding to enroll in SFU’s Co-op program?
I really wanted to gain hands-on experience in communications. Though the Communications depart at SFU does a great job of teaching students theoretical concepts and critical thinking, they don’t really give students the hands-on technical skills, so I though Co-op would be a really great opportunity to gain those skills which would hopefully give me an advantage in the workplace, and make my transition from university to the workplace much easier.
What did your role as Communications Specialist at SAP entail? It entailed a lot of different tasks surrounding communications. Some of my main roles included creating and updating a monthly newsletter for our team. Since my team was global, the newsletter was very important to make sure all of our team members were up-to-date with each other because it could be quite difficult with people in different time zones and locations. My next task was updating internal social media pages for my team. The social media pages were to do with informing internal SAP employees how to use my teams’ services. With that came a lot of technical writing, which is sort of what you see in an instruction pamphlet. It was very difficult from what I have learned being in university. In university, we focus more on academic writing, as opposed to what I was tasked with at SAP, which was more instructional and step-by-step.
What was the biggest challenge you faced while working at SAP?
I think the biggest challenge for me was trying to get out of my comfort zone at the beginning. My goal coming into SAP was to say yes to as many opportunities as I could, and I definitely think this is something I accomplished towards the end of my time there. However, to start saying yes to things at the beginning was terrifying for me. So being able to the take the necessary steps to get out of my comfort zone and take risks was probably the biggest challenge I faced at SAP.
What was your favourite part about working at such a large and global company?
One thing I loved were the opportunities that it lent me, especially through social programs and the people I got to meet along the way. SAP would plan a lot of events that allowed us to meet our teammates and people around the office, participate in events with them, and actually build relationships.
What was your biggest takeaway from working at SAP?
I would say my biggest takeaway from working at SAP would be the importance of taking chances and being fearless. Before working at SAP, I was really scared to try new things, and still sort of am. But if I hadn’t said yes to half of the things I did I would not be who I am today, nor would I have the skill-set that I have today. Saying yes to things really gives you that well-rounded experience that you are probably looking for in the workplace.
What advice would you give to a fellow student wanting to explore SFU’s Co-op program?
My advice would be to just go for it. It’s going to be scary, and I put it off for almost a year and a half, but I would say just do it. Even though it is scary and stressful to look for jobs, go to interviews, and start in a new work environment, just bite the bullet and you definitely won’t regret it.