Preparing for Internships in the Business World (Part I)

For most of us, it is important to figure out what we want to do after college, whether that be graduate school, professional school (business, law, medicine), or full–time work. Internships are an important tool for gaining experience and learning about one’s preferences and interests. Perhaps most importantly, internships aid in attaining goals such as acceptance to a graduate school or employment in a particular job.
This article does not seek to provide career advice, but rather to provide advice to help secure an internship that will further your business career. It is by no means necessary to major in the fields of accounting, business, economics, finance, or marketing to enter the business world. Two of my best friends, both political science majors, have obtained excellent internships and jobs in not just the business world, but in finance— one at an industry–leading investment research firm and the other at a large hedge fund.

Skills: We All Need Some
First, let me emphasize that the most important skill in the business world is the ability to critically analyze problems with quantitative and qualitative methods. Well, what on earth does that mean? It means that to succeed, one should be able to look at an issue and analyze it using mathematical and statistical metrics (quantitative) together with subjective criteria (qualitative) to arrive at decisions. To put it another way, think of business skills in two main groups:
Quantitative (Hard Skills)
Accounting
Economics
Finance
Mathematics
Statistics
Quantitative Jobs
Accountant
Business Development
Corporate Finance
Economist
Investment Banking
Qualitative (Soft Skills)
Communications
Human Resources
Management
Marketing
Sales

Qualitative Jobs
Customer Service Rep
Broker
Marketer
Manager
Sales
Hard skills tend to be required for a solid foundation in business and are readily measured by aptitude tests, quizzes, brain teasers, etc. Soft skills tend to be handier as one advances in an organization to become the leader of a team, part of the management, or an entrepreneur. These skills are harder to test in an interview setting and, by the same token, also more difficult to learn through classes or books. As you can see, many jobs require a strong balance of both sets of skills.
That said, there are a variety of approaches to entering the business world—with a purely liberal arts education, a purely business–related education, engineering, etc. The best approach is one that combines the strengths of your academic program and extracurricular that help fill in your gaps. Regardless of whether or not one chooses to enter a certain field, a broad set of skills is the only sure way to be a strong candidate from a wide variety of jobs.

• Microsoft Access (if you will be working with any database or data management systems)
• Microsoft Excel (if you will be working in any accounting, finance, or quantitative field such as asset management, corporate finance, investment banking, trading, etc.)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (if you will be working in any situation where presentations are required such as management consulting)
• Microsoft Word (for everything!—try to make sure you know how to touch type)
• STATA (or other statistical program)

Now you are all wondering about what kind of internships are out there. Below is a description of the different “levels,” so to speak, of business internships. This is not to say that any one is necessarily better. Rather, this should show how different internships are regarded differently:
Level 1: Restaurants/Retail/Telemarketing
This includes everything from McDonalds to the Gap. I too did my share of retail while working in the Men’s Department of Florida–based Steinmart. Jobs such as these give experience, but mostly the kind you don’t want to talk about. It’s not too productive to tell your interviewer how you marked down sales and watched for theft for your job. A better approach is to learn how to “spin” this kind of experience. Think about what you learned from this experience? What would you change if you were the manager? How would you speed up the pizza delivery process? How would you improve your company’s customer database in order to better manage sale and frequent–customer rewards? Take these experiences and build on them. This kind of position is a good start, provides some cash, and is best to pursue during your high school years and perhaps your first year of college.
Level 2: Basic Office Jobs (Pure Grunt Work – Mostly)
This is the kind of “internships” that involve shredding papers, photocopying, faxing, doing various errands and are usually secured through friends, parents, family friends, professors, past bosses, etc. Sometimes companies recruit for such positions and disguise them as real internships where one is given responsibility. In the 1970s, such grunt–work jobs were considered the best one could do, but as times have changed, companies have realized the value of formal internship programs to develop future full–time employees.
Basic office jobs are found all over the place—often in suburban office parks near where many of us reside. These jobs also require some serious “spinning.” So even if all you actually did was get your boss coffee, order lunch from the local Chinese restaurant for the whole office, and organize a baseball game outing, figure out what you learned. Try to learn what office politics are about. What does the company you interned with do? Who are their competitors? What do they well and what do they do poorly? Glean what you can.
Level 3: Formal Corporate Internships
Most of these internships involve working in corporate offices doing accounting, finance, marketing, product research, etc. for large corporations such as Colgate–Palmolive, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and Verizon. These internships provide valuable formal training and the chance to see how Fortune 500 companies work—quite interesting considering the amount of administration it takes to run a company with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in sales.
More likely than not though, these internships will either be very specific to one area such as accounting, corporate finance, or marketing a specific product or will be generalist internships which seek to expose you to the whole company. The latter will be interesting and exciting but you will not learn as much or go in depth to the degree you would with a more focused internship. Nonetheless, these are great internships that provide you with a solid brand name on your resume, but you need to learn how to explain that not only did you learn how to be part of a team (albeit the lowest person on the team), but you also learned about how organizations work, how teams work, etc.
Level 4: Start–Ups and Innovative Small Firms
While we have listed this as level 4, it could be lower than level 1 or higher than level 5 (the highest) depending on what you actually do at your internship, what you learn from it, and how you sell it to future employers. Personally, being an entrepreneur and starting four different companies including PrepMe have helped me get every interview under the sun, whether it be a prestigious consulting firm such as McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), an investment bank such as Barclays Capital, Citigroup, and UBS, or other opportunities such as Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Legal and SG–2 Healthcare. Not to boast, but I have learned how to spin the entrepreneurship experience and it really comes down to having a story which I will get into towards the end of this really long article.
Working for a start–up can be incredibly rewarding whether you are the entrepreneur starting it or a participant on the team. One can learn a lot about teamwork, strategic management, how to develop an idea into a product, marketing, sales, operations, human resources—you can basically learn everything because a start–up is a microcosm which contains almost all of the aspects of every major business. It’s really exciting to see how the same person can be in charge of customer service, marketing, and sales at the same time. On the other hand, if one doesn’t step up to the challenge and take on new responsibilities and learn–by–doing, a start–up may provide no value at all. Start–ups don’t have formal training programs; rather, one is expected to learn by making mistakes and taking chances.
After such an internship, make sure you can explain to a bigger company why you want that experience as opposed to the flexibility of the start–up experience. Good reasons include: direction, formal training, guidance, stability, structure, etc.
This article is brought to you by PrepMe.com.
Article by Karan Goel and courtesy of www.careersandcolleges.com