Transcript:

Stephanie: Hi there. You're listening to Gear Up Season 2, where we bring you the Career Centers' own career advisers to talk about a variety of summer internship experiences. Today we're talking to Jen, who advises STEM jobs at the Career Center. Jen A.: Hi, I'm Jen Agor. I am one of the undergraduate career counselors here in the Career Center and I focus on STEM careers, energy and environment as well. Stephanie: So within your career area, you know, focusing specifically on summer internships. When do usually advise students to start preparing, looking for summer internships for an upcoming summer? Jen A.: Pretty much in any of the areas that I work with. It's all year long. So if I'm working with tech, it's goingto be a little bit closer to the fall for the big companies. But the rest of the time, for startups and other positions, it's all year. And then engineering, certainly same kind of thing. It's most people don't get started until the spring. So I would saythat's probably the best time to start looking for stuff that's going to be available in the summer. Stephanie: And so what are, I guess just a we're alike on the same page. What are some like examples of students who have done X internship that you've advised within engineering within STEM? Jen A.: Well, I had a student go to iRobot a few years ago, an ECE students. Well, we have students that go to like Boeing and aerospace companies. We have some students at GM and other automotive companies, G.E., some of the energy stuff. We have students who do Stanback fellowships or we also they go to all kinds of government positions. And then some of the other sciences, when you're talking research positions like that, they go to the NIH, they go to the CDC and all kinds of different places like that. Stephanie: So what are some resources that you usually tell students or places for them to start looking for these internships either online or here at the Career Center.Jen A.: Yeah. So with engineering, I would say that their biggest resource honestly is the North Carolina State Engineering Fair. Every fall it's two full days and both days have completely different employers and it's strictly geared towards engineering. So it's a really great resource. If students can get over there and they can take advantage of that in the spring it's one day, but it's still a huge amount of employers. So I think that's a really good opportunity. And then outside of CareerConnections and the career fair here, professional organizations, if you're involved with NSBE or SWE or SHPE or any of those organizations, they all have job boards and conferences, which are a great place to network. And then, you know, when my portfolio area is so broad, so I'm trying to answer for everything but things like biopharma, or biotech and pharma and things like that. North Carolina Biotech Center has a great job board that focuses on jobs around here. But there are all kinds of job boards like that for places all over the country. Stephanie: So, you know, let's say students find positions that they want. They go into the interview process. Are there any specific skills or qualities, you know, broadly speaking, for like STEM, for engineering that you think students should be looking to showcasewithin interviews that you think employers are looking for specifically? Is there more technical skills required, I assume?

Jen A.: Well, I think across all functions of what I do for a portfolio area, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, some data and quantitative skills are usually pretty helpful when you're doing research or trying to figure out projects, stuff like that, being able to track them and really focus on that data piece is important. And technical skills. You know, I see a lotof students who use a lot of Matlab, SolidWorks, any coding R and Strata. Again, if you're going into research and then Python, Java, all that kind of stuff, if you're in tech and honestly sometimes with