Turning an Internship

into a Full-time Job

A dialogue with Nicole Wagner,
Southern California Group
Manager of Talent Acquisition,
Training and Development

whenever possible so that you can easily update your

resume qualifications.

As posted in the CSUF Career Center group on

LinkedIn

Nicole, in addition to asking for more

responsibilities, how else do you increase your
exposure to potential hiring managers while
interning?

Nicole has worked for Enterprise for 16 years since

she graduated from UCLA, including 14 years in the
recruiting area. She is responsible for all recruiting
and training in the Southern California region.
Enterprise Holdings is the largest rental car company
in the world and includes the Enterprise, Alamo, and
National brands, and internships are a key part of
their recruiting strategy.

Nicole Wagner: I would suggest establishing a

mentor within the company. Learn from those you
admire and develop mentoring relationships you can
continue after your internship has ended. A good
mentor is someone who is willing to share their
knowledge and expertise and wants to see their
mentee succeed in the field. It's also a great
networking tool!

Nicole, if you love your internship and want to

work for the company you are interning for when
you graduate, how do you go about making that
happen?

Keep up on employer information and read what the

professionals are reading (i.e. trade journals and
newspapers). Learn more about your employer, their
competition, and as much as you can about the
industry in general. Are there new trends or
something relevant happening in the field? Internship
success requires motivation and a true desire to learn
more about the industry. Successful interns take the
initiative to learn as much as possible during the
duration of their internship experience and ask
questions. Employers don't expect interns to be
experts in the field, but and intern's research shows
engagement.

Nicole Wagner: You should definitely be up front and

inform your management team that you are looking to
go full time upon graduation. If a performance review
is not offered, ask for one. Also, ask who you need to
speak to and what steps you need to go through to
secure a full time job BEFORE the internship has
ended. By asking this question and being assertive,
you are able to make the necessary changes to your
performance to insure you are the candidate the
company looks to first when hiring.
In addition, don't limit yourself to just your intern job
description. Ask for more than just your duties so that
you can widen your skill set and become a more
valued team member with your employer. Keep track
and quantify your successes during your internship

A Student to Nicole: I won't be able to receive an

internship until my last semester of my official senior
year, and during that semester I will have a full load of
classes. I feel as if I would be better prepared to
graduate if I had more internships and experiences,
so I am looking into adding another semester to open
up more room for growth while taking less classes per

Turning an Internship into a Full-time Job by Nicole Wagner

semester to make room for these internships.
Is this decent idea? Or do companies not take into
account past experiences as much as they your
experience with them? I would hate to rush school
just to get a degree without also receiving the proper
experience through internships (most of which seem
to require academic credit).
Nicole Wagner: Your question is two parts:
First, as far as extending your collegiate career one
more semester to accommodate internships, that is
the decision of the individual and best handled by an
academic advisor. From an employer perspective, a
balanced collegiate resume that has academics and
internships/work experience is far more desirable to
any employer than one that is solely academic. If this
extra semester will allow you the opportunity to intern
with a company in which you have a strong interest
for full time opportunities, then by all means, I think
this is a great idea from an employer perspective.
Part two of your question is whether companies
account for past experiences or rely mostly on your
experience with them. Speaking from the perspective
of an employer who has both a formal external and
internal recruitment process, I can tell you both are
important. Most employers utilize a behavioral
interviewing model in which they relate past
performance with future potential based on job
specific criteria. Anything that is relevant to how well
you will do the job at hand is relevant to the employer.
Certainly how you perform with the employer is recent
experience and a good indicator of future success
with that same employer.
Nicole, so much of what you have shared seems
to be related to high level performance. Do you
have any tips on how an intern can maximize how
effectively they perform?
Nicole Wagner: I would advise interns to take on
ANY task assigned, no matter how small, and do so
with enthusiasm. Overtly demonstrate the initiative to
acquire new skills. Take your assignments seriously
and build a reputation for being dependable, diligent
and accurate in your work. You may encounter
ambiguity in the work environment, so seek direction
and ask questions. Also, set realistic goals and
expectations. A learning agenda is what distinguishes
a short-term job from an internship. This is a critical
element and is often overlooked. Determine with your
supervisor the specific skills and competencies you

wish to acquire. IT IS UP TO YOU to establish a

correlation between your learning goals and daily
tasks. Maintain a journal of activities and
accomplishments and seek regular reviews from your
supervisor to assess your performance.
A Student to Nicole: I am a Health Science major
who has had internships in many areas, except
for experience in health science. I initially looked
for internships to help me figure out what to do
before I settled on health, when I first started
college. I also wanted work experience in those
fields. Now, four and a half years later, my resume
looks like that of a marketing manager and
potential preschool teacher. I find it hard now
more than ever to land internships in health
science, or even jobs. I have about a good year
left before I graduate to work on that. What advice
do you have to students who are struggling to
find the right internship that could leverage them
into the right job, especially if they are unaware of
what they are looking for? Is it a good idea to do
many internships for the experience or just one or
two in a potential field of interest?
Nicole Wagner:
The advice I have to students struggling to find the
right internship if they don't know what they are
looking for is to first narrow down their interests to a
couple of areas they are potentially considering for full
time work. One of the best places to start an
internship job search is on line. There are a number of
websites devoted to helping you find the best possible
internship job. However, it is really important to look
beyond the computer screen to make sure that you
weigh all of your options. Other best places to search
include networking through your professors, other
students or current colleagues, stopping by the career
services office and calling your local chamber of
commerce. This endeavor will help you realize that for
virtually everything we see, there is a person working
behind the scenes, and therefore there is potential
internship around every corner.
To answer the second part of your question, I believe
it's a good idea to do internships in your junior and
senior years when your interests are more focused
and defined by the major you ultimately choose. At
that point in your college career, you also have a
better idea of what direction you want to go. I don't
know if I would give you a limit on number of
internships, but a focused area of interest is
encouraged in my opinion.

