Undergrads Pursue Leading-Edge Business Skills Through Internships
Many Olin undergrads build foundations for their futures through internships with some of industry’s leading companies. Discovery@Olin caught up with BSBA students Alex Dumas and Jessica Cohen to talk about the their summer internship experiences.
Alex Dumas, BSBA Junior
Marketing major Alex Dumas interned in Google's Chicago office, where she worked within one of its industry-focused sales teams.
She had the opportunity to work with the account executives as they sold Google products and services and also with the account managers as they managed client ad campaigns, evaluated performance and optimized performance to achieve required metrics.
“My team focused on clients in the financial services industry, and we helped them use paid search and other Google products to meet their marketing objectives,” says Dumas.
Dumas also had an opportunity to help respond to an agency's request for proposal, including offering the best pull strategy for reaching the target audience through specific sites, certain keywords and an enhanced online campaign, which involve a mix of categories.
As far as the work environment goes, Dumas says Google is fast-paced and interns are not micromanaged. “Some people describe the Google workstyle as organized chaos. Therefore, interns have the freedom to work in a style that suits them best, but they have to be organized, transparent and efficient. Interns must also be able to tackle unsolved problems with little direction.”
Dumas adds: “Needless to say, this was the best internship I could have asked for. Everyone was so helpful that it was easy to achieve success.”
Jessica Cohen, BSBA Senior
Finance, economics and international business major Jessica Cohen interned in the Investment Banking Group of Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. in New York, where she was placed on the Industrials Growth and Services team.
“Within industrials we cover a wide variety of sectors, including anything from aerospace and defense to chemicals,” says Cohen, who interned with the company in June and July. “Our history of deals has been evenly distributed among the different products, providing me with a wide knowledge of the type of work done in investment banking.”
While at Oppenheimer, Cohen was involved in a number of pitches to a variety of companies. This gave her the opportunity to sit in on all the meetings with directors and managing directors and learn the stories behind the pitches.
It also gave her the chance to learn how to come up with different ideas for the companies to consider. "For one company, we presented them with four different ways they could reduce their currently large warrant overhang and provided case studies of how similar situations have turned out in the past."
While working on these pitches, Cohen also created the standard company profile pages. "Since these profiles are used in every pitch, it was very useful to learn how to create them," she says.
“Although it certainly was a lot of work, it was rewarding to know that I was learning a lot every day on the job, and I am pleased that I was able to take on this opportunity this summer,” Cohen says.
