Senior Lilybelle Davis interned at Google in summer 2014.
Internships have become an integral part of the modern labor market. As employers place more emphasis on students’ work experience, more students are looking for experiential opportunities to supplement their education. Some majors even require an internship.
An internship can mean sitting behind a desk, filing papers and answering phones. But this summer, some university students found opportunities most only dream of, working alongside the most successful professionals in their respective fields.
Senior economics major Lilybelle Davis spent the past two summers working at Google in Mountain View, California.
“I’ve always been fascinated with Google’s work culture,” Davis said. “One evening, I Googled ‘Google Internships’ [and] applied to a week immersion program for rising sophomores, called BOLD Immersion.”
Following a week in the company’s immersion program, Davis applied and was accepted to a full-time BOLD internship. In her first summer, she developed focus groups for Google’s engineers to improve recruitment. This summer, Davis spent her time with the patent litigation team, which fights patent lawsuits filed against the company.
“The exponential growth of lawsuits outpaced the system of organization internally,” she said. “My project organized patent litigation’s case information through a modern, intuitive internal website.”
Davis wasn’t the only university student in Mountain View over the summer. Junior finance major Peter Garber spent his break at Peel, a tech startup that created an app that turns smartphones into universal remotes. For Garber, it helped to have a connection at the company.
“I actually knew someone working in the data science department, and he got me in contact with the business development director,” Garber said. “I had to do projects during finals last semester for the company and they liked my work, so I flew out after finals for the whole summer.”
At Peel, Garber helped manage the company’s business development and sales strategy. He helped create and customize pitch presentations, develop budgets for advertising campaigns and conduct meetings with the sales team.
Peel also entrusted Garber and other interns to pitch directly to representatives for TV networks such as ABC, CBS and FOX.
“I actually won a campaign for TV Land’s Candid Camera, securing $25,000 for the company,” Garber said. “I prepared the budget and made the presentation to the TV Land network.”
Senior bioengineering major Rebecca Stevick had a research-based experience this summer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
“I’ve always wanted to work with NASA,” Stevick said. “It was really the perfect opportunity.”
The program gave Stevick the opportunity to work with some of the top scientists and engineers in the country. One of her primary tasks was researching the effects of microgravity on bone.
Further north on the West Coast, senior Ryan Dorson spent his summer on Microsoft’s software development and testing team in Redmond, Washington.
“I applied to a bunch of places,” said Dorson, a computer science and mathematics major. “I really wanted to leave the area — I’ve lived in Maryland my entire life — and Microsoft is all the way out in Washington.”
Much of Dorson’s work was confidential, but a few projects he worked on functioned primarily to improve productivity within the department.
“I worked with my team to make an internal pool,” Dorson said. “It made collaboration between us much easier.”
While these experiences are unique, they require the same approach as most other internships. Dorson emphasized the importance of networking and performing well.
“I’d say about halfway through, start networking and reaching out to specific teams you’re interested in,” Dorson said of his time at Microsoft.
And interns have to be eager to take on extra responsibilities, Garber said.
“You have to be scrappy, on your feet, always willing to do a lot of tasks at once,” Garber said. “And in a startup company, you can’t possibly get everything done that you’re asked of, so you have to have incredible time management.”