Turning an Internship into a Full-time Job by Nicole Wagner

Lastly, and this is for you personally, never
underestimate the power of ANY paid work
experience on your resume, regardless of kind of
work. It shows that you led a balanced college career
between academics and work/extracurriculars. A lot of
students change their major part way through school.
Any employer views work experience as a positive
because it shows work ethic, ability to multi-task,
responsibility, and drive. You can articulate the skill
sets you achieved from your work experience and
relate it back to what you are ultimately interviewing
for.
Moderator: Internships are extremely valuable when
you are "trying out" potential careers, and it sounds
like you made some good choices for you as a result
of your investment in the internships. Let me reinforce
what Nicole pointed out in her reply about the value of
any work experience for potential employers.
For example, many of the teaching skills you
developed in your preschool work might be valuable if
your health sciences work includes helping clients
create a healthy lifestyle for themselves. The
marketing experience might be invaluable in a role
communicating a message related to health
promotion, for example. Showing an employer that
you have learned something valuable from a past
experience and relating it to their needs can be very
effective as you pursue new opportunities.
We do a workshop related to this titled "Marketing
Your Leadership and Transferable Skills" and the
slides are available from this link: http://fullerton-

csm.symplicity.com/utils/view.php?id=ab080cfb
5f369ff59040b6c5f50762e7. There is a worksheet
that provides some examples of transferable skills
you may find useful.
Nicole, so once someone performs so effectively
in their internship, how do you best express your
contributions during an internship to a potential
full time employer in an interview setting?
Nicole Wagner: You can best express your intern
contributions to a potential full time employer in a few
ways. First, I'll talk about the resume. Use your
internship the way you would a job. List it under work
experience, chronologically among your other work
experience placements. Be sure you label this
experience as an internship so that employers dont
think that you're a job-hopper and unwilling to commit
to a long-term position. As with writing any resume,
keep your main points concise and bulleted. Most

employers give a resume a quick once over as part of

the initial screening process, so your key selling
points should be written in a way that is eye-catching
and quick to read. Most employers also know that
interns are not often given a great deal of
responsibility, so a few main points are all you need.
Secondly, you will need to highlight your
accomplishments in an interview setting once you've
gotten your foot in the door. Sell your experience. For
example, if you had a significant individual
accomplishment during the tenure of your internship,
make sure you draw attention to it. Be able to expand
on your resume bullets. Even if you worked on
something as a team, highlight what you did and how
it contributed to the project. You should give
examples of the jobs you did during your internship,
so that your potential employer gets an understanding
of your job. Qualify and quantify everything on your
resume in the interview setting as much as you can.
Nicole, would you share a bit about the Enterprise
internship opportunities, including the types of
projects and assignments students have
completed, and how these internships have
yielded full-time jobs for interns?
Enterprise of Southern California offers a formalized
part time intern program twice a year. We offer a
winter program which is a six week minimum and
typically occurs during and/ or overlaps So Cal school
winter break schedules. We also offer a more
extended version in summer that is a 10 week
minimum program. Both opportunities are paid
internships, up to 30 hours per week, and the formal
title is Management Trainee Intern.
As a Management Trainee Intern, you work within one
of our rental locations doing everything a full time
Management Trainee does. By working in the day to
day operation of our business, you will be exposed to
all aspects of running a business. We will immerse
you in sales, marketing, customer service, and the
accounting aspects of running a branch operation.
The Management Trainee intern experience is
basically a glimpse of what it's like to run your own
business.
In addition to your day to day experience within a
branch location, we have two formal training sessions
with our Group Training Department; one at the
beginning and one in the middle of your internship. In
the interim, you are being trained by the management
team of one of our branch locations. During the first

Turning an Internship into a Full-time Job by Nicole Wagner

training class, you will be assigned a team project
with your fellow interns. This summer's interns are
working on team projects regarding marketing plans
and growth of our business. At the end of the
summer, we have a project presentation competition
for all of Southern California's interns, and one intern
team is awarded the first place prize which is a $1K
scholarship per team member.
We offer this internship to students going into their
senior year or that have current senior standing ONLY
because we are interested in applicants who have a
serious interest in our full time Management Trainee
position upon graduation. To learn more about our
opportunities within Enterprise, you can visit our
recruitment website, http://www.go.enterprise.com.
You can also access the contact information for a
local Talent Acquisitionist in your area of residence
that would be happy to speak to you about local
opportunities. Our Summer 2013 intern program is
currently under way, and we begin our recruitment
process for the Winter 2013-2014 program this fall so
stay tuned!
Thank you, Nicole, for all you have shared this
week.

If anyone wants to contact the Enterprise Orange

County Talent Acquisition Manager who recruits
at CSUF, contact Kim Martin at
kimberly.m.martin@ehi.com or 949-373-9363. She
can also put you in touch of a recruiter outside
the Orange County area if need be!

For more information on searching

for an internship or a full-time job,
visit:
http://www.fullerton.edu/career/students/careerg
uide/thejobsearchprocess/index.htm