Internships

Internship Interview Thank You Notes

If you’ve ever interviewed for a job in your professional career, chances are someone who has conducted your interview doesn’t even remember who you are. You are much more likely to remember them, and can you even think of every person who has ever interviewed you for a position? These HR reps have the daunting task of interviewing hundreds of people. During an active hiring period, they conduct multiple interviews every single day. It must be difficult to think back and remember intimate details about every single applicant. Standing out is the only chance you’ve got at getting the job you’re gunning for. There are many creative ways to accomplish this, but let’s not forget the tried and true method of sending a thank you note to your interviewer.

Sending a thank you note for something that was part of their job may seem unnecessary, but it’s always a good idea to grease the wheels a bit. Perhaps you won’t blow them away with your courtesy, but sending an honest thank you card to your interviewer can definitely jog their memory as to who you are and show them that you’re appreciative. Sending a thank you card in this situation is a perfect balance between being a sycophant and being too nonchalant. It won’t be the deal breaker in terms of getting the position, but it very well might bump you up a few spots. Additionally, you will assuredly get a quick response from the company, and they are more likely to consider you for the next job opening if you didn’t land this one. You should never hesitate to send one after your big interview. Just be sure you spell the name of the recipient correctly!

What Students Look For In a Summer Internship Program

Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but it seems that just about every student is looking for the same basic things in a summer internship: experience, babes, and good references. Ok, maybe not babes…but the other two are still relevant. No one wants an internship that won’t be pertinent to the career path they choose after graduation. While it is good to intern at many different places in various fields of work to figure out which is for you, at the end of every internship, it always feels a lot better when you feel like you’ve advanced your career. In order to increase your odds of landing that perfect internship, be sure to maintain contact with employees in the company you’re applying to. Just ask them simple questions about what it’s like to work for the organization in order to express your interest. When application time rolls around, it will be nice to already have a reference from within.

You should be careful about revealing your availability when applying for a summer internship. If you tell a firm that you’re available five days a week, you better be willing to work those 40 hour weeks. Companies know what the demand is like for internships in the summer, and want to get as much labor out of you as they possibly can. Try to find out as early in the application process as possible whether or not you are going for a paid position. It can be tough to find a paid summer internship, but if it’s what you really want, stick with it. They’re tough to find, but they are certainly out there. It will be worth the extra effort to land a paid position if and when you’re receiving weekly paychecks.

Links

Here are some helpful links for anyone looking for summer and fall internships:

how-i-got-my-internship.com
thedailyintern.com
marketing-internship.com

internship-work.com
internship-interview.com
new-york-internship.com
chicago-internship.com
washington-dc-internship.com
advertising-internship.com
internship-cover-letter.com
internship-students.com
internship-resumes.com
design-internships.com
investment-banking-internships.com
pr-internships.com
summer-internship-program.com

Like Surveys?

Try this quick one on for size:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=H_2fx4OB9QHG1v9CaC0r4Dww_3d_3d

Interesting Stuff

Just some things to check out. Sorry nothing terribly news-breaking, but these are worth looking at:

http://groupereye.com/blog/thought-provoking-internship-cover-letter/

http://groupereye.com/blog/internship-cover-letter-dont-do-this/comment-page-1/#comment-1798

http://groupereye.com/blog/internship-cover-letter/

Check it out.

GrouperEye Membership

At GrouperEye, we are all very confident in the product we are offering. Both on the employer side and the college student side. One thing we have been learning is that it's hard to sell something solely based on the faith and enthusiasm we hold for our own product.

If we had a great amount of students signed up right off the bat, the job of finding employers would practically be done for us. If students went to the website and saw a list of hundreds of employers they're dying to work for, their membership would follow suit. I guess it's a good thing that these aren't automatic, because then I wouldn't be needed, but at the same time it would be convenient if some perfect solution fell from the sky. None of us are afraid of a little hard work; we all knew what we were getting ourselves into. This doesn't change the fact that it's going to take a lot of ingenuity and brainstorming to find the key element in getting as many members on board as possible.

If you are reading this, please check out the website, and tell me what you would do differently. Help us help you enjoy an easier job application process that allows you to stand out in the crowd. What would it take to get you to sign up for a membership? Employers, what are you looking for? As I said, we are all dedicated to the service we offer and truly believe in it. We just need a means of getting others to see it. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, but as always, I'm open to any suggestions. Credit will certainly be given where credit is due.

http://www.groupereye.com/launchprogram/

Let's help each other out.

