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Tasnim Chowdhury was looking for new professional challenges before graduating from the University of Texas at Arlington in December 2024 and starting her career. When she came across an internship opportunity with Health Care Service Corporation’s Texas health plan during a college career fair, she knew she’d found one.

After speaking with two interns there who graduated from the program, Chowdhury was drawn to the one-on-one mentorship meetings, networking sessions and the chance to learn new skills as a product developer. She applied, was accepted and started her 12-week summer internship in June 2024 working on product engineering.

“There was a chance to have conversations with leadership and learn from their journeys, which I found interesting because I wanted a place where I could learn technical skills but also learn from scratch as someone new to the corporate world,” she says.

Each year, HCSC welcomes between 90 and 145 interns into its Summer Intern Program, providing mentorship and networking sessions, development and business etiquette workshops, measurable work assignments, performance evaluations and social activities with HCSC leaders who share career advice.

“With our Summer Internship Program, we’re focused on giving students a well-rounded hands-on experience that not only deepens their understanding of the business, but also helps them build meaningful connections, develop critical skills, and grow both personally and professionally,” says Justeen Moss, HCSC’s executive director of Talent Acquisition.

Nearly 70% of last year’s interns received offers to return to HCSC as a university new grad full-time employee, and more than 60% accepted their offer to join the company. The New Grad Program provides ongoing support throughout their first year, including an enhanced onboarding process and setting expectations for success, monitoring progress, and providing opportunities to develop critical skills.

For Chowdhury, a full-time developer since January working on claims modernization, the numerous volunteer opportunities were unexpected but rewarding, she says. And as a self-proclaimed introvert, the program helped nurture both her technical and social skills.

“You can be underconfident with certain things like networking as an introvert,” she says. “But I’m happy I got out of that, it’s something I never thought I could have pulled off.”

Imran Khan, who interned during summer 2024 in the security operations department, says his team encouraged creativity and welcomed his idea to automate a previously manual process for gathering departmental data.  

He received a full-time offer to join HCSC in January that fit his true passion as a cybersecurity specialist working on threat and vulnerability management.

“The team I work on is amazing,” he says. “They encourage openness and new ways of doing things.”

He’s pursuing a master’s degree in cybersecurity through an online program at Georgia Tech, with the help of HCSC’s tuition reimbursement program.

Others, like Kira Luo, intern after completing their advanced degrees.

During her internship with member engagement, Luo worked with new exploratory modeling using real-world data that deepened her prior experience as a data scientist specializing in health care.

Her 12 weeks with HCSC prompted her to accept a full-time role as a machine learning and data scientist, and she’s currently training models to identify members who may have social health needs.

 She credits her positive experience to meeting new people and mingling with other departments.

“Take time to learn about what others are doing because our company is really big,” she says. “You will definitely be surprised.”