College Internships | Summer Jobs

State University Vs. Golf Bag

2010-06-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

For readers curious about the title of this post my immediate reaction is: good. The intent was to be slightly less than clear in the hopes of attracting a few more sets of eyes to a curious and arguably downright confusing title of a post.

In short the title State University vs. Golf Bag is an oversimplification of both the real and merely perceived differences amongst both current students/recent grads and employers when it comes to preconceived notions about typical state school graduates and the more highfalutin golf bag toting, country club lifestyle, high society, upper level executive style of manager that new hires ~~want~~ need to impress.

So, what's a young chap who recently got his diploma from a public school to do to fit in? When invited on his first golf outing with customers should he be concerned that he's more likely to have an Iowa State University golf bag than a Harvard golf bag?

The short answer is that worrying only does any good insofar as it can serve as motivation to be prepared in an effort to mitigate whatever worst case scenario is feared. Does it do any good to worry about failing a calculus final? Well, if it motivates you to study hard and put in more than enough time preparing then the worrying actually did do a significant amount of good. There can definitely be a positive aspect to having a legitimate level of concern.

When it comes to conceivably feeling inferior simply because the golf bag you're carrying has the team logos of a school that doesn't rank as well in the US News and World Reports ranking of the top academic universities as the college your work golfing partner graduated from the key is to realize that whatever inferiority issue you're grappling with is probably all in your head.

In many instances the absolutely worst thing that you can do is to let your nerves get the better of you.

Here's the single best piece of advice that you'll hear on this topic and it carries over to job interviews, asking someone out on a date, and yes - going tee shot for tee shot with someone that went to a "better" school.

If you only take one piece of advice away from this entire website remember this next sentence because it might be one of the most sound pieces of advice that you ever hear.

If you're confident be yourself. If you're not confident be confident - ooze confidence.

Public Relations Summer Internships

2010-01-11T16:30:00.000-08:00

Public relations summer internship opportunities are very popular with marketing majors and the reasons for the popularity are quite simple.

Public relations is one of the sectors of the marketing world where any dedicated summer job searcher can have success in landing a spot at a reputable firm. These positions are often prevalent because public relations companies are generally stretched very thin, consequently it is pretty common for them to open their doors to seasonal (summer) staff whenever the opportunity presents itself.

While there are global public relations firms the industry is largely dominated by very regional players that are often broken into such small subsections as specific cities. In most instances PR firms with clout are still smallish companies that in many instances are less than ten years old. The PR world presents an interesting opportunity for an intern because it often offers a glimpse into the world of running a small business and the industry certainly offers the opportunity to someday be your own boss and preside over your own firm.

While the following descriptions of PR firms are not absolute they are believed to be reasonably accurate generalizations.

The PR business can be broken down into three main categories

Very large global companies
In house public relations departments
Small and mid level sized firms

The majority of the discussion in this post centers around #3 but groups #1 and #2 will now be briefly summarized.

Very large global public relations firms are relatively scarce in the current economic landscape. These firms play an important role in the industry but are somewhat limited by the unique niche they occupy. Giant global corporations like Coca-Cola and AT&T have the resources to retain their own in house public relations departments (#2). With multinational corporations employing their own in house PR teams large global public relations companies are forced to cater to midsized companies with a national presence that necessitates paying an expensive public relations firm to manage their image. Because a lot of PR is done on a very local basis there is generally a great deal of demand for boutique local PR shops to handle local clients.

Small and midsized level PR firms are in almost all cases the result of at minimum a pair of career long PR workers partnering up and consolidating their books of clients to start their own shop where they'll take on additional risk and overhead in exchange for the opportunity to enjoy more of the upside in terms of client billing. When these types of PR firms are created the brand new company needs at minimum a small support staff. This support staff is filled with several usually younger employees who aspire to be mentored in such a way that they will eventually be able to learn the business and make the connections necessary to someday open up their own businesses. There can also be numerous perks to working in PR in terms of attending opening and kick off parties. While the hours can be long and the pay reasonably low there instances where the work can actually be considered "fun" - which is more than many people can say about their jobs.

