Madison Brown scored her summer internship with GDIT through a moment of opportunity. While attending a resume workshop, Brown caught a recruiter's attention, networked, applied and landed among a virtual cohort of 115 interns across the company. A junior studying technical writing at Louisiana Tech University, Brown won GDIT's Intern Leadership award for her job performance. Her takeaway? "Go out and talk to people, even if you don't think you need it," Brown told CIO Dive. "Even if you walk away with one thing you didn't know: It was worth it." As IT faces a growing skills shortage, organizations across all industries offer technical internships to enrich the next generation with job experience — even in a remote world. But for successful retention of potential candidates, responsibility falls on IT leadership to create a meaningful experience with long-lasting investments in upskilling folks from all backgrounds.