When you think of an internship, do you think of fetching coffee, or do you think of actually getting work done? At AOL, internships fall squarely into the latter camp.

There is a perception – fairly earned, some would say – that internships offer little more than glorified grunt work. Some companies make concerted efforts to move beyond that.

At AOL, interns are thrown in at the deep end almost from day one, working on projects that go beyond the internship to being adopted company-wide.

Liam Maloney, an intern at the tech giant, spoke to us about what he did at AOL, from working across the technology stack to collaborating on an intern intranet project that was rolled out across the Dublin office.

Words by Kirsty Tobin

Intern holding tray of coffee. Image: SpeedKingz/Shutterstock