Due to the abundant supply of people interested in exploring careers in PR (an industry somewhat dominated by women) salaries are usually low compared to other industries requiring similar levels of experience. As described above the trade off in terms of current salary is often justified because the work environments lend themselves to providing an opportunity for much larger paydays down the road when the workers of today are the owners and bosses of tomorrow.

While it is not always the case that traditional college internship programs offer public relations positions these are the types of opportunities that are best learned about through networking. In many instances with the right level of resourcefulness and persuasion boutique PR firms that had no intention of bringing on summer interns can be talked into the idea of letting you help out around the office during the summer in such a way that both parties benefit.

As with most businesses along this vein the formula for success is to (a) have a network of billable clients and (b) provide added value for those clients that exceeds the amount you're charging them for your services.

Many professionals both young and old agree that the most worthwhile college internships/summer jobs are those in which the intern has a great deal of exposure and interaction with top level management. These types of situations foster the greatest level of learning and degree of understanding about how a particular business works. Public relations summer internships in most instances offer these unique opportunities for daily interaction with mentors responsible for the success of the business.

College Internship Programs

2009-12-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

College Internship Programs are overrated.

College internships can be very necessary wonderful career springboards that make the entry level period of most careers go more smoothly. The smoother the early phase of a career goes the quicker it can launch someone into the fast track to financial success and career bliss.

The college internship programs that are prized by many semi-informed college students are often thought of as the ultimate prizes when it comes to summer internship opportunities. The truth of the matter is that these cookie cutter internship opportunities are not the truly unique opportunities that the most ambitious students are looking want. If you look around any disgruntled office you'll find middle aged middle managers that hate coming to work every day. Many of these people have been coming into the same job day in and day out for over a decade and without really planning to just assume they'll do the same for another ten plus years. These less than enthusiastic workers are quick to complain about their station in life without ever actually making an effort to improve it. These types of workers are typically the end product of the standard college internship programs. If you surveyed most of the individuals that were just described you'd likely find a common background thread in the form of a predictable past that included standard, run of the mill, cookie cutter college internship programs.

As depressing as it is to say a standard college internship program can be vastly superior to the alternative of doing nothing even remotely productive during the summer. There are of course rare instances where being off the beaten path can actually be worthwhile. Some of the people that take the road less traveled actually do benefit in the long run from not being stuck on a predicable career path with an understood ceiling of the maximum level of success. There is an old adage that says "you'll never get rich working for someone else" and there is a great deal of truth in that statement. For many individuals that either get lucky or find their calling later in life there can be much benefit in not being stuck on what is considered to be a traditional career path.

Regardless of what sorts of college internships or Summer jobs an individual is exploring it is important to keep in mind that someone that wants unique results needs to do something unique. If you want to be unsuccessful do what unsuccessful people do. If you want to be pretty successful do what pretty successful people do. If you want to be extraordinarily successful then you need to do what extraordinarily successful people do. By definition extraordinary people aren't ordinary and that means they don't do ordinary things.

The secret to success is merely in the approach and attitude. The ideology is effectively to work smarter, not harder. Getting a unique internship that puts you on the fast track to career success and ultimately extraordinary results doesn't have to be any more difficult than getting into a typical college internship program.

Summer Internship Opportunities

2009-11-09T15:50:00.000-08:00

If you just read the first post Summer Internships | Summer Jobs (catchy name for a website) then you're probably excited about living a fulfilled life but know that in order to get your career off the ground you're going to need to start by taking advantage of summer internship opportunities but you probably don't even know where to look. I can comfortable say that you probably don't know where to look for the real quality jobs because you won't find them on a job message board or at your school's career center. The best jobs are discretely handed out to people with connections and if you don't have any connections right now don't worry at all. You'll soon understand how to quickly amass all of the connections you'll ever need to land the college internships you want summer after summer. Following the steps outlined in this website will keep you from wasting away in a perpetual state of misery that's induced by spending your Monday mornings in a cubicle until you're old and gray. If you want to avoid the stagnant office trap that even the brightest college graduates find themselves in every year read on to find out exactly what you need to do to put yourself on the fast track to successfully ramp up your career at a pace quicker than any of your peers.