Peter Schiff stole my thoughts

Well...not really. However, we've had similar views for a long time. The guy's a genius and had the courage to stand up to all the other economic "professionals" because he ultimately knew that something wasn't right. A lot of people STILL disagree with him, and don't get me wrong, it's a difficult pill to swallow, but he was right about a lot of things, and you really can't argue with the fact that everyone else was wrong about the indefinite stability of our economy.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=230053

They spoiled us with endless sub-prime mortgages, which led to "shocking" defaults on loans by the dozen, and the thing that really makes me angry: BAILOUTS. Now don't get me wrong, I think Obama truly wants what is best for most of the people in this country. A lot of what he's done in these months will ultimately make our suffering less painful than it could have been. However, bailouts don't help ANYONE. If a business isn't financially sound, that's their problem. Let it go bankrupt, and accept all those people losing their jobs. LET ME FINISH: Then the smart and talented individuals who are experienced in that company, those who were ignored for so long, can rise to the top. They can either bring the firm out of bankruptcy, or start a new business with carefully monitored guidelines. That's how capitalism works. That's the ONLY way it works, and it would be foolish to stray away from it now. The United States government is like those parents who never scold their children for fear of having their kids cry in public. When a child (business) does something wrong (allows their accountants to smoke crack in the mailroom), that child needs to be reprimanded or he/she will end up sleeping in Mommy and Daddy's bed for the next 50 years (want bailout money every time they suck at keeping business afloat). Believe me, I am aware of the fact that some bailouts were out of our control. Essentially, the government was contractually obligated to make up for lost assets on some firms, or the economy would have collapsed to a point where it would have been near impossible to regain our bearings. Bailing out companies who have been putting out the same shoddy cars for the last twenty years? Now that's asinine. All these companies got lazy, and figured they could get by producing the same thing over and over without bothering to do any significant research. If they were smart, they would have introduced new energy efficient technologies in increments over the next ten years to maintain a steady demand, but apparently research and development has been on vacation for the last two decades. If we just let them fail, everyone would have benefited. More tax dollars to go elsewhere (our broken roads or even our pockets, perhaps?), the employees would have benefited by leaving the company to join a more steady organization that would rise from the ashes of the failed auto industry, and us consumers would benefit from the exponential increase in competition that would result from new transportation production companies. I say transportation instead of automobile because who knows if another far superior vehicle-type would have emerged in the next five years? Well, now we'll never know because the auto companies won't bother to try discovering them.

It was completely and utterly foolish to think we could coast by for so long being a solely service based economy. At some point, we need to produce something if we want to close the deficit. There are only so many services you can export before other countries realize they're idiots for paying for it. I know, I know, I've been training my whole life to enter a service industry too. I would also rather not switch my career aspirations over to a labor-intensive industry. There is some good news, but this may come off as politically incorrect: A few years ago, this country was packed with laborers willing to do our labor for us, only at the price of allowing them to live here. Unfortunately for us, after extensive racist efforts to kick them out, and driving our economy into the ground, that opportunity might be long past us. People seem to forget that in creating a company that sells tangible goods after producing them also creates a ton of other jobs as a result. Only about 5-10% of the jobs within that firm would be filled by laborers. The rest of the employees can be as lazy as you want them to be. Whether these other jobs be filled with managers, marketers, salespeople, accountants, HR, and the list goes on and on. So if you just allow a few [possibly "illegal"] employees into the organization, you can create less labor-intensive jobs for everyone else. Let's just hope they're not too offended when we ask them if they want to join our country when we realize we have no other options...

Everything he says about interest rates is true and has been true for a long time. I raised my hand in my microeconomics class in high school asking how our economy could possibly afford such low interest rates in the long term and my teacher's answer ended at "that's for the Fed to worry about." When I began arguing with her that you can't give away what you don't have in the first place, she got mad at me for disrupting her lecture and asked me to leave. I also threw my textbook and raised my voice during that argument, so that might have had something to do with it, too.

It's really too bad that all those who have been smart in the past and saved their money are going to suffer when value of our American dollar plummets. It will feel a lot like getting completely robbed.

"Meanwhile, by propping up all the industries and companies that need to fail, we're preventing companies, that need to expand and are growing, from hiring those people." THANK YOU, PETER SCHIFF. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR PUTTING MY THOUGHTS INTO SUCH ELOQUENT WORDS. I have failed to do so for so long, and maybe that's why no one has ever believed me. Deep down, I truly hope you're wrong about hyperinflation and our economy spiraling downward into the abyss. Yet part of me wants both of us to be right just to say "I TOLD YOU SO."

