Category Archives: Career Advice

Indiana INTERNnet is pleased to announce Kristan Pfeifer has joined our team as assistant director! She will serve as the liaison between employers and Indiana INTERNnet as it pertains to work-based learning and career/technical education.

Hailing from Portland, Indiana, Kristan received her bachelor’s degree in telecommunications (sales and marketing) from Ball State University and a master’s degree in business administration from Indiana Wesleyan University. While pursuing her undergraduate degree, Kristan completed a sales internship with a local television station in Fort Wayne. That internship helped jumpstart her career and led to her moving to Fort Wayne.

After several years in pharmaceutical sales and the health care industry, Kristan decided to pursue a different career path and became the assistant director for employer connections and internships at Ball State University’s Career Center. She thrived on assisting employers with internship programs and working with internship coordinators throughout the campus. Kristan wanted to …

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Last week, Indiana INTERNnet partnered with the Indiana State Fair to host the final intern engagement event of the summer. Local interns and mentors enjoyed a day of networking, trivia and deep-fried food!

The program began with welcoming remarks from Indiana INTERNnet Executive Director Janet Boston, followed by an overview of the fair’s festivities by Alexis Behnkendorf, marketing manager at the Indiana State Fair.

Next on our stage was the keynote speaker, Ashley Miser, community and events manager at IndyHub. She spoke about connecting with Indianapolis, and how it is a great place to work and grow. Miser also admitted she is a foodie and will gladly recommend local eateries to try!

“It’s really important for us [at IndyHub] to make sure people know that you can curate your lifestyle in Indianapolis and that our city is a maker’s space,” said Miser.

After Miser’s remarks, the interns were pumped up …

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Hattie Hynes is a Recruiting/HR Marketing Intern with Milliner & Associates. She will graduate from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in 2019.

Through my internship with Milliner & Associates, I have access to many resources through the American Staffing Association (ASA), one of which is webinars on their website. These webinars are conducted by professionals around the nation who are experts on what they teach. From marketing and social media to employment law and employee engagement, these webinars offer a variety of content with wonderful advice for businesses and people alike.

The most recent webinar I watched was titled “Power Up; Stress Down.” Guided by Adam White, motivational speaker, this webinar covered a lot of great topics and had many great little nuggets of wisdom. While there were plenty of different things that I learned from Adam White, I wanted to share five takeaways:

Knowledge is not power, applied knowledge …

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If you’re a college student, there’s no doubt you’ve heard of LinkedIn. The professional social network is extremely popular, and I’m sure more than one professor, career counselor or mentor has told you to join it.

LinkedIn can be intimidating to use at first for inexperienced students, but a solid LinkedIn profile can go a long way in your internship and post-grad career search. According to LinkedIn, 9 in 10 companies use LinkedIn to recruit new hires. Additionally, you can apply for many jobs and internships directly through LinkedIn.

Here are five suggestions for students to polish their LinkedIn profiles.

Add a (good!) photo.

This one is more important than you might think—according to LinkedIn, profiles with pictures get viewed 14 times more than those without! Use a clear, high-quality photo of you in appropriate clothing. No grainy shots, cropped group pictures or crazy expressions. A simple smiling photo is …

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Hattie Hynes is a Recruiting/HR Marketing Intern with Milliner & Associates. She will graduate from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in 2019.

Through my internship with Milliner & Associates, I’ve had the opportunity to go to many networking events. The exposure I’ve received in the “big little town” of Indianapolis has been instrumental in developing my professional self and making connections with influential people.

Milliner & Associates is a well-exposed company and I’ve had the ability to attend many networking events, like “Forward: Branding Yourself in Your Business” hosted by the Indy Chamber, and Indiana INTERNnet’s Summer Intern Engagement Event at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. While these events were completely different in formality and tone, they were about the same topic: self-branding.

The speaker of the Forward event was Trevor Yager, founder of TrendyMinds. Majoring in psychology with minors in political science and history, he wasn’t really set up …

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While you’re waiting to hear back from employers during your internship search, it can be easy to forget that communication goes both ways. Employers appreciate the little things like a thank you email after an interview. Plus, an email that takes you five minutes to write can make a huge impression and help you stand out. Below is a list of the four essential emails you’ll need during your internship search.

The “post – interview” email

Regardless of if your interview was casual and over lunch, or a grueling hour – long panel, you should always send a thank you email. Sometimes, if the top two candidates are neck and neck, the final decision could be based off something as small as whether or not someone thanked the interviewers. You don’t want to have an amazing interview, only to lose the position to someone else because you never sent a …

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Hattie Hynes is a Recruiting/HR Marketing Intern with Milliner & Associates. She will graduate from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in 2019.

This week with Milliner & Associates has been full of amazing stories. To give back to the community, our team takes the skills we practice every day at the office and put them to work with high school students. Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) is our corporate social responsibility partner. JAG is a state-based not-for-profit organization that helps at-risk students and preventing dropouts. It’s a three-year program that assists high school students during the Junior and Senior years, as well as one year after graduation. The program focuses on gaining practical, real-world experience with career prospects, interviewing, resumes, cover letters, scholarship applications, college applications, and anything else they may need along the way.

The final project in Decatur Central High School’s JAG class is an interview that is …

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 Indiana INTERNnet celebrated internship excellence on February 8, 2017, at the 11th Annual IMPACT Awards Luncheon. Though the event is over and the winners have been announced, we are continuing to celebrate the nominees’ successes.

These are their stories.

Brittany Ulman is a graduate of Ball State University with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. She completed a marketing internship with International Floral Distributors, Inc.

