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Posted by Roy Mlakar on February 26, 2009
I've decided to hand this space over to my daughter, Tracy, this week. She is is currently the Associate Director of Development Communications for
UCLA's Anderson School of Management. She recently received her masters in sports administration and marketing from California State-Long Beach. Her ultimate sports career would
blend her two passions: helping others and sports, preferably at a
sports non-profit group or foundation. Tracy has served as an intern for both the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and Major League Soccer's L.A. Galaxy. Here are her thoughts on what makes an internship experience so valuable: I once heard a sports executive say that he would rather hire someone he knew than go through the process of interviewing a group of strangers. It was at this moment that I vowed to use my internships as opportunities to be that one intern who stood out above the rest so if a job presented itself, my resume would be recognized. Then I decided that even this strategy might be too ambitious. Perhaps I didn’t want a job in the department in which I was interning. I decided my internships should be about standing out so that when a job presented itself ANYWHERE in sports, I would have the best sports references and endorsements than any other candidate. I might even have a connection to the job by getting to know my sports colleagues. The Good
I made it my goal to “be the intern.” What do I mean by this? Well, I don’t care what title you may have in your full-time job or how old you are — you’re still an intern. And that means, you do all kinds of envelope licking, storage room cleaning, excel spreadsheet filling, database crunching, mail sending, and silent auction sorting that the intern job entails. And I guarantee that if you do it well enough, you’ll get more responsibilities. And with that, you’ll be recognized for a job well done and more likely to be remembered by your employer after you leave and the next crop of interns arrive. I also guarantee that you will actually learn something. Despite the fact that you’re envelope licking, mail sending, database crunching, etc…you will learn something new. And that something new might actually help you obtain your next job in sports. The Better
What did I learn during my internships? A lot, actually. I learned the importance of volunteering. I volunteered for extra hours I thought I didn’t need, for beach clean-ups, for weekend events, things that weren’t even related to my internship. I took vacation days from my actual paying job to volunteer for hours upon hours. And through this, I met people outside of the department for which I was interning, thus increasing my professional network. These were people I never would have known since they worked in an entirely different building. And during these hours, I asked them about their jobs, what they liked and didn’t like, where their favourite city was to live, what sports they enjoyed working for and why, and if they were even fans of the sport for which they were working. The Best
What else did I learn? That interning was not only a way to meet professional sports executives as colleagues, but also how I made some new friends. I wouldn’t recommend going into a job looking to meet friends — you are there to learn and to work. But just like in a paying job, the people you spend large quantities of time with organically become part of your world. And that’s just an added benefit.
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