Design Internship Program (Viasat)
Year: 2019-2022
Company: Viasat
Industry: N/A
Role: Senior Product Design Lead
Challenge
Traditional hiring focused on candidates with linear design education and experience, missing talented career changers with transferable skills and strong motivation. Organization needed alternative talent pipeline addressing hiring challenges while building design capability. The solution required structured program developing raw talent into productive designers efficiently.
Approach
Program Design
- Created 6-month intensive internship program specifically for career changers
- Designed curriculum covering real product challenges rather than theoretical exercises
- Established mentoring structure pairing interns with experienced designers
Talent Development
- Structured hands-on learning experiences building practical design skills
- Provided frameworks for systematic thinking about product and user experience
- Created assessment milestones tracking capability development
Organizational Integration
- Positioned program as legitimate talent sourcing mechanism not just training initiative
- Demonstrated career changer success converting skeptics to program supporters
- Built repeatable model for continued cohort recruitment and development
Outcome
Team building: Successfully sourced untapped talent from career changer pool, demonstrating viability of non-traditional hiring.
Capability development: Proved structured intensive program could develop productive designers from non-traditional backgrounds within 6 months.
Talent pipeline: Created sustainable alternative hiring source addressing organizational talent needs.
Methods & Deliverables
Methods: Curriculum design, Mentoring, Hands-on projects, Assessment frameworks
Deliverables: Training Curriculum, Documentation, Mentoring frameworks, Assessment criteria
Tags: Training/Mentoring, Leadership/Org Design, Team building, Enterprise, Ireland