Indiana INTERNnet: How did you become interested in pursuing your degree?

Brittany Ulman: When I first started at Ball State, I was a dietetics major with the full intention of completing my internship in a hospital and becoming the dietitian in an Intensive Care Unit at a hospital close to my hometown. However, as my freshman year progressed, I evaluated my career choices and contemplated whether I would want to work in an ICU for the rest of my life. I knew I could enter into …

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The concept of high school interns may seem strange. Don’t most high schoolers work at fast food restaurants or mow lawns, if they have a job at all? When you think of a typical intern, you probably think of a college student or a twenty-something trying to ease their way into a full-time position. High school interns are becoming more common as the job market becomes more competitive and the demand for more relevant work experience increases.

When I was 17, I got an internship at VYPE Magazine Central Indiana, a local branch of a national high school sports magazine. My dad occasionally took photos for the VYPE magazine and web site, and I jumped on the opportunity to work with them. I was a senior in high school and I knew I wanted to go to college to major in journalism, but I had no idea what I wanted …

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Hattie Hynes is a Recruiting/HR Marketing Intern with Milliner & Associates. She will graduate from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in 2019.

Through my internship with Milliner & Associates, I have access to many resources through the American Staffing Association (ASA), one of which are webinars on their web site. These webinars are conducted by professionals around the nation who are experts on what they teach. From marketing and social media to employment law and employee engagement, these webinars offer a variety of content with wonderful advice for businesses and people alike.

This week, I had the opportunity to watch a webinar conducted by Jamie Notter, founding partner of Culture That Works, LLC., entitled “The Power of Millennial Alignment: Understanding the Future of Employee Engagement.” Notter had a lot to say about shifting the older generations’ views of Millennials from an attitude of complaining to an attitude of learning, but …

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Last Friday, the Indy Chamber hosted Indy Intern Connection in partnership with Indiana INTERNnet at the Fountain Square Theatre Building. Employers and interns from all over the city were invited to hang out on the rooftop garden, play duckpin bowling, and network.

The Director of Policy & Civic Engagement at the Indy Chamber and Indiana INTERNnet Board of Directors Member, Matt Impink, played a big part in organizing the event. He said that one of the main goals of the event was to encourage connections between interns, who will ideally be the future professionals of Indiana. He, and many other groups in Indiana, hope to encourage young Hoosiers to continue to live and work here. This combats the “brain drain” issue—that many of Indiana’s best and brightest leave Indiana to work elsewhere.

Many interns were from Indiana, but there was a decent handful who weren’t. In addition to encouraging current Indiana …

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Indiana INTERNnet celebrated internship excellence on February 8, 2017, at the 11th Annual IMPACT Awards Luncheon. Though the event is over and the winners have been announced, we are continuing to celebrate the nominees’ successes.

These are their stories.

Mason Hammock is one of the first graduates of the business analytics program at Ball State University. He completed an internship with Ontario Systems.

Indiana INTERNnet: What made you interested in pursuing your major?

Mason Hammock: I am a business analytics (BA) major, with a minor in economics. I thought that BA was a good pairing of technical knowledge and high-level business leadership and communication. These are two skills I identified in myself when I decided to pursue a business-related career, so the major was a pretty natural fit.

IIN: Describe your internship experience with Ontario Systems.

Hammock: I could not have begun my career in a better …

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Hattie Hynes is a Recruiting/HR Marketing Intern with Milliner & Associates. She will graduate from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in 2019.

Through my internship with Milliner & Associates, I have ample opportunity to network and learn about the community of Indianapolis businesses. So much so that I was able attend an afternoon job shadow with seven different human resource (HR) representatives at Finish Line, Inc.

Finish Line is an Indianapolis-based company that brings primarily athletic shoes to the consumer in retail stores nationwide. Employing over 10,000 people at over 900 retail locations, Finish Line prides themselves on delivering “the epic finish” to all customers. There are six full-time Milliner & Associates employees and an intern (that’s me) heading over to such a massive company for half a day was a shock to say the least. I’m not going to lie to you guys… I was a bit nervous going …

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I went to a small high school with extremely limited class choices. The only language available to take was Spanish, and the electives didn’t go much beyond drama or choir. When I decided to go to Indiana University, I was so excited to have a variety of options. IU is huge—I could learn anything I wanted to! I could learn how to write code, then turn around and read about famous Mexican muralists, then get some advice from a Pulitzer-winning journalist. (All things I’ve done, by the way. Thanks, IU!) The possibilities were endless.

As I progressed in my college career, I realized how difficult it is to master more than a few skills or subjects. It seemed like every job opportunity I came across wanted me to have infinite abilities—writing, editing, graphic design, social media, videography, photography, web design, event planning, marketing, and the list goes on. Overwhelmed by …

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Hattie Hynes is a Recruiting/HR Marketing Intern with Milliner & Associates. She will graduate from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in 2019.

Last month, I had the opportunity to go to “Indiana’s Talent Gap and Brain Drain/Gain Workshop”, a partnership of Purdue University, Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Lilly Endowment, Inc., and Indiana Commission for Higher Education. The opportunity was presented to me through my internship with Milliner and Associates by my mentor and VP of Operations, Nicole Bieker. The subject was retaining graduates from Indiana’s universities, what it would take to get them to stay, and attracting similar young talent from other states. They had recent college graduates share their experiences as to why they stayed or left Indiana.

What may surprise you is that students aren’t leaving Indiana to go to the glamorous California or the East Coast. They’re moving to other Midwestern states. Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee …

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