Business interns gain understanding, awards, and more

Megan Martin knows the highs and lows of an intern’s life.

A December graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s B.I. Moody College of Business Administration, Martin worked four internships — one for credit — during her UL undergraduate years. It was the summer internship at a medical sales company in New Orleans where she thought she’d landed in hot water.

That internship required intensive training about medical practices as well as observation of surgeries. As part of her preparation, she learned procedures related to the use of timers in surgery; during a surgery where she was an observer, she said, the timer went off and, in an effort to be helpful, she walked over and turned it off.

“The surgeon started freaking out and wanted to know who turned it off,” she said. “I had to come clean and tell him it was me.”

Fortunately, the doctor kept his calm and told her to “just stay in the corner” and not touch anything. It was embarrassing, but not fatal.

“Nobody died,” she said, even now with a sense of relief.

But Martin, who studied salesmanship, also encountered the high of her first big sale while serving in a short-term internship selling ads door-to-door. On her first call at a business, she sold an ad for $3,000, a triumph that stayed with her a long while. She said she left that business and called several people to share her good news. That might have nudged her along the pathway to a sales career.

‘Need is the greatest motivator’

Martin was one of some 150 business Moody College students who complete internships during an academic year.

Brandi N. Guidry Hollier, the business college’s internship adviser, said the goal is to give students a chance to “integrate theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom with practical job experience in preparation for postgraduate employment.” Some 500 companies or organizations have offered internships to Moody College graduates since the program began in 2002.

Hollier said that, in general, interns should be juniors or seniors with an adjusted grade point average of 2.5 to apply for internships.

Although internships are not required for all majors, they are recommended.

Students are allowed to complete one internship for credit, and interns are required to work at least 150 hours, sometimes more.

Advantages abound. Hollier said students gain work experiences, walk a prospective career path, network with professionals, earn academic credits and money. Participating businesses can fill short-term staff needs, recruit and evaluate potential employees and gain access to high-quality pre-professionals. Win-win.

For Andrew Tregre, a senior majoring in insurance and risk management, his internship as a financial representative at Northwestern Mutual has cemented his career path and given him fruitful employment, helping him work his way through college. He interned in the spring 2013 semester, and has since worked with more than 150 clients and prospects.

“It’s been a blast,” Tregre said. He was introduced to Northwestern Mutual by a former campus minister at St. Thomas More, where he went to high school. When he started with the company, he saw his internship as a way to make money for college.

“Need is the greatest motivator,” he said.

But Tregre, who trained in various aspects of Northwestern Mutual’s business, found the work intricate and fascinating; working with clients, he said, was energizing.

After the academic internship ended, he continued with Northwestern Mutual, working some 30 hours a week and balancing classroom with on-the-job training and real-world work.

“I get to love people,” he said. “I meet people and I do it in a personal way. If they talk finances, they talk life.”

Having a job motivated him, made him a better student, he said. His grades were sub-par prior to starting his internship — “I barely qualified to do the internship,” he said. That’s changed as he’s progressed toward his degree and found a career path.

“If I’m not at school, I’m at work,” he said. “I don’t know where else I’d go.”

Nonetheless, he’s found time to find a fiancée, a nursing student from Ville Platte, whom he describes as “brilliant.” And he’s winnowed down his target clients from “just about anyone” to “young professionals” and now UL-educated engineers and nurses. Clients have tipped off potential clients that Tregre knows his stuff. He treats all with the same care: With them, he reviews their financial situations and coverages and looks for “gaps” that might be filled with Northwestern Mutual products.

He’s been this successful: He was recently recognized by Northwestern Mutual for reaching the highest ranking among Louisiana interns, second-highest in the South and 11th in the nation.

Come graduation in May, he’ll leave campus for full-time work with the company.

Gaining understanding

That school-to-work path has senior Jordonne Johnson looking at full-time work in May, too, after she graduates UL’s hospitality management program.

She’s carrying 19 hours this semester while working an internship and part-time hours at the Hilton Garden Inn, across from the Cajundome. She started work there in October, began her academic internship there in January and wraps about 30 hours a week at the hotel around her class-and-study schedule. She and two other UL interns are getting the complete Hilton hospitality experience, rotating turns at food-and-beverage, front desk, housing, sales, general management and more.

Johnson concedes she is no extrovert, but said her work at the Hilton has tapped into every potential she had for working with the public. Her internship and work has been a “growth experience.”

“I love working with people. I love customer service,” she said. The hotel’s clientele are “great people,” and she said she’s learned plenty — and can learn much more, she said — from the hotel’s employees and staff.

Long-term, she said she’d love to work at a destination resort, perhaps in ski country. But for now, she said, she’d love to work full time at the Hilton, a facility with a lot of resources.

“If I prove myself, I think they’ll know it was a good choice to hire me. If I stick around, they will make it worth my while,” she said.

That’s how things worked out for Martin. Her formal internship in her junior year was at Stuller Inc., a jewelry manufacturer in Lafayette. She worked in the sales operation center and did logistics there, learning firsthand how a company can help a sales team. Stuller made a great impression on her as a place to work, and, fortunately, she made an impression on Stuller. With graduation nearing, she called her old boss, who had been thinking about her, and took a job as a sales trainer that she finds exciting everyday.

Martin said every internship initially carried with it some small sense of terror, but she got more comfortable and learned something everywhere she went. Sometimes she shadowed people. Sometimes she contributed in ways large and small. Each internship gave her additional confidence, she said. Real work experience, classes and lab work at UL provided her foundation for professional success.

“You can memorize definitions all day long,” she said. “But that doesn’t give you understanding” — not like the workplace.

Hire an intern?

Want your business, agency or organization to get involved in the B.I. Moody College of Business Administration internship program?

Contact the Internship Program Office at internship@louisiana.edu or call 337-482-5836.

Advantage: Workplace

•Cost effective way to fill short-term needs without longterm commitment.

•Cost effective way to recruit and evaluate potential employees.

•Allows employees to gain managerial experience by supervising interns.

•Provides access to a pool of high-quality, pre-professionals who are eager to learn as well as contribute to an organization.

Source: Brandi N. Guidry Hollier, internship director, UL Lafayette B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration

As seen in The Daily Advertiser, March 6, 2015