CEO to present tips on making most of college internships
Known as the self-proclaimed Intern Queen, Lauren Berger held 15 different internships during her four-year college career.
Berger will speak at Syracuse University on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium. Her speech, ‘Everything Internships with the Intern Queen,’ will have an ‘entrepreneurship feel to it,’ Berger said. She will explain how she started her business and provide tips on how to turn internships into jobs and how to make the most of the internship experience.
Her goal is to encourage students to start looking for internships, she said, so they can learn the value of them like she did.
‘Even the worst internship can be an amazing and beneficial experience,’ Berger said.
Berger said her mother was the one who pushed and encouraged her to get an internship as soon as she could. By the spring semester of her freshman year, Berger had a public relations internship while still pursuing her entertainment journalism major.
‘Being in that environment was the first time I felt challenged, and I wanted to do more,’ Berger said. ‘I’m the kind of person that can never be busy enough.’
At age 19, Berger spent her summer in New York City, where she lived in the New York University residence halls and held another internship.
When she returned to Florida State University in the fall, she realized there weren’t many opportunities available for her and decided to transfer to the University of Central Florida, she said. Berger took on a full course-load of credit hours, held a part-time job, worked as a freelance magazine writer and doubled or tripled up on internships in her junior and senior year. She graduated from college with experience at major companies such as MTV, FOX and NBC.
When Berger was searching for internships, she encountered many issues and questions she had to try and figure out on her own, she said. After all of her success getting internships, she decided to start a business designed to become the ‘middle man’ between college students and employers, Berger said.
Her website, InternQueen.com, was launched in 2008 and offers assistance for internship-seeking students. Many employers reach out and provide her with internship openings, which she then posts on her website. Most of the time, the website will link directly to different internship applications and also has a service that allows users to send specific questions to Berger.
‘While looking for internships, it’s important to know who’s who, and the Intern Queen is definitely a who’s who,’ said Jennifer Pluta, an internship coordinator at SU Career Services.
Pluta has been working at Career Services for five years and helps post and promote all different types of internships, she said, along with organizing workshops for SU students to try and make the internship-searching process easier.
She and Daniel Klamm, the outreach and marketing coordinator at Career Services, have been trying for years to book Berger to speak at SU, Pluta said.
‘It’s one thing to hear from staff members how important internships are, but it’s another to hear from someone in her twenties and closer to the college demographic,’ Klamm said. ‘It’s much more impactful.’
Published on January 31, 2011 at 12:00 pm