It comes as a shock to most people to learn that the most prestigious summer internship opportunities are the ones that result from multiple rounds of intimidating interviews that are performed over several days. The perceived most desirable jobs that come to campus and have their pick of the best and brightest students are not really best jobs nor are they the optimal jobs for people that want to get rich and live life on their own terms. What most of these cookie cutter so called top jobs offer is a two to three year training program that may help pave the way for graduate school but won't necessarily make you feel fulfilled. The objectives of these companies and these programs are to plug in the best employees for positions that in many instances are designed not for the employees optimal growth but rather for singularly filling a very specific role that a recent graduate is hired to fill.

Summer internship opportunities should be just that - opportunities. In order to best find the ideal opportunity we have to ask what that opportunity needs to include in order to truly be a real opportunity to spring board your career to the next level. If we were to paint a picture of the ideal summer internship opportunity what would it include? Let's start with working for someone that is actually glad to have your help. A manager that doesn't think of you as a distraction for a couple of months but rather as an impressionable young student that they'd like to help by passing along whatever career advice they've amassed during their lifetime.

While on the subject of direct managers let's all agree that in addition to being a helpful superior that's not only able to but also volunteers career (and life) advice that you want to be working for someone that you look up to career wise. There is nothing more frustrating for working for someone that is a position that you never aspire to be in yourself. Think about all of the levels of middle management and paper pushers that most large companies employ. So many of these people literally show up for work every morning for decades and every single day they don't want to be there. This is unquestionably not the type of environment that fosters personal and professional growth. If you're working for someone that hates their job you're probably working for the wrong person. There are a lot of reasons that people stick around in jobs that they don't like or even hate. Among the most popular reasons are that the pay is good, the job is secure and they fear they're not qualified for anything that pays nearly as much, and the overwhelmingly most popular reason is a complete lack of motivation to make a move. For a lot of people "good" really can be the enemy of "great." What this expression means is that too often people, particularly with regards to careers (but also with relationships and other facets of life), get so caught up in just being comfortable that they are not motivated to strive for excellence or greatness. Of course in many instances the pursuit of perfection requires additional levels of risk taking and risk tolerance levels vary greatly between individuals and shift throughout ones life. The fact still remains though that for many employees just being comfortable with their position is life is the biggest suppressor of potential that exists in the workplace today.

Find a job that provides a willing, informed, and helpful mentor that has progressed in their career to a point that you want to some day be at and you will realize that these circumstances are the summer internship opportunities worth pursuing - this is the scenario that properly lays a foundation for a lifetime of great success.

College Internships | Summer Jobs

2009-11-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

Depending on your major and grad school plans college internships can be the most influential part of any college experience because these summer jobs have a tremendous influence on career success.

This website will specifically address how any college student regardless of their interest can get a paid internship in any city they want.

If you want to work in fashion in San Francisco this website will tell you how.

If you want to work in the NBA front offices in New York City this website will tell you how.

If you want to work in finance in Chicago this website will tell you how.

If you want to work for a movie studio in LA this website will tell you how.

If you want to work in advertising in Dallas this website will tell you how.

If you want to work for a golf course designer in Phoenix this website will tell you how.

If you want to work for a real estate developer in Miami this website will tell you how.

If it isn't already apparent this website will show absolutely anyone how they can find their dream internship that will give them their best shot at landing their dream job. The way to do it is surprisingly simple and I know from personal experience.

Why I know what I'm talking about:

While the current economic recession unquestionably makes the job environment exceptionally difficult for college students this isn't the first time the market has been extremely unfriendly to recent grads. I was an underclassmen when 9-11 happened and I sat by as I saw fraternity brothers and other seniors graduating into a world that wasn't offering the same opportunities for new grads that could easily be had just the spring before. Of course that summer I faced the same difficulties in finding a summer internship that my recently graduated friends were experiencing with full time permanent jobs. While my plight wasn't as serious because I still had years of school ahead of me to get my act together the process of how to land the ideal job quickly became apparent to me. I had to get creative and it's worked out very well for me.

Here's what I did

The first step in landing your dream job is to decide exactly what that job is.

