Tag Archives: Indiana
Calling All Bloggers
Entry by Pat Patterson
We are inviting any students, employers, or educators to contribute to Indiana INTERNnation.
For students, you may want to blog about your day-to-day life as an intern. As you document your experience, you will have a portfolio to reference when you interview for your next internship or first job. For employers, you may want to blog about your internship program. Other employers may benefit from your shared information, and the blog will be free advertising for your organization. For educators, you may want to blog about success stories you have had with students or resources you may have benefitted from utilizing. There are no strict guidelines – we are willing to share any stories of mutual interest.
If you would like to become a contributing author to our blog, then contact Indiana INTERNnet’s Program Coordinator, Pat Patterson, at ppatterson@indianachamber.com or 317-264-6863.
When submitting a blog entry, please …
Transitioning from Intern to Full-time Employee
Entry by Courtney Sampson, Marketing and Communications Intern, Indiana State Fair
I haven’t submitted an entry to Indiana INTERNnation in awhile, but that’s because I’ve been extremely busy taking advantage of the 12…15…18 hour days that my internship requires! It’s been really fun working at the Indiana State Fair; I can’t believe we’re finally in full-swing. As I write this, the State Fair is at the ½ way mark. What’s this mean for you? It means you get to read an entry from me, and it means if you haven’t attended the Fair yet, time is running out – what are you waiting for?
Don’t worry, I’m finishing pitching the Fair. In other news…I’ve had a few opportunities come up throughout the past week. The good news? Potentially a job. The bad news? I’m still taking it day-by-day at the Fair! But, as internships wrap up, it got me thinking…how …
Southeast Indiana Economic Opportunities 2015 (EcO15) Initiative
Entry by Pat Patterson
As described in Monday and Wednesday’s blog entries, valued partners such as the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber’s Graduate Retention Program and the Southwest Indiana Education and Experience (E2) Initiative are using Indiana INTERNnet‘s technology platform to facilitate internship matches among students and employers.
To the southeast, another group, the Economic Opportunities 2015 (EcO15) Initiative is working with high school students to promote internship interest in the advanced manufacturing, tourism, and health care industries.
Here is a brief overview of EcO15:
Economic Opportunities through Education by 2015 (EcO15) is initially focusing on education and careers associated with Advanced Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Hospitality/Tourism for 10 counties in Southeastern Indiana. Counties include: Bartholomew, Dearborn, Decatur, Franklin, Jackson, Jefferson, Jennings, Ohio, Ripley, and Switzerland. Advanced Manufacturing is the value-added combination of people, processes, and products, which remains competitive in a high-wage environment in the pursuit of continuous improvement. Advanced Manufacturing …
Southwest Education and Experience (E2) Initiative
Entry by Pat Patterson
As I have stressed numerous times, internships are invaluable experiences for both students and employers. After Indiana INTERNnet was established, some regions realized the necessity to create their own additional programs to promote the significance of internships.
From a statewide perspective, Indiana internships are being promoted by Indiana INTERNnet and its regional partners. In Monday’s blog entry, I described how the Greater Fort Wayne Graduate Retention Program utilizes Indiana INTERNnet’s technology platform to facilitate internship matches among students and employers; The Southwest Indiana Education and Experience (E2) Initiative works to do the same in nine Southwestern counties.
Former Indiana INTERNnet intern, Anastasiya Elaeva, describes E2 in the August INTERNnetwork:
With just a few people on staff, the Southwest Indiana Education and Experience (E2) Initiative team, also known as the E2 initiative, has been enthusiastically working on boosting the region’s talent retention. Since its start in …
Greater Fort Wayne Graduate Retention Program
Entry by Pat Patterson
As I have stressed numerous times, internships are invaluable experiences for both students and employers. After Indiana INTERNnet was established, some regions realized the necessity to create their own additional programs to promote the significance of internships. From a statewide perspective, Indiana internships are being promoted by Indiana INTERNnet and its regional partners. Valued partners such as the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber’s Graduate Retention Program use Indiana INTERNnet’s technology platform to facilitate internship matches among students and employers.
