'Internships give students practice working in a professional environment, and they learn how to work with more experienced people,” says William Gittens, director of employment services for the career development center at Tennessee State University (Nashville, TN).
In a co-op or internship students learn about intangibles that they don’t get in the classroom, he says, like how to navigate office politics and collaborate closely with teams that span a variety of departments and job titles. And of course the chance to apply classroom theory to real-world situations is invaluable.
Sandra Sanchez learns IT at Osram Sylvania
Sandra Sanchez graduated with a 2002 BSCS from the Instituto Politecnico Nacional (National Polytechnic Institute) in Mexico. During her last two years she did an internship in management of administrative systems with SGA Company, a Mexico City software development and MIS firm.
“It was a great opportunity. I practiced what I learned at school and started developing myself as a professional,” says Sanchez. “At the beginning I did some development of Web pages in HTML and maintained websites. I also read about ASP, because that was the language the company used to develops its systems.”
When she had enough experience she started working on administrative information systems. “That was when I acquired more expertise in the information systems development cycle.”
Sanchez had a job offer from the company at graduation, but she decided she wanted new challenges and experiences, so she looked for another job. “I finally found it at Osram Sylvania,” she says. “It was a long and selective recruiting process, but I’m a very tenacious person. I’m used to fighting for what I want.”
Today, Sanchez is an EDI analyst at the Mexico City facility of Osram Sylvania (Danvers, MA), which makes lighting products. “Our main IT department is actually in Danvers, so here in Mexico we do a kind of IT tele-working,” she explains. Sanchez was born in Mexico and has spent most of her life there.
She is part of the company’s associate development program, which includes assignments in several different areas of IT. “In the development program I only have eight months to learn processes and put them into practice. Gaining diverse technical, administrative and organizational skills in a limited period of time has been challenging.”
A company benefit
Osram Sylvania sees internships and co-ops as a vital tool for creating a more diverse workplace. “Internships and co-ops are in our best interest,” says CEO Charlie Jerabek. “They introduce our company to students with diverse backgrounds, and at the same time show us who’s out there.” Successful interns may end up with full-time positions at the company after they graduate.
The lighting industry, like many others, is in the midst of major change, particularly when it comes to finding more sustainable and environmentally friendly technologies, Jerabek notes, so fresh ideas are especially welcome. “New talent creates a culture of change and innovation.”
DeVon Williams: programmer/analyst with Walgreens
DeVon Williams was in his senior year at Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL) when a classmate mentioned internship opportunities at Walgreens. “I didn’t even know Walgreens was headquartered in the Chicago area until I talked to my friend,” Williams says. He went on line to find out more information, applied and was accepted.
Walgreens’ IT internship is a twelve-week paid assignment. Interns work on real-world projects and a case study, participate in social events and interact with senior IT leadership.
Williams did his internship in the summer of 2005 and got college credit for it. “I had to get a letter with feedback from my supervisor, and I had to write a paper about what I did,” he says. In the internship he worked with HTML pages and Word documents.
The work as well as the corporate experience solidified Williams’ career choice. “I have always wanted a professional office job and I also wanted to build software. This is the best of both worlds.”
At the end of his internship a full-time position became available on his team. “I liked the environment and I enjoyed my co-workers,” says Williams. “They really encouraged me to apply for the job, so I did.” He had an in-depth interview, and a week later he got a job offer.
Williams is now a programmer/analyst with Walgreens, on the team where he worked as an intern. He works on projects to optimize the pharmacy experience and improve processes like billing and information generation for pharmacists and patients. “Our team develops software for Web applications and I do Web application maintenance,” he says.
His internship was a valuable experience. “I got to see what goes on in a corporation, what the expectations were, what the flow was.” He thinks an internship is an experience other IT majors should consider. “When you buy a car you take it out for a test drive. Why not test drive your career?”
Brian Christian does external Web development at Compuware
Brian Christian was a business and CS major at Marygrove College (Detroit, MI). Internships and co-ops aren’t required for graduation there, but they are encouraged. So when Christian heard about an internship possibility with Compuware (Detroit, MI), an enterprise software and IT services provider, he decided to apply. He did a three-month internship during the summer of 2006.
He worked with a Web development team. “I did mainly content management and development. I also did a mainframe orientation. I had to work on a group project, familiarize myself with the product, and show management how versed I was.”
