Intern Selection

By Corinne Feight

I really cannot believe that this semester is coming to a close. In just a week, Thanksgiving break will commence and then once we return we only have two weeks until finals start. My senior year is almost halfway over! Still, I am so excited for spring semester already. The last two weeks we have been collecting résumés for our spring internship program. We had over 30 applicants so it was hard to our selection committee to bring it down to 9 applicants to interview. As I am heading our largest event next semester, I am taking part in the selection process, which has been super exciting and challenging for me.

This week, after we had selected our 9 interviewees, we took time interviewing each of them. I was present for 8 of the 9 total interviews, which was a really fun and enlightening process. I got to know many of our applicants very well in terms of their professional life. I also got plenty of practice in conducting interviews and just interviewing in general. As a graduating senior, I am preparing myself to interview for each position I apply to and this week was really good practice for me.

After two full nights of interviews and many good impressions later, we selected the 5 candidates we wanted to see for the group interview. Thursday night we brought them all in to work on a project with each other, collaborating to figure out their strengths and veins of interest. In the end, they had to present to us their final decision and design. As an observer, this was a unique experience to see how a team starts, after just being introduced, and ends by producing a final outcome. It was really interesting to watch and really revealing about the strengths and weaknesses of our candidates. My favorite part was how many good ideas they had! I am super excited to put some of their thoughts into action for our own career week. At the end of the group interview, we finally all sat down and selected our top candidates!

I am very excited to welcome aboard three new candidates for next semester. I just hope they are ready to jump start career week in the spring because they will not get a second to take a break. In January, it’s time to get down to business!