PS: I don't actually hope we're right. You've got a great track record, though.

Case Competitions

Today at GrouperEye, we're all busy at work trying to effectively increase membership on the site. As a student, I know how tricky it can be for websites to convince us that it's worthwhile to offer our information and create an account. In order to get people to make that leap of faith, it requires a damn good product, and a promise to not spam. At GrouperEye, we've got both.

There are two Case Competitions posted at GrouperEye right now seeking any suggestions available to increase membership and launch a solid promotion campaign for the site. As a firm that prides itself on the idea that students can provide the best solutions possible to the problems of companies, we're putting our money where our mouth is. If you think you've figured out the best approach that GrouperEye should consider, challenge yourself. Submit a solution to the case and show us what you've got. There could be a cool hundred bucks and an internship in it for you. What's the worst that can happen?

A Historic Day

I've never written a blog before, and I have to admit...I'm a little nervous. I always just assumed that no one cares enough about my life to read about what I have to say. I guess this will be the litmus test for that theory.

My name is Chris Veasey. I am a rising Senior at American University, in the Kogod School of Business. I am in the Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity Theta Eta Chapter, I host a late night talk show called "AU DeRailed," and I work as an Event Coordinator in the Kogod Center for Career Development. I'm happy to say, that this summer looks rather exciting for me. As some of my activities from during the school year will be on hiatus until late August, I've taken on an internship for the summer with a startup firm known as GrouperEye. As I sit in the rented space of another company's office, along with two of my four co-workers of the company, staring at a whiteboard for hours deciding the perfect means of pitching this innovative product...I know EXACTLY why I'm here. For those of you who are familiar with my mundane sarcastic antics, rest assured that the last sentence was a completely genuine statement (as is this one).

We are all crammed into this small room trying to fix a long-broken problem in HR: Recruitment. Luckily, I think we've found the key. Unfortunately, we still don't know where that key fits, but we're working really hard on that. Take a typical hiring process: Company posts a job, applicant submits a resume, the resume gets lost in a sea of unqualified applicants leaving motivated students feeling dejected and confused. Companies overlook hardworking individuals on a daily basis. I don't know who thought the solution to shoddy recruiting for companies is creating websites that serve as a bridge for thousands of people to blast resumes, but let's just say I hope that someone has spit in his burger. The solution is creating a medium for companies to build long standing relationships with job applicants; one that makes the process easier for students and employers alike.

There aren't just fallacies on the applicant side, either. Employers hire hundreds of thousands of employees each year who simply are not right for the job. In the Armageddon of outrageous turnover costs, firms have been scratching their heads for years as to why they can't seem to find the talent they are looking for. The fact is there has been a missing link in the equation for too long. It's pretty simple: Outstanding Resume + Adequate Cover Letter + Good Writing Sample + X = Job Offer. The problem is, every career website out there has been ignoring the X. Not just ignoring it, but not even bothering to figure out what it is.

Finally, that's where GrouperEye steps in. GrouperEye.com is a revolutionary platform that allows you to hire better-suited young people because you know them. GrouperEye has discovered the X: the ability to tackle tasks relevant to each respective company. The website provides effective solutions to this missing link. The benefit for students is the ability to submit to case competitions with all the clients of GrouperEye in order to show these firms what they're really capable of. Cash prizes are distributed to the top three competitors. In addition to this, students can upload resumes, join the talent pools of employers, apply for jobs, and most importantly, establish relationships with companies and truly stand out. Companies who have signed up with GrouperEye can post cases and contests for students to compete in, build up a talent pool of applicants with the ability to filter applicants, post positions, and easily keep in contact with all students interested in working with the company. Of course, there is an ultimate benefit of seeing the skills of applicants firsthand, and being much more confident in hiring decisions.

It is very early in the process, but we are all very enthusiastic here at GrouperEye. The company consists of an intelligent and creative team of individuals who are dedicated to changing the job application process forever. Honestly, I think this website will provide a major advantage to anyone who is open-minded enough to give it a shot. I strongly recommend checking it out:

www.groupereye.com

Thank you for reading my blog, I hope I'm not addicted. I'll try to keep it as interesting as possible, and as with anything I ever do, feedback is always appreciated. Good day to you all.