The question of what's your ideal job is really a grown up version of the childhood question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" It can be surprisingly difficult both then and now to come up with a good answer.

If you don't already know what your passion is let's break it down to figure it out. What's important to you? Where do you want to live? Do you want to have a lot of money? Do you want to have a lot of free time? Do you want to have a lot of money and a lot of free time? Your priorities are your business and no one else (yes including me) can tell you what they are. If teaching autistic children is what makes you feel fulfilled that's wonderful, the world could use more people like that. If you won't feel like you've made a success of your life until Steven Spielberg turns one of your screenplays into a blockbuster movie that's an entirely different set of goals and priorities.

The bottom line is this: Once you figure out where you want your career to some day be in terms of independence, security, flexibility, wealth, fulfillment, physical location, work environment, etc. then you're finally in a position to layout a road map as to exactly how to go from where you are today to where you want to be when you cross the finish line. I should mention that when performing the aforementioned exercise many people mistake the finish line or the pinnacle of their career for retirement at age sixty-five. That's not what I'm talking about here. Part of the analysis that goes into choosing a career should be how quickly you can reach your optimal level of happiness with that career path and how important that quick assent is compared to an alternative that makes takes longer but offers a higher summit.

Your Career Path

For the sake of moving this along and getting to the point of this entire blog which is what you need to do to get any internship you want in any city you want in any industry you want we're going to assume for the purposes of this conversation that either through divine intervention or through the process described above that you've decided what you want to do with your life (at least for now). The next step is to reverse engineer yourself into the place you want to be. What I mean when I say reverse engineer is that you're going to work backwards so that you can figure out what you should be doing now to get yourself on the most direct track possible to your dream scenario.

For starters do some research on what sort of people are currently doing the jobs you someday want to be doing. What kind of backgrounds do they have in terms of education, work experience, life experience, etc. Imagine the ideal resume that would make someone an outstandingly qualified candidate for your dream job and strive to someday have that resume yourself. The very idea might sound overwhelming until you consider the fact that you may have as long as decades to sculpt the background you'll need to position yourself for where you want to be in the future.

Here's an oversimplified example to further drive home my point. For simplicities sake let's say you want to the President of West Coast Operations for Best Buy.

You love the west coast, you love Best Buy, you love the idea of how much money this job makes, and this is what you've decided you want to do with your life. It'll be wonderful. Your office will be in San Francisco, you can send your son to USC and your daughter to Berkley. Your wife (or husband) and you can take weekend trips to wine country and celebrate anniversaries in Vegas. Life will be good.

The only thing standing between you and your happily ever after ending is everything you need to do to get there. Let's get you on a career path that will get you there ASAP.

In high school your summer jobs are at the Best Buy in your hometown. You help out with the little stuff but you're just happy to have a few extra dollars in your pocket every pay period and you mainly took the job for the employee discount anyway. In order to get into college you might need to enroll the help of CAHSEE preparation if you're a California student or a similar high school exit exam in your own state if you live elsewhere.

In college you major in some sort of related business field depending on what your university has to offer. Retailing, Marketing, Finance, or even just Economics if that's the closest fit you can find.

Using the steps that this blog will recommend you land summer internships in the retailing business while in college. Unfortunately Best Buy didn't offer anything that you qualified for but you did land with Macy's working as an assistant buyer in their Dallas offices.

During your senior year of college you realize that while working in the corporate offices for a department store might be the dream of many young girls (including Rachel Green from Friends) it's not optimal for you. You want to be on the west coast and with Best Buy or a similar technology related company. Using the knowledge you gain from this website you politely decline a job offer from Macy's and through your own efforts you parlay your relevant experience to land a job with Gap in their management training program in San Francisco.

After the initial thrill of living in San Francisco wears off and you've completed the three year training program you realize it's time for greener pastures. What you need is a change of scenario and to continue down the career path that you laid out many years ago. It's time for a change. You begin speaking to job recruiters and after deciding that there really isn't anything out there for you right now you decide to take the GMAT and got to business school because an MBA is practically a prerequisite for consideration for the job of President of West Coast Operations of Best Buy.

