Internship to Career: Evan Tsai
We take a look at Evan Tsai's exciting journey from intern to his current role as Senior Analyst.
As Evan Tsai thinks back on his first full year at Sodexo, he fondly remembers the exciting journey that he has undertaken from his internship to his current role as Senior Analyst for HR Systems Integration.
More than a year ago, as a senior at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Evan began his hunt for internship programs that not only fit his college course requirements, but ones that would support his career goals. The list was short and featured Sodexo at the top with the Sodexo Student Impact program.
“I had been looking for internships that aligned with my college coursework and I was excited when I found the posting for Sodexo,” said Evan. “The opportunity to work with Sodexo’s recruitment and HR technology really interested me.”
Even though, Evan initially believed the internship would be a great fit for him, he quickly found out that the most intriguing part of working for Sodexo, was the ability to work remotely in his hometown of Frederick, Maryland. At first, the opportunity seemed too good to be true, but as he was informed by the hiring manager, work-life balance and remote working opportunities are true benefits at Sodexo.
“I had heard reports about these ‘fabled’ remote positions at Sodexo, and I thought the prospect of working at a remote position sounded great and was super enticing for me,” said Evan. “There are a ton of benefits to working remotely. You don’t have to spend time on a lengthy commute, and you can save on travel expenses which is a huge benefit.”
As a dedicated runner, Evan can now take advantage of the non-existent commute time to do what he loves to do before logging on to work each day.
“I’m an avid runner, and I run every single day. The main benefit for me to work remote is by not commuting to work in the morning, I can take that time to jog. It really helps with the work-life balance of being employed by Sodexo,” he said.
The main benefits for Evan, though, are the feeling of belonging on the HR Systems team and being motivated by his leaders to learn new things each and every day. Before his internship, he didn’t realize how much technology was used by Sodexo. Nor did he realized how many different ways there were to grow his career.
He spent his first 11 weeks in the internship program and performed so well that he was quickly hired on full-time as a HR Systems Specialist. He was only in that role for a short period before he transitioned into his current role, which is challenging to him, but wouldn’t want it any other way.