The Graduate Retention Program is a business/education partnership facilitated by the Workforce & Business Development Division of the Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce:
The Graduate Retention Program is designed to attract and retain college and high school graduates in Northeast Indiana. Our strategy is to increase awareness of area employers by promoting the development of meaningful internships for college and high school students.
As Mike Landram, the Greater …
Educators: Best Practices to Welcome Students Back
Entry by Pat Patterson
Summer break is quickly coming to a close, and students will soon pack up their belongings and return to their college campuses. As educators, it is best to engage these students in career services activities as soon as possible.
The following are a few ideas to help career services professionals welcome students back to campus and encourage them to visit the career office:
Create flyers to distribute in living units and common areas, which list the first few career services events of the year, engage in social media by advertising your Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn pages, host a beginning of the year cook-out or ice cream social (perhaps the “fee” for attending can be that students have to bring a resume for review or take a Myers-Briggs Test, etc.), reward the first hundred or so students who visit the career office with t-shirts, professional resume paper, …
Keeping the Communication Lines Open After the Internship
Entry by Ashley Cashen, Talent Acquisition and Retention Coordinator, digitalKnowledge
Once your company’s internship ends, it’s important to make sure the communication does not end with it. Hopefully at the end of an internship, both a company and its intern are parting ways with a positive experience to look back on. And if everything goes as planned, both that company and the intern will want to work together in the future.
Most interns still have one, maybe even two or three, years of school left before entering the “real world.” So a company can go from communicating with their intern on a daily basis to not speaking to them for a year. But, a lot of things can happen in that last year of school – your intern may attend career fairs, have job interviews, and meet potential employers. How are you going to continue to stick …
How to End Your Internship on a Good Note
Entry by Pat Patterson
It is that time of the year again – your internship is wrapping up and it becomes harder for you to focus, as thoughts of the upcoming school year flood your mind. But before you pack up your materials, say your goodbyes, and take that final step out the door, it is important to make sure that you leave your internship on a positive note. You may have learned a lot, contributed significantly to the organization you worked with, and made great connections and even friends, but the way you end your internship may ultimately be the way you will be remembered – you don’t want to “pull a LeBron James” and leave on a negative note with your former boss releasing an open letter expressing his disapproval after you leave (sorry about that – I’m originally from Cleveland).
Anyways, with that being said, on AdAge.com …
Landing an Internship in a Tough Economy
Entry by Courtney Sampson, Marketing and Communications Intern, Indiana State Fair
No matter what the economists say, we’ve got to face it. Times are still tough for Americans, and many companies simply aren’t hiring full-time employees. With that said, I feel pretty lucky to be a Hoosier; many of my friends who live in other states have had a difficult time finding minimum-wage jobs, and they have college degrees!
I’ve had plenty of phone and face-to-face conversations with friends about “life after college.” What are the options if you don’t have a full-time job after graduation? Well, if you’re a fan of waking up early, you could head down to the local Starbucks and see if they’re hiring any baristas. For night owls, perhaps there’s a local 24-hour diner or even the corner pub!
But if you’re trying to enter the “professional world,” maybe Starbucks isn’t your best bet…or maybe …
An Internship Can Change Your Life
Entry by Pat Patterson
This summer, I had the privilege of coordinating internships for 59 high school interns through the Common Goal Internship Program, a collaborative effort between Indiana INTERNnet and the Indianapolis Chamber aimed at motivating at-risk high school students to continue their education, graduate, and pursue higher education. Yesterday, we celebrated the student’s successful completion of the program and recognized their host employers for offering the internship opportunities. (See pictures below)
A student intern with her employer mentor.
Throughout the summer, I visited several of the students at their places of business, and at the celebration conference, a few of the students shared their experiences at the podium on stage. After learning more about the students’ experiences during their visits and the few students’ presentations, it became apparent how influential the internships have been in their lives.
