Emma McIlroy explains the WF Intern Challenge to College of Business students. Emma McIlroy explains the WF Intern Challenge to College of Business students.
Emma McIlroy, co-founder and CEO of tomboy-style clothing retailer Wildfang, was on campus Feb. 26 to invite students from multiple College of Business disciplines to compete for a pair of paid 10-week internships at the Portland-based startup.
The deadline is April 14 to enter the WF Intern Challenge. The challenge is actually five separate challenges that students can choose from depending on their major, expertise and experience.
Basic details are as follows:
Design and merchandising students are asked to create four to six pieces for Wildfang’s fall/holiday 2015 Tomboy collection, each retailing for less than $100.
Marketing students can either come up with a five-day run-of-show social media campaign, or identify two key consumer moments in 2015 and show a plan “to activate them for Wildfang.”
Business students’ mission is to predict where Wildfang might be in five years and give three examples of how the company could potentially modify its business and/or operating models.
Operations students are tasked with figuring out the metrics that matter most to a business like Wildfang and how they might trend over the next two years, and providing three initiatives to improve in some or all of those areas.
Nine students attended McIlroy’s presentation in Austin Hall. Wildfang is hoping to hire two interns, each of whom will receive a $1,000 stipend and course credit.
“We’re looking for people with a passion for learning and understanding our brand and our consumers,” she said.
For more information on the intern challenge, visit http://on.fb.me/1MvQ9re.
Yuan Feng Chao addresses the audience as fellow panelists Tyler Kluempke, left, and Keenan Seguancia listen during the Students Speak Out event on Jan. 27.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, and come up with at least one to ask every day.
Find a mentor.
Anticipate interview questions and practice answering them.
Research the company well in advance.
Lose your ego and be ready to learn from everyone in the company.
Develop your communication skills, both the formal and informal ones.
Understand that you’ll likely be asked to do at least some amount of grunt work.
Those were among the internship lessons passed along Jan. 27 by an eight-member panel during Students Speak Out. The Career Success Center organized the event, the first of its kind, and the near-capacity audience of about 50 in the Robert Family Events Room included a mix of majors and grade levels ranging from freshmen to MBA candidates.
Senior panelist Keenan Seguancia praised the first-year students for taking the initiative to learn about internships so early in their college careers and wished he had done the same thing. Seguancia, a business information systems/accounting major, interned with Nike in summer 2014.
In seeking out internships, Seguancia emphasized using the Career Success Center – “They search for opportunities for us day in and day out,” he said – and to research companies to see if their core values and mission statement align with those of the prospective intern. He also stressed the value of joining clubs on campus both for the resume-building and networking value.
Other panelists’ internship firms included Neil Kelly, Daimler Trucks North America, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Naked Wines, Mutual of Enumclaw, Olah Inc. and Robert W. Baird & Co.
Tiga Evans, a sophomore majoring in merchandising management and sustainability, spoke of being ready for whatever questions the interviewers might ask, including in her case, “Why do you want to work for this company?” and even “What is your favorite movie?”
Taylor Wobig, a senior in interior design, urged students not to exaggerate their skills when interviewing, and she also offered a networking tip: When you receive someone’s business card, write down additional information about the person on the back of the card for future reference.
About 50 students of varying majors and class levels attended.
And Hannah Taylor, a senior in finance, reminded the students that while internships provide for a variety of interesting and challenging responsibilities, they’re not all glamorous ones.
“Know you might be doing grunt work at the beginning,” she said. “It’s what you’re there for.”
For more information about internships, visit the Career Success Center, Austin Hall 102, and also like the center on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/OSUBIZJOBS.
Riley Kinser kept himself more than busy in his time at Oregon State. Kinser was in the College of Business’ Honors program, took part in the Austin Entrepreneurship Program (where his team took first place in the Business Plan Competition), and served as the president of the Oregon State Investment Group (OSIG).
Even though graduation took place just over a week ago now, Kinser has already moved to the San Francisco Bay area where he’ll be working withUnion Square Advisors, a middle-market investment bank that specializes in mergers and acquisition advice for tech companies. Kinser’s role as analyst will involve building presentations and financial models for clients. Kinser said that he was looking specifically for investment banks on the west coast that specialize in technology, which is how he ended up interning with Union Square Advisors in the summer of 2013. After completing his internship, Kinser received an offer to come to work for the company full-time upon graduation.
