Shaun Edwards (CTO and Co-Founder) and Crystal Parrott (Chief Operating Officer) run a super strong internship program as a pipeline for entry level talent. “The long interview” has been very successful for Plus One, the caliber of applicants is top notch, as evidenced that some of our more recent Treadmill Award winners are employees that started out as interns.
Hezron E. Perez has been by far our longest interview.
Back in 2019, Shaun brought on a couple of students to do data tagging. The task needed doing and didn’t take much training to get up to speed, but even so, I was surprised when he told me the interns would be high school students from CAST Schools, a local STEM-focused school.
Hezron came to work for us the summer before his junior year. He was all of 17 years old. These two interns were the most energetic data taggers ever and it wasn’t very long before Shaun informed me that their skills were more akin to rising juniors in college than high schoolers, so we gave them more involved responsibilities in our QA group and they excelled.
Hezron and Thomas worked for us every break for two years. After graduation, Thomas took his talents to Hofstra.
But Hezron chose to stay home, attend UTSA, and continue interning with us. Fast forward to today and Hezron has been with Plus One longer than most of the staff! In the years he’s been with us, Hezron got a driver’s license, bought his first car, moved out, earned the respect of his coworkers, and has now graduated – twice!
This weekend Hezron graduated summa cum laude with his BS in CS, and he did it in just 2.5 years.
The long(est) interview will have to go on a bit longer because Hezron has been accepted into grad school. Keep killing it, Hezron! You are an exceptional young man and we are all beyond proud of what you have accomplished.
Erik Nieves
Founder and CEO
CAST Schools Board Member