His internship showed Christian the connection between IT and business. “When I developed websites for companies, for instance, I could see how the sites helped those companies attain their goals,” he explains.
One of the missions of Compuware’s internship program is to develop future employees. “In the exit interview after my internship I was asked if I would be interested in returning to the company,” he says. “The HR staff let me know they would do everything they could to make that happen.”
Christian started his full-time position as a systems designer and developer in June 2007, shortly after graduation. Now instead of working on the internal development team, he’s involved with external Web development.
“I have more responsibilities,” he says, “like ensuring that the website supports the company’s sales and paid search campaigns. We use different content management and tracking tools from third-party vendors, along with ASP, JavaScript and other Web technologies.”
He says students should definitely do an internship. “Even if all it does is tell you that you made the right career choice, it’s worth it.”
“Both Compuware and its interns receive great value from the company’s internship program,” notes Thomas M. Costello, Jr, Compuware senior VP of HR. “Interns at Compuware benefit from challenging, fast-paced, real-world experiences in a professional technical work environment. The company benefits from the direct link such programs provide to a diverse, talented and motivated pool of potential employees.”
Merrill Lynch’s Jose Chavez: from intern to full-timer
Jose Chavez got his BS in computer engineering at Texas A&M (College Station, TX) in 2006. Before graduation he did two summer internships with global financial services firm Merrill Lynch (Jersey City, NJ). He’s now a full-time Merrill Lynch employee.
He applied for his first internship through Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (www.seo-usa.org), a selective program that works with minority students and major corporations. For the second internship he applied directly to Merrill Lynch.
During his first internship he was a Java developer in the firm’s fixed-income business. “I worked on two projects. One was with reconcilers on a system for cash settlements. The second was an application for a pricing system. We dealt with technologies we had never used before.”
For his second internship Chavez was in the infrastructure group. “I was on a team that managed all the cell phones, pagers, BlackBerrys and wireless cards for the firm. We would work out costs with carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. I also did a lot of research on BlackBerrys and wrote user manuals for internal clients.”
From his internships he learned about the financial services industry, as well as how to work as part of a team. He took this knowledge back to the classroom with him.
Time management was his biggest challenge on the job. “In school if you miss a homework assignment or a test, the professor lets you make it up. In the corporate world there are big consequences if the deadline isn’t met.”
After his second internship Chavez was offered a full-time job at Merrill Lynch. A month after graduation he entered the company’s technology analyst training program. He is now a senior specialist and works with applications used by bond traders.
FM Global’s Christine Hurley is a team leader
As a student at Northeastern University (Boston, MA), a five-year school, Christine Hurley was required to complete at least one co-op as part of her undergraduate education. Her co-ops helped her find a new career.
Hurley began at Northeastern as a marketing major, so the first co-op she did was in marketing. “But I didn’t find it interesting,” she remembers. “I didn’t see a lot of career growth.”
Even so, she stayed with her major. Her second marketing co-op was with FM Global (Johnston, RI), a business property insurer. During that co-op she realized that marketing was not for her and requested a change to IT. “I did a lot of data entry in marketing and I found computers interesting,” she says. FM Global cooperated, and when she returned to school she changed her major to MIS/business administration. She received her BS in 1992.
Co-ops at Northeastern typically last from three to six months and begin in the sophomore year. Hurley returned to FM Global for the rest of her co-ops and with each one was given more responsibility. “I started in helpdesk support, then went to production support, and then into a programmer/analyst role.” When she graduated FM Global offered her a full-time job.
She’s now a principal business analyst. She leads a team of analysts, developers and QA specialists working on applications in risk analysis and risk transfer.
“At FM Global, information technology and customized, state-of-the-art business systems are the infrastructure that enhances our ability to help safeguard the properties of more than one-third of the Fortune 1000,” says Jeanne Lieb, senior VP of IS. “We strive to provide IS co-ops with a truly meaningful experience that will help them secure full-time employment in the future.”
Hurley’s co-ops gave her the opportunity to figure out the right career path. “Don’t be afraid to admit you picked the wrong path and need to change majors,” she advises. “A lot of class credits are transferable.”
Nitish Gupta is a business analyst at FM Global
As an undergraduate student at India’s Technological Institute of Textiles and Sciences, Nitish Gupta participated in a six-month unpaid training program in IT services while studying for his bachelors of technology in computer engineering.
He graduated in 2003 and came to the U.S. for an MS in computer systems engineering at Northeastern. As part of his program he did two different co-ops.
