Each summer, students across the country look forward to the end of the semester and the start of summer vacation. All students look forward to the fun of summer vacation but a high percentage need to balance that fun with the financial necessity of earning money for college. Most simply get a job, but some take the opportunity to look into the future with the combination of earning money through an internship.
Extensive Web surfing will turn up a host of paid and unpaid summer internships, but you might want to simply start at "home," with the company where one of your parents work. That's exactly what interns did at Hyundai Motor America last summer. Thirty of the 43 interns had family members working for the company.
Progressive Companies Match Intern Jobs to Major
All of these interns were paid for their work, but what did they do? Work at menial tasks nobody else wanted to do? No. They were either matched with a responsibility that encompassed their college major or were given the task of creating and executing community improvement projects.
The college "major-matching" placed interns in the Finance, Legal, Internal Audit, Parts, Service, Marketing, IT, Human Resources and Community Relation departments. An example of the kind of responsibility given to the interns comes from the parts department, where an intern became an analyst involved with conducting parts distribution studies for both the East Coast and Latin America.
Community Projects Offer Interns Real-World Experience
The challenge to create and execute community improvement projects resulted in two very different programs, the Hyundai Youth Soccer Camp and Safe Start 2000.
The Youth Soccer Camp benefited 300 underprivileged children by providing them with free, head-to-toe soccer gear and a high quality program designed to instruct them on various soccer skills and important life concepts such as teamwork, communication and self-esteem. The highlight of the camp was a guest appearance and participation in soccer drills and contests by Kristine Lilly, one of the stars of the U.S. Women's World Cup Team.
Safe Start 2000 was a school safety and violence prevention conference. The goal of the conference was to educate the over 300 faculty and administration participants about the warning signs of potentially violent students, intervention techniques before a situation becomes violent and how to respond to a potential crisis.
The interns invited experts in the fields of education, law enforcement and psychology to speak at the conference. The interns represented Princeton, University of Chicago, Rutgers, University of Maryland, Stanford, UCLA, Chapman University and numerous other universities and community colleges. And what did they have to say about the intern experience?
"My summer intern experience helped me to learn to a lot about teamwork and the complexity of a business organization. I gained insight into the importance of networking and how things run in a big company. I also learned the importance of helping others," said Adrianna, a student at University of California Riverside.
"Working with the Youth Soccer Camp I learned about budgeting, inventory, decision-making, media relations, meeting organization, and data development," said Adrianna. "I couldn't believe that our bosses had enough confidence in us to leave all the decisions up to us. This project affected my college life tremendously. I feel like I can take on anything that comes my way."
Source: YOUNG MONEY staff
© 2008, Young Money Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
