第二期 寻找实习：长大后你想做什么（上）

《职场第一步 | Starting Somewhere 》是由墨尔本大学团队为初入职场的朋友们倾情打造的职场助力节目。墨大教授、职场达人、优秀学生将一一现身，为你讲述如何开启“职场第一步”！

第二期 寻找实习：长大后你想做什么（上）Finding an Internship - What do you want to be when you grow up? （1）

你长大后想做什么？今天的节目中，我们将和实习生女王Lauren Berger一起讨论。另外，还有一些使用网络的技巧和一些有用的网络资源分享给你。

在四大会计师事务所和战略咨询公司实习过的两个人分享了他们的故事：他们一位是安永的前工作人员，一位是毕业后进入人工智能咨询的职业道路。

一起来听吧！

Episode 2 - FINDING AN INTERNSHIP

Buffy Gorilla:This is Starting Somewhere - a podcast from the University of Melbourne allabout internships - finding one, landing it, and making the most of theexperience. I’m Buffy Gorrilla. I didn't give my internship a lot of thought, I justwent where they told me...and now I’m host of this podcast.

Ben Pawson: I’m Ben Pawson, I got my internships through networking... and now I’m co-host of this podcast.

Buffy: So, we’re clearly the best people to help you start somewhere.

Buffy: In episode one we showed you what an internship can do for you, it’s going tomake you smarter, help you stay in your first job longer, and let you try out anew career in a super safe space, or get a leg up if you already decided whatyou want to do.

Ben: If you’ve not sure about internships go back and listen to that one. We highlyrecommend it.

Buffy: This time on Starting Somewhere we’ll help you figure out and find what kind ofinternship you should be doing. And in the next episode we’ll tell you how to doa great application, stand out in the interview and land the gig.

Ben: So dear listener, what do YOU want be when you grow up? If you know, great.But if you don’t have an idea of what you want to do, stick around and hearfrom Warren Frehse, he’s a Senior Advisor in the Experiential Learning andEmployability area of the University of Melbourne, and he has some greattakeaways.

Buffy: Plus, we get Lauren Berger, the Intern Queen, on the phone from Los Angeles.Lauren did 15 internships and then started her own company exploding themyths around internships and helping people like us.

Buffy: So this notion of your dream internship, it sounds great, but for some of us, it’sjust the one we can get, or the one we are told to go to.

If you’ve got a clear idea of what your dream internship looks like or the idealcompany you think would be so much fun to work for, then track them downand pitch them. But we’ll get to that in a bit. First, if you are lost, like I was, howdo you identify your dream job?

Warren Frehse: We hear a lot about the dream job and one could ask the question does thatreally exist? I mean, in some ways you've got to look at the aspects of workthat you enjoy doing so, in many cases we look for in-transferable skills thatcan come out of their degree or the experiences they do along the side theirdegree. So, if they're doing a part-time job or a casual job, that gives themsome idea of what they might appeal to. So when I worked fo the bank in thebranch, I actually found dealing with customers to be quite rewarding. I likedhelping them but when it came to some of the other back office work, I didn'tlike that at all so, it helped me decide what aspects that I'd like to take further.

Buffy:You just met Warren Frehse - because he has his fingers on the pulses ofpeople like you all day long he has some great insights, including the latestthinking from...

Warren: Stanford University, have a look at a programme called Design Your Life andI've been doing some research in that and last year, I picked out an element ofthat called Mind Mapping. So we got the students to work in a large room with,literally with coloured pens and balloons and try to map out things they’d enjoydoing, but making visual connections. The basic premise of that is what wewould advocate for here at Melbourne as well - is that you don’t need to totallybe 100% sure about what your passion is straight away, and it’s okay to be likethat, In fact, the Melbourne model is designed to help students makeconnections between totally different kind of areas, for example robotics inmedicine, the convergence of those sort of technologies. Melbourne allowsthose different subject areas we call breadth subjects and undergraduates areallowed the students to find that they can try different things that are totallyoutside maybe their core interest. That could lead them in a totally differentdirection.

Buffy: What Warren means is think about what appeals to you - is it working withpeople, or working with data, working on your own, or working in a team, beingcreative, or helping things run smoothly? There's so many options out there.But how do you narrow it down? Someone recommended that book to me,‘What Colour is your Parachute’, I read a few pages and honestly I still don’tknow what colour it is. Purple? But reading self help books might work for you.

Ben: Using the careers team at your university is another way to find that careeridea. I would not have a clue, I did not know we had one when I was atUniversity. But if you’re not at University, how else can you do that?