The first was in QA with EMC Corporation (Hopkinton, MA). His second, which lasted nearly eight months, was with FM Global. “I was a business analyst co-op. It was very different from my first experience. My job was to gather and analyze requirements for an insurance system and communicate them to the IT folks. I was like a liaison between business and IT.”
Although co-ops weren’t required for his graduate degree, he felt it would be a good idea to do them. “I felt they would give me an extra edge when competing for a job,” he says.
Both co-ops helped him define his career. “I did the programming co-op and I thought I liked it,” he explains, “but then I did the business analyst co-op and loved it. I decided that is what I want to do.”
Today he is a full-time business analyst with FM Global. He’s still a liaison between business and IT. “Right now I’m involved in a pricing project to develop a better software system for our employees to use when working with clients. I try to understand the software needs of the business people and then help the people who are making the software program understand those needs,” he says. “It’s an IT position, but it gives me a chance to learn many aspects of the insurance business.”
Sylvia Hoe: IT analyst at Cisco
Sylvia Hoe had several jobs while she was an MIS student at San Jose State University (SJSU, San Jose, CA).
“I got my first job my very first year at SJSU working in the hospitality management department on campus,” she says. “After a year and a half of doing clerical work I wanted a job that would help enhance my career, so I decided to attend my school’s job fair.”
Two months later she had an interview at Infineon Technologies (San Jose, CA) for a tactical marketing intern position. She got the job, which required her to automate inventory and the pricing distribution list. Her BS in business administration with a concentration in MIS came in handy. She completed her work quickly and advanced to new projects.
“After a year and a half I decided to shift my career again, this time into the IT field. I went to another job fair at SJSU and submitted my resume to companies like Cisco, HP, IBM, Intel and more. Five months later Cisco hired me as an IT analyst intern on the global operations team.”
Her internship at Cisco Systems (San Jose, CA) introduced her to a career path she didn’t know existed. “As an MIS major I wasn’t sure what types of jobs were out there for me besides database admin or network admin. But when I did the internship I realized that an IT analyst position suits me very well,” she says.
After graduation in 2005 Hoe wanted to stay with Cisco, but there was nothing available on the team where she’d interned. With the help of her manager and HR, “I enrolled in a recent college graduate program at Cisco and interviewed with different groups at the company. There was a job as an IT analyst in the global technical response center, and that’s what I got.”
Today, Hoe works in internal support for the applications and tools used across Cisco. She has worked on projects to implement Microsoft Vista throughout Cisco’s global community, and to upgrade users to four new mobile devices. She is also the IT support liaison for acquisitions and mergers.
“There’s a lot of competition in the industry and it takes more than book smarts and grades to get your foot in the door. I have many friends who had a tough time finding a job after graduating because they didn’t have real-world work experience. I think all students should start applying for an internship as soon as they can. The best place to start is at your school’s career/job fairs. You can also apply via the Web. Students should also take advantage of their schools’ career centers to get help with their resumes and search for jobs.”
Senior analyst Darius Bovain: IT program manager at J&J
Darius Bovain is a senior analyst at DePuy (Warsaw, IN), which is part of the Johnson & Johnson family. He received his BS in computer engineering from Oakland University (Rochester, MI) in May 2004. He’s been with J&J since 2003.
Bovain completed summer internships in 1999 and 2000 with Kmart Corporation (Troy, MI), where he maintained the helpdesk website and integrated new software. He also maintained applications and tested system updates as a QA specialist.
During the 2001-2002 school year Kmart offered him a full-time development support specialist position with flexible work hours. He accepted it and spent the year as both a full-time student and a full-time employee. He was responsible for developing and maintaining desktop application installations within the organization, as well as raising the applications’ stability and usability levels. But when the company restructured in the summer of 2002 he was laid off.
In the spring of 2003 he attended NSBE’s national conference and career fair, where he landed a co-op with McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals (Fort Washington, PA), a J&J pharmaceutical company. He deployed software, served as a business analyst for technology solutions, developed intranet sites, and worked with business unit managers, team leaders and associates to determine development and implementation requirements.
After his co-op with McNeil he was accepted into J&J’s Information Management Leadership Development program, a two-year rotation program for enterprising recent undergrads.
Bovain’s first rotation was in 2004 with DePuy, which designs, manufactures and distributes a variety of orthopedic products. As an associate analyst Bovain was responsible for managing the IT project portfolio and its governance process.
