Booz Allen’s Summer Games Interns Challenged to Solve the World’s Toughest Challenges

More than 6,000 students applied. Just 320 of the most creative minds were selected. The prize is a 10-week opportunity to participate in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Summer Games, a fun, intense and competitive internship program that assesses each student’s interests, passions and skillsets before assigning them to project teams that align best with each individual’s goals.

The projects—known as challenges—are not cookie-cutter by any means. Interns are asked to create powerful solutions to real-world client and societal challenges by blending approaches born out of combining management consulting skills with advanced technical capabilities. Each team is assigned Booz Allen mentors who bring deep subject matter expertise and help guide the team throughout the Games.

This year, teams are helping to develop an app that gives military commanders an easy way to track real-time and open-sourced information about developing situations like sudden attacks, fighting human trafficking and even tracking the spread of a disease worldwide.

At the end of their 10 week program, intern teams compete over three days in a series of pitch sessions to Booz Allen’s senior leadership. Teams are eliminated each day until the best of the bunch face off. Winners are awarded funding and support to evolve their projects into end-to-end solutions (see last year’s highlight reel here).

On top of their team challenges, interns are also encouraged to pursue a personal area of interest, spending 10 percent of their summers developing a product or solution that solves a current issue they are passionate about through the Student Incubator Competition. Toward the end of the Games, interns individually pitch their ideas to a panel of judges for assistance to bring their solution to life.

By 2020, more than 50 percent of the workforce will be comprised of millennial talent. And the war for this talent is raging as organizations address a generational shift and compete for the small pool of future leaders with real passion for STEM. Booz Allen is reinventing how it attracts and retains top, entry-level talent – offering to millennials the opportunity to help their country protect and serve its citizens better and help clients solve today’s toughest challenges.

Since its creation in 2014, the Summer Games program has grown ten-fold, and 90 percent of eligible interns are accepting full time offers from the firm.

With their eyes on the prize, the possibilities are endless for the Booz Allen Summer Games Interns. Over the coming weeks, Booz Allen interns will share their experiences, in their own words.

Want to learn more about Booz Allen’s Summer Games Internship Program? Check out our video here. Or read more, and learn what you need to apply here.

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