Taking the initiative on internships

HIRE GROUND: More than 60 companies met with 450 RISD students last month at Internship Connect. Pictured above are Facebook designers, from left: Robyn Morris, Andy Chang and Justin Stahl. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
HIRE GROUND: More than 60 companies met with 450 RISD students last month at Internship Connect. Pictured above are Facebook designers, from left: Robyn Morris, Andy Chang and Justin Stahl. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

A young man clutched his sketch book and introduced himself as Eric He, even though his resume announces him as Zhong-Xiou He.
Behind the table for Pawtucket-based TEN31 Productions, Creative Director Eric Auger and Amy Radis, a principal painter, chatted with him about how the company creates and displays “living art” for special events such as WaterFire Providence. Auger, like the 59 other employers in the cavernous but crowded ballroom at the Omni Providence Hotel, was looking for interns – four, to be exact.
As a junior at the Rhode Island School of Design, his meticulous ink renderings of saddles, tanks and imaginary monsters only hint at his love of storytelling, which he correctly sensed is something Auger is looking for.
“They told me what their interns do,” He explained when the conversation was over, “and it seems like it’s a start-to-finish process – concepts to costumes to performance. I left a resume. We’ll see how it turns out.”
RISD is certainly not the first school to offer fairs to promote internships with employers for students, but the Sept. 25 Internship Connect program, followed on three different days by three employer-led panel discussions for small student groups, put the focus on 450 students taking the initiative in an intentional quest for internships with employers who are actively hiring.
That number of students has more than doubled since the fair was first offered two years ago, said Susan Andersen, associate director for employer relations in RISD’s Career Center. She attributed the interest to word-of-mouth promotion from other students and today’s difficult economic climate.
At RISD, holding this fair in the fall semester for the third time was intended to give sophomores, juniors and even seniors who may not yet have a complete portfolio ready to present, a way of networking and preparing to compete in a real-world setting. The three-hour session was set up like a job fair, with the emphasis on internships in disciplines ranging from industrial design to illustration.
“We really emphasize that they have a plan and a strategy in terms of finding an internship or a job,” Andersen said, “and part of that plan is developing a network, so when you’re trying to make connections for an internship or job, you can go back to your network.” Later discussions included panels led by representatives of AS220, Samsung and Facebook.
Students working the floor during the internship fair said they valued the opportunity to meet employers face to face and sell themselves and their work.
Anneka Bjorkeson, 20, a junior from Sweden whose parents are based in New York, touted her industrial design expertise to five different employers in the first hour.
“I wanted to know what types of opportunities they have for the summer, things for industrial design, paid internships,” she said.
Both she and Shannon Crawford, 20, a junior from Rocky Hill, Conn., majoring in illustration, said they plan to stay in touch with the employers they spoke with and follow up on the visits. And like many students, they did their homework before showing up.
“They’re hiring,” Crawford said, referring to TEN31 Productions. “I’ve dabbled in costume creation and [learned about the firm] when I went to Career Services. They just interested me. They said they’d keep in touch, but I plan on contacting them within the week.”
Employers said they connected individually with students but also were pleased to see such a big crowd. Paula Foley, special assistant to the creative director at New York City-based Ippolita, said the handmade jewelry maker was devising internships that paid between $15 and $20 an hour depending on the student’s skill set.
“We’ve been getting a variety of students, primarily in industrial design, graphic design and sculpture,” said Foley. “It’s interesting that they’ve done their homework and that they realize there’s an artistic foundation to the brand.”
Students who take advantage of career services are coached to present not only the skills of their craft but their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, and how they can be a good all-around fit for a position, said Andersen. Foley said the guidance was evident.
Hiring “is not so much based on the beauty of their portfolio,” Foley said. “We want to see the mind behind the portfolio.” Other Rhode Island colleges and universities offer a wide array of programming to match up employers and students, but most focus on job fairs that mix job, internship and graduate school opportunities, school representatives said. One program that is similar to RISD’s but with a twist is an Internship Showcase offered Oct. 2 by Rhode Island College in which students who have worked as interns coach their peers about what the experience is like, said Linda Kent Davis, director of RIC’s Career Development Center.
Providence College uses this approach, too, said Patti Goff, director of the school’s career education center.
Within RIC’s School of Management, Lawrence E. Wilson, executive director for economic and leadership development, uses a two-pronged approach: a required, for-credit seminar and working one-on-one to help students get internships.
“Our kids mostly are first-generation students to go to college,” Wilson said. “They’re working their way through school and they’re out there already, but the jobs are away from their academic interests.”
Roger Williams University set up a job and internship fair last March attended by more than 80 corporations, nonprofits, government agencies and grad schools, but instead of a separate internship fair, which the school used to do, the university holds smaller events specific to certain types of majors and segments of industry, said Robbin Beauchamp, Career Center director.
“Every student, no matter what their major is, needs to get multiple internships before they graduate,” Beauchamp said.
At the University of Rhode Island, fairs focus on internships as well as careers, said Kim Washor, director of Experiential Learning and Community Engagement. “Each year you figure out what students need and how majors complement industry,” she said.
After the RISD program ended, with lines snaking around booths for large employers like Hallmark, even smaller employers like Auger found the meetings overwhelming – but in a good way.
“We spoke to 32 kids,” he said. “It was amazing. I’m definitely going to take more than four [interns]. •

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