The combination of a strong GMAT score, pretty good grades in college, and relevant work experience secures you a spot in top tier UCLA's Anderson school of business. You're moving to Westwood (Los Angeles) for a two years school, networking, and fun in the city of angels. School is a little hard but it's mostly group projects and the professors treat the students as adults. The entire emphasis is to land the best job possible. When that happens the school looks good and you look good. There are a lot of job choices coming out of grad school from coast to coast but you've already situated yourself in the part of the world where you want to be.

The summer between your two years of business school is spent working for Microsoft is Seattle doing supply chain management. It's much more technical than your management trainee position with Gap or your assistant buyer internships with Macy's and allows you to broader your resume with an additional useful skill that would be relevant for someday landing the Best Buy President of West Coast Operations position. At the end of the internship Microsoft offers you a full time position upon your graduation from UCLA and you gladly accept. The second year of grad school is extraordinarily comfortable as you enjoy the laid back nature of a school schedule with the piece of mind that you already have a full time job locked up in Seattle after graduation.

School ends and your days of tailgating at college football games and lounging down at the beach in Santa Monica are quickly cut off when you realize it's time to move up to Seattle (where you know practically no one) and begin a serious job that involves real responsibilities and managing employees.

Stuff at Microsoft isn't wonderful. You like it okay, you really like getting the biggest paycheck you've ever received, the city's cool, and you're paying down your student loans. The problem is that the job isn't totally fulfilling. You feel like a cog in a giant machine - doomed to spend eternity bouncing around middle management positions if you don't figure out a way to move out and up. After a few years you know you need a change so that's exactly what you do.

Armed with an impressive resume filled with desirable job history and degrees you network your way into a position that's finally with Best Buy. Finally, you'll be working on stuff you're really interested in. It's not quite Head of West Coast Operations in San Fran, but you will be working San Diego as a division manager.

You absolutely LOVE San Diego. It's mid-west sensibility with weather that is somehow even superior to LA's. You realize and proudly state that San Diego has a downtown that every city envies and thrives to emulate. You quickly grow to love your lifestyle.

Yes, you're working long hours to make a good impression on your superiors but it's also because you like what you're doing and the people you're working with. You're surrounded by smart people with similar backgrounds and ambitions. When you're not working you're perusing everything that San Diego has to offer. During the long summer days you often walk straight from your office to Petco Park in the Gas Lamp District of downtown San Diego to catch a Padres game with friends. It's at one of these very baseball games that you meet your eventual wife (or husband). Life is wonderful.

You never want to leave San Diego but a job opens up at Best Buy corporate office in San Francisco and while it's not President of West Coast Operations it is Vice-President of West Coast Operations. You love San Diego but San Fran is great too and this new position would offer a big pay raise - something you're always welcoming of. The company says they want to hire internally and you're as qualified as anyone. You've been with Best Buy in San Diego for five years now and while that's not as long as a lot of people it is a substantial enough amount of time to make you more than just qualified.

After a series of interviews you're hired and just like that you're moving back to San Francisco. This time you're not moving to SF straight out of college to start working at Gap, now you're moving up from San Diego with a spouse. The city's just as beautiful as the way you left it only now you have more disposable income to enjoy it. You don't spend nearly as much time in bars or going out during the week as you did right after college (sadly your body can't handle it anymore) but you do frequently go to nice dinners, shows, pro sporing events, and ski trips to Lake Tahoe.

Time flies.

Ten years go by and you have two young children and are finally up for the President of West Coast Operations of Best Buy. This is the job you've always wanted and the one you've positioned yourself for since you were a teenager. Of course the new job will entail as increased responsibilities (what promotion doesn't) but in addition to greater compensation you'll also have an increasingly independent schedule that will allow you to organize your time how you best see fit. This added amount of autonomy will allow you go to your kids softball games and soccer matches. On the night you find out they picked you for the job you go out with your spouse and spend a night in the nicest hotel in San Francisco and celebrate your success.

Life has been good. Life is good. Life will continue to be good. College internships and summer jobs while you're still in school are the entry level positions that can set the path for a lifetime of prosperity in work and every other facet of life.