Each summer, students from the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics gain important real-world professional skills through internships. In each installment of this series, you’ll hear firsthand about how one Lerner student secured their internship, what their experience as an intern was like and what comes next!
Annie Stohler, Class of 2020, majoring in management with a minor in advertising, spent her summer in Seattle, Washington as a sourcing recruiter intern at Amazon.
Q: How did you find out about this internship?
Stohler: I saw a post about it on Amazon’s internship posting site and applied directly! I chose the internship because, first, it would be such a new experience. I’ve never been to Seattle before. The second reason is that HR is something that I have always wanted to explore but never had an opportunity to before, since I’ve only had experience in marketing.
I definitely wouldn’t have been as successful without the UD Career Center. They were instrumental in assisting me by providing feedback for interview prep and resume reviews. The interview process consisted of three consecutive, hour-long virtual interviews. The career center helped me by allowing me to book a room where I could focus and have no distractions. One of my interviewers even told me that my resume was much better organized and formatted than others she had seen from candidates she had hired in the past! Hearing that from an interviewer was great and it definitely was because the career center helped me along in the process.
Q: What is the most exciting task that you have undertaken in your role?
Stohler: The most exciting project I did was working with the employer branding team to help create content for Amazon social media, both Facebook and LinkedIn, to try to increase the amount of candidates to apply for jobs on the teams that I support! It was awesome being able to see what goes on behind the scenes for organic and paid social media postings.
Q: What did you learn through this internship that you don’t think you would have learned Stohler: One unique thing about Amazon is that we have 14 leadership principles that we like to abide by as a company. One of these include “think big” which means tailoring your thoughts and ideas to be able to operate at scale. Because Amazon is such a large company, with around 600,000 employees, I had to learn how to make sure my work could be implemented for both the number of employees and consumers we support worldwide.
Q: What is an example of a time you were able to apply something you learned at the Lerner College to your role?
Stohler: One thing I learned in my consumer behavior class this past spring semester is how to elicit certain responses from consumers if you want them to act a particular way. I was able to apply this to my role because I wanted to increase the amount of responses I got when I would reach out to potential candidates and I would tailor my messages in ways that would make them more likely to respond!
Q: What has been the most fun part of your internship?
Stohler: The most fun part of my internship was having the ability to own my work and also the freedom to try new things. I learned so much just from taking advantage of all of the resources Amazon has available for employees and interns!
We also had intern events, like sports games, boating trips and intern lunches, every so often where we could network and meet new people! That’s how I made most of my friends over the summer and it was awesome!
Q: How do you think this internship will help you with your professional goals?
Stohler: It helped me with my professional goals because I have a much better understanding of what I want to do after I graduate and what it’s like to have a “real” job. I was also able to network with dozens of people that can help connect me to others in the industries where I want to work and help me find my dream job!
Q: What are your plans or next steps once this internship is over?
Stohler: Finishing up my senior year and hopefully getting a job in marketing or HR in either Seattle, Washington, Austin, Texas or southern California!