Greg Hixson

I completed my internship at Spirit Telecom under the Director of Project Management and Process Engineering David Jones. Spirit Telecom is located on 1500 Hampton Street two blocks from the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia, SC. Spirit Telecom is considered to be your telecommunication bridge to the world by offering local voice, long distance, data services, network management, dedicated Internet access, web design, web hosting and domain name services to help your business succeed.

During my internship I have experience what it takes to actually manage and maintain all aspects of a project. This has been one of the most challenging and educational experiences that I have encountered throughout my college career. At Spirit Telecom I have been put in charge of managing projects of all size. The one project that has taken up most of my time would be implementing a new billing system for the company. This project consists of five phases, which span of over a year.

While managing this project I have encountered everything from having to request a project scope change due to re-prioritizing of projects within the company along with the successful completing two major project phases. One of my initial tasks was to finalizing a Microsoft Project document that had over 400 individual tasks. This was a major challenge to allocate the proper amount of time and resources for all tasks. Another task that I was assigned was to setup all meetings while providing Meeting Minutes and status report to help keep the development team and implementation of the project rolling as smooth as possible. After the first few weeks I was put in charge of conducting the weekly status meeting, which consisted of the application, development, customer service and billing representative teams reporting any issues that they may have encountered throughout the week along with discussing the action items from the previous weeks meeting.

This internship with Spirit Telecom along with my Technology Support and Training Management course have proven very valuable for the development of my career. These two experiences have allowed me to see what Project Management has to offer as a full time career. Since completing my internship I was offered a full time position at Spirit Telecom as a project manager. This position gives me the opportunity to continue my experience in project management while also giving me the opportunity to gain project management certifications. This has provided me with the prefect opportunity to become a certified Professional Project Manager (PMP) in the future. I am currently studying and applying to become a Certified Associate Project Manager. Needless to say this internship has be a rewarding and education experience that will with out question be extremely beneficial to me as I continue my career in project management.