“Nearly all of the people I know who had work right after graduation found their jobs because of an internship they did,” said Kinser. “It’s important to start doing internships as soon as possible, as the more experience you have, the easier it gets to land interviews in the future. Internships will also help you discover what you like and don’t like in a potential career,” he said.
Kinser’s completion of Oregon State’s Honors College program also helped prepare him for today’s competitive job market.
“My research thesis was brought up in almost every internship interview I’ve ever had, and I think it played a major role in differentiating me from other applicants,” said Kinser. “Writing my honors thesis was probably the most challenging thing I did in my entire college career, but I learned a lot doing it and had the opportunity to thoroughly explore a topic I found interesting. I think more business students should choose to join the Honors College,” he said.
Kinser’s thesis study looks at whether two characteristics — physical attractiveness and perceived competence — have an impact on financial analysts finding large discrepancies between current prices and target prices of investments. Kinser’s research paper presented some intriguing evidence that overconfidence in investment recommendations may be correlated with an individual’s physical appearance. This is an especially important finding because when investors behave irrationally and make financial mistakes, many theories point the blame squarely at that investor’s overconfidence.
“Using only physical appearance, individuals can form a variety of opinions of others ranging from how physically attractive someone is to how competent they anticipate them to be,” said Kinser. “These judgments we make of others likely play a subtle yet important role in how we interact with each other. If these subtle differences in how we interact with each other have a cumulative effect, it is possible we would see individuals who are perceived to be extremely attractive or extremely competent becoming overconfident in themselves,” he said.
Now that Kinser has moved on from Oregon State and is starting the next chapter of his professional life, he leaves future and current Oregon State students with this advice:
“My advice to everyone is to try something new and say yes to opportunities. When I was a freshman I moved dorms from Callahan to Weatherford during the second week of school. While visiting the Resident Director of Weatherford to finalize my move, I just happened to run into a College of Business staff member who asked me if I was there for the Austin Entrepreneurship Program meeting. I had no idea what that was but it sounded interesting. I’d never envisioned myself becoming an entrepreneur, but I thought it sounded like fun so I said yes and went into the meeting. I was lucky and got to join an amazing team and over the course of the year I had the opportunity to watch a company form from an idea. My team ultimately went on form a company, Rowan Greenhouse Technologies, and won first place in the Austin Entrepreneurship Business Plan Competition. It was an amazing experience and it happened because I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and I decided to try something new. If you’re a new student, go check out some clubs and find something you like whether it be a business club or something else. The more involved you get, the more fulfilling your college experience will be.”
College of Business student Parker Edwards on his internship this summer with Alaska Airlines.
Oregon State College of Business student Parker Edwards heard a familiar phrase over and over this summer.
“I don’t know if this is possible, but …”
The Business Information Systems major spent his summer in Seattle with Alaska Airlines as a systems and process intern. Working with maintenance and engineering, Edwards’ job was to structure the huge amount of data connected to every aircraft and make it easier to find areas needing repair.
“I love data,” Edwards said. “It’s so powerful. People get really excited. Someone would come in and say, I don’t even know if this is possible, but if you can find a way … if I could click a button.”
Edwards was just one of a number of College of Business students who worked around the country and the world this summer as interns with some of the biggest companies in their industries.
Edwards’ role with Alaska combined his interest in technology and problem solving with his love of aviation.
“I want to get my pilot’s license as soon as I get out of school,” he said. “Also working with an airline that’s as prominent in the northwest as Alaska was a great opportunity.”
Interning with an airline also comes with perks beyond great experience.
Between his time as a system and process analysis intern with Alaska, Edwards and other interns flew free around the west coast and to Alaska and Hawaii. Edwards’ favorite trip was a day in Honolulu, leaving in the morning and returning the next day.
Edwards also had a great view at the office.
“Because it’s at the hangar, you can go downstairs at any given time and there would be 747s and just outside the door it’s SeaTac International Airport,” he said. “That was probably the coolest thing I could do there.”
Georgia Brown on her internship with Daimler Trucks North America.
Georgia Brown is still finishing her summer internship with Daimler Trucks North America in Portland.
