Unlike most Freshmen, he was lucky enough to have secured a summer internship with a large U.S. company, but the gig would be in a functional area that didn’t interest him. He was seeking advice on whether he should actually do the internship or try to find a different way to spend his summer.
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JB wrote:
Dear Marquis,
I hope you are having a good weekend! Thank you so much for […] presenting to us about your experiences! I never got to introduce myself as I had to rush out of the event afterwards to go to a meeting, but I truly loved hearing your story. It was such a breath of fresh air from the typical formal presentations that are mostly interesting to sit through, but lacked the level of vibrance and overall personability that you had.
Yesterday I was having a conversation with a fellow student about what I am interested in studying, and I thought back to your presentation. This was mainly because of your ending up doing much of your work outside of your initial major. In a response to a question, you said that you almost never use skills from your major in your work, but I don’t believe you went much into how your little experience with your major helped you develop in your career.
I was lucky enough to pretty much blindly walk into an opportunity for a summer internship for DISH in sales, where I will be going door to door selling products and receiving training from higher-ups in the company. Initially, a freshman internship sounded like an amazing opportunity to me, and I really don’t have any experience with sales. So for all I know, I could love it. However, based on what I’ve learned about different fields so far, human resources or management sounds like a much more appealing option for me.
To tie it all together, I am curious if you think that I will be able to gain anything from the DISH internship that could potentially help me progress as a professional towards eventually looking into jobs and internships in other fields that I am currently more interested in? Or do you believe that looking into other opportunities such as study abroad in the summer, which could potentially be more directly related to human resources or management, would be a better option?
Thank you so much again for speaking [to our group], it was such a pleasure to listen to your talk. I truly appreciate your offering to respond to network with [my fellow classmates] and I if we reached out, and I would be so thankful to get a response and hear your opinions.
Best,
JB
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My response:
Hi JB,
Thanks for taking the time to attend my presentation last week. I never know whether my words are useful to the audience, so I appreciate you sending this message to let me know that I did alright. 🙂
Great question about the best way to spend your summer. Before diving into my specific feedback, I want to say that it is pretty amazing that you were able to secure an internship already, especially as a Freshman. Most internship employers are seeking Juniors as a way to feed their recruiting pipelines for full-time recruits. There’s always an outside chance that those employers will also consider Sophomores, but it is usually a TOUGH road for Freshmen who want meaningful summer work. You should pat yourself on the back for having locked down the opportunity with DISH.
If I think about your situation, I see 2 key points: (1) the question that you asked and (2) the question that you should have asked. I’ll cover both of them:
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- Do I think you’ll gain anything from the proposed internship as compared to the alternatives?
I think that your learnings could potentially be significant from this internship and, although it may not exactly fit your interest at the moment, it could give you a 12-week deep-dive into an area of business that most folks your age never get to see. When it comes to building your overall profile as a growing business professional, you should think about the “long game” and aim for experiences that could be interesting (and put some money into your pocket). This DISH internship sounds like it could fall into that category.In a sales role, you would have to learn a lot about the company in order to be fully-informed enough to make a viable pitch to sell its product and service offerings. Key topics/ideas include:
- Detailed understanding of the firms products and services offered (including differences in offerings per geography)
- Customer segmentation practices that could impact its strategy to grow the business
- Background on its pricing approach and how that fits into its business strategy (including discounting and bundling)
- Marketing, promotions, and go-to sales techniques
- Competitor analysis and how to articulate the uniqueness of the DISH offering
Also, if you have a chance to learn sales from the senior people at DISH, you would not only be learning from some of the best in the business, but also getting practice at building senior relationships, which, as you know, can pay major dividends throughout your career. I have a feeling that you’re underestimating the potential benefit from being apprenticed at the sales game by folks who know it well. This could be huge for you and it’ll be something that could distinguish you later on.
Summer research work and study-abroad opportunities are cool if you aren’t able to get a business internship and could be great experiences. That said, nothing will help you more in terms of building yourself up as ayoung business professional than getting real professional work experience in a business environment. If I look at the resume of a Sophomore who had a business internship versus one who did a study-abroad summer, I’m more likely to think that
- How will the internship look as a part of your profile when competing for future internship/full-time opportunities?
In short, the DISH internship could look really good, but it’ll all depend on how you communicate its value to your profile. If you think about the experience as something that isn’t in line with your interests, then you’ll likely end up making it sound like it was a consolation prize and wasn’t valuable. In other words, you’d be dead in the water.But, if you focus on the benefits that I noted above and can craft your story around that, you’ll be golden. It’s all about being able to make folks understand the skills that you developed, the experiences that you gained, and professionalism that you sharpened during the internship, all of which could play well in an interview.
Most importantly, when you’re looking for an internship next year, having had a challenging experience like sales at such an early stage will be a great way to distinguish yourself from other kids. Don’t overlook the impact of that.
So, if we step back and look at the situation, I’d say that you should feel incredibly fortunate to have the internship with DISH in your back pocket. There may be other gigs that appear to align more closely with your educational/career interests, but you can still get a lot out of this sales role. Also, if you were to compare the value of a real corporate type of internship to a study-abroad summer, it isn’t even close…the corporate gig will make your resume sparkle much more in the future. Don’t let the pursuit of “perfect” get in the way of getting the “really good”.
I hope that my comments above were along the linea of what you were looking for. Take care and good luck with the rest of your semester.
Marquis
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Response to my message:
JB wrote:
Dear Marquis,
This was probably the most insightful and helpful advice I have received about the situation. You have completely persuaded me that doing the internship is the right move for me personally in order to develop as a professional and put me in a better situation going into the future. Not only did this message help me out for the specific scenario, but the perspective you brought forth about looking into the future is one that I hadn’t considered nearly as much as I should have before this. I could not be more grateful for you taking the time to write this to me, and it would be such an honor to keep in touch with you going into the future.
I hope that everything continues to go well for you, and that you remain to be the AWESOME person that you are!
Best,
JB
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