During their internships, the students were able to test out their …
The Benefits of using Partnerships to Grow Your Internship
Entry by Ashley Cashen, Talent Acquisition and Retention Coordinator, digitalKnowledge
As you may recall in my earlier blog entries, digitalKnowledge chose to team up with the Interns for Indiana Program through Purdue University for their first internship. We chose to go this route for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, with this being our first internship in company history we could use the help. Interns for Indiana has supported our internship from the beginning, including sending us resumes of students who fit our criteria and setting up an “interview fair” for us to meet these candidates. Secondly, Interns for Indiana offers funding for smaller start-up companies.
Choosing to partner with Interns for Indiana has without a doubt been one of the best decisions we could have made. Not only do they offer administrative support to employers, but they also provide the interns with additional educational opportunities. Bart has had …
Lessons from the Corner Office
Entry by Courtney Sampson, Marketing and Communications Intern, Indiana State Fair
You know, nothing’s typical at the Indiana State Fair. We’re the biggest fair in the state, attracting nearly 975,000 visitors throughout 17 days. We’ve got “the world’s largest boar” and a 25-foot tall sculpture based upon Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” We’ve even got gigantic pumpkins, big deals and steep discounts, and real-life bears. (Oh my!)
Not that I’m biased or anything, but we’re the biggest and the best! And we sure aren’t typical. So, let me share a secret with you. It’s been a lifelong goal of mine to reach the “corner office.” You know, once you get to the corner office, it means you’re the big kahuna…the big cheese…you’ve made it to the top! Well guess what, folks? It may all be downhill from here – cause I’ve got the corner office at the Indiana State Fairgrounds!
Really, …
Keep Your Eyes Wide Open During Your Internship
Entry by Anastasiya Elaeva, Indiana INTERNnet Intern
The fun part of interning is that you never know what events you will have a chance to attend and what people you will get an opportunity to meet. If you keep your eyes wide open, your internship can extend beyond your primary responsibilities and the department to which you are assigned.
After my Washington D.C. internship in international affairs did not work out because of differences in mine and the company’s schedules, I was desperately looking for something in Indiana. I picked up the phone and called the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. To be honest, at that point of time, in mid-May, I did not expect that there would be anything available. I picked up the phone because I thought that trying every single opportunity would be the right thing to do.
To my surprise, I was offered an exciting internship assisting …
Transitioning from Internship to Career
Entry by Pam Norman, Indiana INTERNnet Executive Director
Yesterday I had the privilege of serving on a panel that provided advice to thirty downtown Indy interns. The event was sponsored by the International Center of Indianapolis, and the interns represented corporate, nonprofit, and government sectors.
Takeaways from the discussion included:
• Improve your skill set by taking on more than you think you are capable of
• Track internship projects so it will be easy to update your resume
• Develop your professional network; opportunities are just a business card away
• Seek advice from management; people enjoy talking about their path to success
• Dress for success; dress for the job you want, not the one you have
• Be authentic; consider your internship a ten-week interview
• Soft skills are important to Indiana employers; make sure your skill set contains them
I’ve already received emails …
The Benefits of Hiring an Intern (And how to avoid training candidates for your competitors)
Entry by Ashley Cashen, Talent Acquisition and Retention Coordinator, digitalKnowledge
digitalKnowledge strives to hire recent college graduates for their fresh perspectives and eagerness to continue learning. Our company tries to hire 2-3 Associate Consultants each year. A lot of on-campus recruiting occurs through career fairs, class presentations, and on-campus interviews. We hire talented, entrepreneurial graduates, but they come into our company with little to no real knowledge of our business.
Bart, our intern, has been with us for two months now, and while that may seem like a short amount of time, he is “one of us.” He knows about digitalKnowledge, our values, our processes – formal and informal, and he is part of our culture and environment. Through his time with us, he has sat in on client meetings, conference calls, and staff meetings. Not to mention, he sits next to three of our developers each day and has …