His next rotation, in 2005, was with J&J’s global pharmaceutical supply group (Bridgewater, NJ), which handles supply chain ops for many J&J companies. He oversaw the computer security incident response team process and was a member of an IT security team. His last rotation was in security and computer forensics for J&J’s networking and computing services company (Raritan, NJ), which provides global infrastructure, technology and IT services across J&J.
In 2006 he returned to DePuy as a full-time senior analyst. He is now an IT program manager. He deals with schedule, budget and project scope, and ensures that the projects comply with appropriate standards and regulations.
His job gives him the satisfaction of knowing that he’s helping people, since the company’s products enhance quality of life. His internship and co-op, he notes, helped him build the skills to collaborate and interact with a variety of people in IT and non-tech areas.
Berbee’s Melissa Wright: working in voice over IP
Melissa Wright works in the Detroit, MI regional office of Berbee Information Networks, a solution provider and wholly owned subsidiary of technology products and services provider CDW (Vernon Hill, IL). She’s in an associate program that is part full-time employment, part internship. For the first six months most of her time was spent working on her certifications; now she is working on projects.
“The program is unique to Berbee and only accepts about twenty people twice a year,” she says. “It’s a twist on an internship in that you are a full-time hire, but you are in intensive training from the beginning.”
Wright received her degree, a BBA in computer networking, from Davenport University (Grand Rapids, MI) in 2005. She found the Berbee program through a career link at her university. “I thought it sounded like a great opportunity, since I was coming out of school with little experience. I sent off a resume and two days later I got an interview.”
Wright says the program has been key to her success. “I would not have had the exposure, the experience or the type of project work I have had without this program.”
Her major concentration is on voice over IP (VoIP) technology, with a secondary focus on wireless technology. “Berbee does its best to give you project experience in the things you are interested in,” she notes.
One of the reasons Berbee began its associate program was the lack of VoIP engineers in the marketplace, so Wright knew going in that she would be working with voice over networks. Fortunately it was the direction in which she wanted her career to go. “I think there is a lot of security in network jobs, and I also like the wide range of technology.”
“The CDW/Berbee associate program offers intensive technical training combined with practical consulting skills and is designed to prepare new co-workers as they launch their technical careers,” says Paul Shain, senior vice president of CDW and head of the Berbee subsidiary. “This training program has proven to be very successful for both our co-workers and our clients. The participants receive essential knowledge about their jobs, and our clients gain access to skilled, technically strong young talent.”
Rachelle Odom does info assurance at Booz Allen
As a student at George Washington University (GWU, Washington, DC), Rachelle Odom worked on two very different degrees: a BSCS and a BA in criminal justice. She knew she didn’t like programming and didn’t want to go in that direction with her career. “I was at a crossroads with my undergraduate majors,” she recalls. “I wasn’t sure how they could work hand in hand.”
She began doing some research, more to look for a part-time job than an internship, when she came across a website for the Consortium Research
Fellows Program (www.consortium-research-fellows.org), made up of universities in the Washington, DC metro area and Department of Defense agencies. Odom contacted the Consortium and, with a recommendation from a professor, was offered a fellowship at the National Defense University at Fort McNair (Washington, DC).
The fellowship began in 2004 when Odom was a senior in college and lasted two years. During that time she graduated and started her advanced study at GWU. “You can keep the fellowship for as long as you’re in school,” explains Odom. “I was able to continue because I went on to graduate school right away.
“We were assigned mentors,” she continues. “I worked with my mentor on developing an information assurance database.” She also worked as her mentor’s teaching assistant for some of his classes.
The fellowship helped her define the direction of her career. “I realized that information assurance was what I wanted to do. Another mentor was a former employee at Booz Allen Hamilton (McLean, VA) and he recommended the company to me.”
Odom approached Booz Allen Hamilton for a full-time position after college. She is now a Booz Allen consultant while she continues her graduate studies in computer forensics. The position lets her combine her computer science and criminal justice degrees into a viable and enjoyable career.
At Booz Allen Hamilton she is part of a privacy consulting team working on a project to protect personal identifiable information on government computers. The team recently began another project that will help identify forensic implications of new technologies.
She believes that getting involved with some type of program outside of the classroom, whether it’s an internship, co-op or fellowship, is critical for college students. “It prepares you for what you have to face after college,” she says. “It allows a peek into ‘grown-up’ life.
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