That’s because Brown is part of MECOP. The prestigious, Oregon industry-sponsored program places students in a pair of paid six-month internships with some of the biggest firms in the Northwest.
“The most appealing thing about it was the fact that I would graduate with a year’s worth of work experience in my major,” Brown said. “I’m not exactly sure what I want to do once I’m out of college and having the chance to work for some of the most competitive companies in the Northwest is a great way to find out.”
As a project management intern in the Daimler IT Finance department, Brown works as an analyst for her group, bringing together research from different sources to create easy-to-comprehend reports on a variety of topics.
“Since I started my internship, I’ve developed the department’s Sharepoint site, created a customer relationship database in Access, and am working on documenting and learning TM1,” she said. “My knowledge of IT in general has improved and developed way more than I ever thought it would.”
Beyond the valuable real-life experience, Brown said her internship has helped her learn more about what she wants out of her own career.
“I’ve talked to students before who are hesitant to do an internship because they don’t know if they would enjoy that field, but I think this is the best way to try different career options and see what works for you,” she said.
In the School of Design and Human Environment Internship Program, more than 163 students completed internships during the 2012- 2013 school year with more than 109 companies. Overall, 11students interned in New York City’s Garment District, eight in Los Angeles and three internationally.
Through the program, facilitated by SDHE Internship Coordinator Sandy Burnett, students take a preparatory class before their internship and then a “Field Experience” course during, with weekly check-ins to mark progress and goals.
Merchandising Management student Kahli Lanning interned with Donna Karan during the summer, where she was able to work with teams from Donna Karan Japan.
“Getting to sit in on their meetings and being able to practice my Japanese in a business setting was a great experience for me,” Lanning said. “It is a great program, and I think the experience I gained will be invaluable to my future career.”
Jobe is planning to graduate from Oregon State spring term and interned with Intel in the summer and fall.
A marketing major, Jobe worked with Intel’s Client Board division and helped to head up the department’s social media efforts along with fellow College of Business student and MECOP intern Rachel Sauter.
The pair helped coordinate, produce and publish social media posts for the group, researching and developing strategies that could provide a tangible return on investment for Intel.
“I was the one who updated it and helped decide what the key messages were that needed to go out,” she said. “Just the variety and magnitude of the things I was given to do went way beyond what I expected.”
Sauter, a Business Mangement major, also worked on data anlysis reports for the department and helped troubleshoot a new website before launch.
“Being a part of launching a product was really fun,” Sauter said. “It was such a broad range of experiences, I was able to apply all my knowledge from school and from working in my family business.”
Jobe said the experience gave her not only real-life job experience but also a group of mentors who are already helping her shape her next steps after graduation.
“I can’t even really put into words all the things I got out of it,” she said. “My idea of what a job is and what a career could look like has developed immensely. I have resume items that are competitive with other people. I’m not going into the workforce blind.”
Sauter, graduating this spring, already feels like she’ll be a better employee because of her internships through MECOP.
“The references I have now, I could get four or five good references from managers at Intel,” Sauter said. “This has been such a key part of my education, I can’t imagine graduating without it.”
Trevor Husseman working at Daimler Trucks in Portland for his MECOP internship.
Trevor Husseman, an accounting and business information systems major, spent this past summer with Daimler Trucks North America in Portland.
There he worked on an internal application repository system to track the applications Daimler employees used, and helped integrate that with a system Daimler’s international operation was expanding.
“It keeps track of applications created within Daimler that people use on the shop floor, on their computers that we created,” Husseman said. “I worked with one of the engineers and actually implemented it into production.”
The opportunity to push something into the company workflow motivated Husseman, giving him a taste of what his career could be like after graduation.
“I learned to step up my work and my work ethic,” he said. “This is real life. This is going into production so it has to be perfect.”
This summer he’ll participate in his second internship, this time with Garmin in Salem.
Husseman said he already feels better prepared for starting his job search once he leaves Oregon State.
“It prepares you so much for your first real job, it’s invaluable,” he said. “You’re a year ahead of everyone else that’s starting.”
Looking back at his experience and ahead to his joining the workforce, he can’t imagine entering without his time with MECOP.
“I get a year of experience and two six-months of awesome pay, but really the work experience was worth it,” he said. “I think MECOP is just phenomenal and anyone who doesn’t do it is crazy. How could you not in this day and age when it’s so competitive?”
