College Sophomore with questions about securing a summer internship

The email below is from a college Sophomore that I met at a talk that I delivered to some undergrad business school students a few months ago. Like most students his age, he has concerns about being able to secure a summer internship, especially given that he is still in his second year. His questions to me were meant to provide some hopefully-helpful context around that topic to help with his internship search.

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KI wrote:

Good morning Marquis,

I want to thank you for speaking at the [university] engagement last night. I learned so much more than I thought I would!

What you said about always being respectful to others and how that allows you to establish and maintain great relationships really resonated with me.

And thank you for giving me advice specifically related to my college future. Now I have an idea of the kinds of internships I should be looking for, and what I can be doing now to prepare for them (getting that Businessweek subscription is on today’s agenda!).

I do have a couple more questions:

1. Many internship programs at larger firms are “junior-only” because they turn into full-time offers. If I am unable to attain an internship at a large firm for this summer (after my sophomore year), where do you suggest I intern?

2. So far this year, I have met with companies across several different fields, like General Motors and Eli Lilly, to discuss their IT needs. Do you think it would be a bad idea to start in a very specific field? Would it be harder to broaden my opportunities after working several years at a field-specific company like those above?

Thank you again for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us at [university], your presence always means a lot!

Have a great day,
KI

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My response:

Hi KI,

Thanks for making the time to come out to last night’s session and also thanks for the follow-up email. I am appreciative on both counts.

Here are my quick thoughts on both of your questions:

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1. Many internship programs at larger firms are “junior-only” because they turn into full-time offers. If I am unable to attain an internship at a large firm for this summer (after my sophomore year), where do you suggest I intern?
   I totally understand your concern here and I often shake my head at how companies aren’t often willing to give talented Sophomores a chance to spend a summer proving their capabilities and providing value. It’s not like Juniors are the only folks in the world who have skills and are worth an investment of 10-12 weeks of work.

   My answer to your question hinges on the definition of “larger firms”…If you are restricting your interpretation of this term to refer to large firms that recruit at IU, then you’d be closing off your universe of possibilities to a select set of companies that have had luck getting IU students in the past. I’d recommend that you broaden your definition of “larger firms” to also include other big companies who may not recruit for interns on IU’s campus. There are tons of companies that don’t do on-campus recruiting in Bloomington for any number of reasons (Aon is one of them), but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t consider a qualified Sophomore candidate from IU. As you think through your possible universe of internship employers, look to big firms that will come to campus to find kids like you, but also to big firms that you might have to proactively hit up to make them aware of you. I don’t know which firms recruit on campus at IU, but I’m sure that there are plenty of Fortune 500 firms that don’t…these will be options for you, as well.

   Now, if you aren’t able to secure an internship at a large firm (whether or not it recruits on campus at IT), you do still have options for how to productively spend your summer. You could research smaller firms that might work in the industry/functional area that interest you and then reach out to apply for an internship. For example, there are lots of boutique management consulting firms (e.g., Mars & Co., North Highland, FTI Consulting) that offer internships, but don’t have the budget for large on-campus recruiting efforts. There are several small tech companies that fall into the same category. Another option would be to work for a professor or an academic department doing some sort of research or academic assistantship work in order to build your knowledge in a given area and add an interesting entry into your resume. One more option is to look into interesting non-traditional summer employment options, like non-profit jobs, international fellowships, work sponsored by foundations.

2. So far this year, I have met with companies across several different fields, like General Motors and Eli Lilly, to discuss their IT needs. Do you think it would be a bad idea to start in a very specific field? Would it be harder to broaden my opportunities after working several years at a field-specific company like those above?
   When you say “specific field”, you’re referring to an industry sector, right? For example, the auto industry or healthcare? I just want to make sure I’m interpreting your question correctly.

   If I’m understanding you correctly, then I’d say that you wouldn’t be doing yourself a disservice by starting off in a particular industry if you plan on doing so with a functional focus on IT. While there will be specific IT-related issues that would be particular to the auto industry versus healthcare or any other sector, the general concepts of IT management, system implementation, data management, etc. would be consistent from industry to industry. So, if you decided that you’d want to jump to a different sector in the future and still keep on doing IT-related work, you should be OK if you start off in what may be considered a niche industry.

   I’ve been asked questions that touch this topic a couple of times before, so, if you might want some more perspectives on it, you can check out my blog at https://marquisparker.com/blog and see the advice that I gave to those other folks.

   Before leaving this question, I should touch on a tangentially-related issue: industry focus versus functional focus [There are different schools of thought on this, so it might be worth talking to other people about this issue]. My rule of thumb for deciding to broaden your horizons by jumping to a different job is that you’ll be OK with making a big transition as long as you stay within a single industry or stay within a functional area of focus in the new role. The thinking here is that you’d be able to leverage your existing knowledge in the new role by keeping one of those major characteristics consistent between your old role and your new role.

   So, if you were to jump from an IT management job at Merck to an IT management job at Goldman Sachs, you’d likely be alright because you’re staying with a common functional focus in the roles. On the other hand, it would be much more difficult to jump from an IT management job at Merck to a marketing/brand management job at Procter and Gamble. Such a transition is difficult because you’d be switching industries AND functional areas. This is why most people have to press “Pause” on their careers and go to business school to facilitate such a transition.

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I hope my comments above are helpful. If you were looking for something different, let me know and I’ll try to hit you with something that might be more on point for you.

Marquis