Alumns Discuss Importance of Undergrad Internships

There are many cases where a student’s major in college hardly affects what they do after graduation.

Doug Heffner, a 2010 graduate of the University of Tampa, got his degree in Business Entrepreneurship. During his senior year, he and some friends from the College of Business decided to put their entrepreneurial skills to work and start their own wing sauce company through Anchor Bar on Davis Island.

“I worked over 8 months on this project, but it just wasn’t enough to pay the bills. It did help me introduce myself to the real world and taught me how to interact with adults, though,” Heffner claimed.

Currently, Heffner is working in a construction equipment rental business, but he said, “I’m looking for a way to get out of that job and move on to something new.” Hardly a year out of college and Heffner is seeking out his third career.

Heffner’s case is one where a link between college and a career was missing. An internship could play a critical part in helping a student determine what they want to do after graduation.

Until recently, internships were merely a nice add-on to a resume. In today’s competitive job market, internships provide an invaluable way for juniors and seniors to get a foot in the door of the careers in which they are interested.

According to a 2007 survey conducted by JobWeb, 70 percent of employers extended job offers to their interns.

Timothy Kennedy has been the coordinator of internships for the communications department at UT for 23 years. He claimed, “Internships are an integral part of our curriculum. They provide a balance between the theories taught in the classroom and the practical application of them in the workplace.”

Kennedy said that one of the biggest benefits of internships is that they teach students to interact with professional people in work situations.

Ali Dunn, Internship Coordinator in the Office of Career Services, said, “Internships are the best way to explore career options, because unlike reading about the career or talking about it, you get to get in there and see it first-hand. It’s really like a test drive.”

When it comes to exploring industries outside a student’s major, Dunn said that internships do offer some opportunity, especially to gain experience and to add to the student’s resume. However, when students are doing internship for college credit, they have to make sure that the internship fits within the boundaries of their majors.

“It’s amazing how many seniors don’t know what they want to do when they graduate,” said Kennedy. It’s a scary fact facing many students as their graduation date approaches.

Kennedy claimed, “The most focused of all UT graduates have been the Advertising and Public Relations majors.” He said they are the students that have been the most certain of what careers they want to go into and use their internships to network within firms.

Kenny Quirk graduated from UT in the spring of 2010. He took part in two internships with the marketing agency ChappellRoberts while getting his degree in Advertising and Public Relations. In his internships, he did both copyrighting and account services. Quirk said, “After graduation, I told them I’d be interested in a position, and I went through the application and interview process.”

Quirk started his full-time job with the firm this January. “My internship there was very helpful in making contacts within the company,” he said.

Dunn made the point that, though many internships can lead to careers, “There are a fair amount of students that decide while in an internship that it’s not the right fit. Knowing what you don’t want to do is sometimes as important as knowing what you do want to do.”

Matt Ludwig, a May 2010 graduate, took an internship at T. Rowe Price in the spring of his graduating year. According to Ludwig, “All I did was sit at a computer all day long doing nothing.”

Ludwig called his experience a “waste of an internship,” but he did say, “The job paid well, so I stuck with it, but it really had no influence at all on what I want to go into.”

According to Dunn, if a student in an internship decides that they are somewhere they don’t want to see themselves in the future, “Hopefully they do it soon enough to come to career services to figure out what they do want to do. Usually this doesn’t even mean changing their major, just changing their perspective within their major.”

Katie Leonick, who graduated with a degree in sports management in May of 2010, said that her work as a ticket services intern and a promotion intern to clients for the Hudson Valley Renegades, a minor-league affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, helped her get the job she has today as a box office manager for the Newark Bears.

“I absolutely loved working there. It gave me the opportunity to see what we learned in class in action,” said Leonick.“It 100 percent helped me to get the job that I have now.”

Kennedy said that the job of an internship coordinator goes beyond helping a student get an internship.

“I help that student put together a professional resume by graduation.”

According to Careerbuilder.com, employers spend on average 30 seconds looking at a resume and then make the decision of whether or not they want to look into the candidate further.

“When an employer sees you know the difference from what you put on your cover letter and what you put on your professional resume, it immediately sets you apart from other applicants,” Kennedy said.

In today’s economy, students can use all the help they can get finding a job. Not every story about internships has a happy ending, but when more than two thirds of internship sponsors are extending full-time positions to their interns, the benefits of that extra work during college seem to far outweigh the risks.

Channing Hailey can be reached at channing.hailey@spartans.ut.edu.