Hello, Hello.

Hello working world, hello senior year. After this summer, I feel better prepared going into my senior year with confidence and knowledge that no one else will have. I know I’ll be ready to jump right into the working world and hit the ground running. I think you can all read into my internship experiences my reading my other blogs but I’ll take this time to talk about the benefit of our regional project and why it makes me feel so good about saying ‘hello’.

The SalesForce project gave me intangible skills that I can carry to any new adventure in life, school, or work. I now know how to pick up the phone, do my best sales pitch, and get rejected without skipping a beat. (I can’t imagine how much this will help me recover after a bad attempt at picking up a girl on campus) I know how to deal with success and how to deal with failure. I’m confident in presenting myself and my product with a professional and personal touch. I feel prepared to meet deadlines, work as a team, and even compete in a friendly nature.

Most importantly, I’ve gained a great amount of experience in managing my time, and my resources. The SF project forced me to prioritize my projects, and use my great amount of resources around the office to get ahead. I had to find a friendly co-worker or two to assist me with the project and keep me on the right track. I had to put other, sometimes more preferable, projects aside so I could be ready and prepared to share my updates on the Thursday conference call.

These sorts of skills are transferable in so many aspects of my future and I look forward to utilizing them.

-TJ 

Hello world-wide web. Week six is wrapping up and salesforce is in full swing. I’d like to talk a bit about this salesforce project and balancing it with everything else. Now that I think we’ve all gotten comfortable in our summer associate positions we’re being given a lot more freedom to delegate our own time. This can be a burden and a blessing. It’s nice to feel responsible for my own success time management. But i also have difficulty from time to time prioritizing what needs to get done first. I have a tendency to approach my projects like assignments in school, I line them up and attempt to finish them all in the order i received them. However, some projects are not as urgent as others, some require a few hours while others require days of research and help from coworkers. I think it is important that while we are given freedom in how we choose to spend our work time, we should keep in close contact with a mentor to help us stay organized and efficiently on task.

Lastly, I’ll fill you all in on something I have picked up recently this week from my full-time colleagues. Here in LA, we have four interns, I know that in most other offices you only have one, but hopefully you can find something to take out of this. Because we have four interns it is easy to get too comfortable around one another and not branch out in the office. This does not go unnoticed. Coworkers appreciate when you seek them out for help on a project, a quick question, or just to talk. They want to get to know us, and honestly we need them to know us if we want a good referral to the boss when the internship is over. So, you may already be doing this, but I would encourage everyone, myself included, to branch out. Get away from the computer and cell phone and go out to lunch with someone you have not talked to much. It may be difficult to initiate, but it will be worth it.
TJ