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To become a successful millionaire you need to start somewhere. For those of us that weren't born into a business know about a little thing called an internship. An internship is being employed by a company and working on smaller projects. Companies view this as a way to see if the intern would fit in working full time or will eventually be let go. In return the intern receives an hourly wage or school credit. Internships are important as a young professional because it will be able to fill up your resume and gain real life working experience. Many internships lead to full time offers with that company. Social media and other vehicles of new media assist in being interviewed and hired for these positions.

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College Students

While attending college at a two or four year university it is important to think ahead. Many people think that once they're in school they will start working after they graduate. This is true but in today's job market, that isn't guaranteed and students should take steps to make themselves attractive to recruiters and hiring managers. There are so many college people graduating every year that companies have an extensive amount of candidates to choose from. Your resume needs to stand out and an internship is perhaps the most invaluable way of doing so. Internships show that you have work experience and that you can handle school and work at the same time. That is a difficult task to juggle and it is commended by hiring managers. Most universities know how important this is to get a young professional's career started, so they set up an online recruitment center and Baruch's recruitment site is called STARR.

STARR

STARR has each individual Baruch Student create an online profile where you input all of your basic information along with resumes, cover letters, transcripts, GPA, and graduation date. Companies post the positions they need to fill (including internships) and give a summary and criteria for the job. If the student fits the requirements then they have the ability to apply for the position right then and there. After applying, the hope is you get an interview scheduled either through the phone, a notification on the site, or email. It is important not to forget that an email is a form of new media. In the sense that an email is internet based in which exchanges information from one party to another.

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On Campus Recruiting (OCR) is when companies visit Baruch's campus to recruit students for internships or full time jobs. In order to qualify for OCR internships, one has to view an online OCR tutorial and pass a test. The next step up with full time recruiting requires students to attend an OCR workshop in order to qualify. [1] STARR also offers various services such as mock interviews, cover letter and resume workshops, networking events, and much more.

Companies

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Companies like the idea of interns because its cheaper than hiring someone full time. It gives them a preview if you are a good fit or let go and replaced rather quickly. It is strongly reccomeneded that whichever position you've applied for through STARR is also applied on the companies site. These big companies will really get in depth and make you provide more information than STARR does. They want to be as specific and descriptive as possible. An online profile may have to be made that way it makes it easier to apply for more than one position. Many times they will ask you to regenerate most of your resume in their format. This is tedious but you want to get that job right?

With bulge bracket banks such as JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, etc recruiting at Baruch, it is important for students to get a head start. Many opportunities are available, but it is up to the student to take them.


LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is a site that could be comparable to a professional Facebook. LinkedIn is the first place hiring managers go to when they need to fill positions at their company. On the site it asks you to make a profile with a professional picture, your current and previous work history, resume, and skills. An interesting thing about this site is people can endorse you. This means that the connections you make with other people you know can endorse the fact that you have worked at these places and do posses the skills to do certain jobs that are claimed to be true on the page. LinkedIn has grown more to be more than an online resume. Your profile is now considered your own personal brand. People go onto your profile page and it will make them feel a certain type of way. You can be branded in a good way if people endorse you and your profile and connection looks legit. You can also be branded in a bad way if your profile isn't professional looking or doesn't seem legitimate.

Connections

People in your LinkedIn network are called connections, and there are varying degrees of connections that one can have. For 1st degree connections, this means that you have already accepted their invitation to connect or vice versa. These 1st degree connections initially consist of friends, family, coworkers and potentially other professionals who you want to connect with. It is evident how valuable 1st degree connections can be because they are within your reach. Whether you're looking for a job or seeking career advice, it is simple to reach out with the click of a mouse button.[2]

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The enormous potential of LinkedIn lies in the fact that you are able to access 2nd and 3rd degree connections. 2nd degree connections are those who are already connected to your 1st degree connections. Hence, you can feel more comfortable reaching out to someone you might not directly know. By seeing which one of your contacts they are connected with, it is possible to ask your 1st degree connection for a introduction to the person of interest. Through this process, you can get your foot in the door of an organization you are interested in interning at or working for.[3] And as one can expect, 3rd degree connections are those of which are connected to your 2nd degree connections and people outside of these degrees are simply known as out of network.


As the saying goes, "It's often not what you know, but who you know."

Social media

Hiring managers look at LinkedIn, they look at the companies site, they look at the universities recruitment site but that is not all. They also take into consideration what your social media profile looks like. By social media I'm talking about Facebook, Myspace, Instagram, and Twitter. When a hiring manager is contemplating whether this specific candidate is right for the position they want to know how you will represent the company outside the workplace. Some may think it shouldn't matter what an employee does in their free time as long as it doesn't affect their productivity in the work place. Hiring managers want to know if they are making the right decision because if they don't, then they receive the blame. My advice on social media while partaking in an interview process is to make everything private! You can never be too careful. If you are a more conservative user on social media and there is nothing that would make someone think you would negatively represent the company, than by all means leave it open to the public. Your image is viewed positively from the hiring manager if they see that your social media profile representative of a young professional. For most social media channels there are certain steps one can take to clean up their profile. To clean up current profiles it is wise to edit pictures and privacy settings so that private pictures have limited visibility. Then in order to keep your profile professional, think before you post and make sure to continuously review whether or not there are blemishes that need to be taken care of.[4]

What to look for in an employer

Though many employers may seem glamorous, sexy and worth working for, that might not always be the case. The company could look amazing from the outside and could seem to offer fleshed out products or designs, however internally, inside the company may be the complete opposite. It may appear that the company might be struggling internally to manage timelines, manage projects, etc.

With all of this said, when looking into a company to work for, in addition to the experience and the pay, make sure to look into what the long term goal of the summer or semester long internship will be. In addition to the random menial tasks that are assigned to you, you should also look into completing a long-term project that you will lead yourself [5]. This could be a marketing campaign, a video project or any number of other large projects that are likely to take a few months. In other words, apply Google's 80/20 rule -- complete 80% of the companies work that they make you do, and devote the other 20% to figuring out ways to improve the company through a side project. I think what motivates an intern just as much as the money, the experience and the name brand of a company is the autonomy to perform on a certain project that could potentially make a global impact. If you can shed some of this during your time during your internship, the offer letter will follow through almost automatically.

References

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LinkedIn STARR [1]