Last week in our “2 Questions for The Dean” segment, we looked at how interns benefit Hull College of Business interns. This week, Dean Mark Thompson shares why CSRA companies should partner with Hull.
ABD: How do Hull College students help some of the companies in the CSRA?
HULL: Yeah, so we’re hearing a lot from our internship partners about the value they get from working with the students.
One, getting to know our students, getting a trial run to see if this is somebody that we want to employ within our company?
Do they fit what our company is trying to do with the culture of the company? The other value that really comes to the internship partners is that you get some fresh ideas. You’ve got some students that are really right at that cutting edge of learning the material, getting ready to enter the workforce.
Students may approach problems a little differently.
And so, we’ve heard some companies actually tell us, you know, wow, they actually came up with some problems or solutions to problems that we’ve been struggling with for some time.
It’s as simple as social media and technology, a lot of times they’re at that cutting edge and they’re able to do a lot for the company that the company is not familiar with, or it’s a space they’re not comfortable with that, these interns have been able to really help.
ABD: Is there a certain category of company that you’re looking for to provide internships?
HULL: So, we have worked with, I mean, just about any business in the CSRA. What we really want to highlight to our students is that these internship opportunities don’t have to be so narrowly focused.
If you are a finance major, you don’t have to work in a bank. All of these businesses have a financial component or a financial department that they need people with that background. We find that a lot of our accounting firms certainly need accounting interns, but they also need marketing interns, so making sure students are aware that just because of business might be in one particular industry, that’s not the only kind of intern that they get.