Buffy: Lauren Berger, the Intern Queen called us from Los Angeles and told us howshe did it.

Lauren Berger:I think the reality is that in college, you don't always know what you want to doand even when you have, you know, maybe a gut feeling, you still sometimesdon't know. You know, I think with an internship, you are just putting yourselfout there and you are trying to find an opportunity that sticks. I know for me,when I was in college, I remember printing out a list of all the majors at myuniversity, circling a bunch of different things and then realising, oh, everythingthat I'm circling is marketing, advertising, you know, communications, and theyall sort of go together. I didn't know where to intern, but I said, "You knowwhat? I'm going to step up and I'm going to take initiative and I'm just going tostart. I'm going to start somewhere."

Buffy:Good name for a podcast!

Lauren: And I got a communications-related internship. At that internship, it was sovaluable because, not only did I get hands-on experience, but I also was ableto say, you know, what I liked and what I didn't like and take that informationand apply it to the next position that I found.

Ben: And Lauren went on to do 15 different internships. There's also a lot of help onthe web, from countless ‘a day in the life of’ websites, to quizzes and blogs thatcan help you exclude things, and also find what might be right for you. We’veput a few links in the show notes to get you started. Remember, Google is yourfriend!

Buffy: So when you are dreaming up your ideal internship, play to your strengthswhatever they are. And if you don’t know what your strengths are, ask a friend,your brutally honest, verging on rude friend, you know the one. Mine is calledJess. Hey Jess!

Ben: Mine is called Paul, hi Paul! And I guess if you are not certain about what youwant to do thats the great thing about an internship, you can try different things.Maybe 15 different things. But if it’s an big leap or a total experiment in a fieldthat is new to you, why not try a lateral or allied job?

Buffy:What’s an example?

Ben: OK, so you are an english major who wants to try being a playwright, go internas a theatre critic. If you are a engineer who wants to try product development,find a start up and go be a marketing intern.

Buffy: Ooh let me try one..... If you are an economics major who wants to work at anaccounting firm, try and get into the ATO - That’s the Australian Tax Office.

Ben: That’s right, every profession has things that run parallel or influence it, or areabove or below it, I think Edward de Bono calls it Lateral Thinking.

Vivian Gleeson: Hello, my name's Vivian Gleeson. I'm a graduate of the Master's ofBiotechnology, and I'm currently working at the Burnet Medical Institute as abusiness development officer.

Buffy: And what is the Burnet Medical Institute?

Vivian: So, it's a Institute based out of the Alfred Hospital with the core mandate oftreating vulnerable populations. So, we have kind of two major sections of theBurnet, one being international relations and actually putting boots on theground to treat major issues either in Myanmar, East Timor, or Sub-SaharanAfrica. And then the other side of us is we are a traditional medical researchinstitute that focuses on infectious diseases. So we leverage a lot of the assetsat the Alfred Hospital, and also the amazing academic and clinical network inMelbourne, to basically help major issues within those areas.

Buffy: How did you find yourself moving from a biomedical degree into what you'redoing now?

Vivian Gleeson: So, I always wanted to be on the development side of science. Being onthe pointy end, it's really, really exciting. Just not looking at how does this work,but how can we use this thing that's absolutely amazing to make a differencenow. And anything that we can do to help that get through is great.

Buffy: Now that we’re all Lateral thinking geniuses - I can add that it doesn’t justapply to what sort of internship you want, but the companies you look at for thatopportunity.

Ben: Another plus of lateral thinking: avoid competition with your friends that areapplying to work at the big four strategic consulting firms.

Hamish Taylor: I applied for internships where they were just looking for STEM applicants,STEM meaning science, technology, engineering and maths. I wanted to fit thatsilly mould of being the person who does a consulting internship because that'sone of the buzzwords of my generation, everyone's a consultant or workingconsultant.

Buffy: You may remember that Hamish Taylor, from episode one, wasn’t even a STEMgraduate- so that was some serious lateral thinking. But he went on to asuccessful internship at the Herald Sun newspaper. Interning for the big four issomeone’s dream scenario - I realised my limitations early and would havecrumbled during the application process. We talked to two people who appliedto the big four and got internship offers. They make it sound pretty easy.

Grace Chen: Hi, I'm Grace Chen. I'm studying the bachelor of commerce, major in economicsand finance, currently in third year. Similar to a lot of my friends, I didn't reallyknow what I wanted to do, and commerce has quite a wide breadth, so it sets you up quite well for the future. That's why I chose it.

I wasn't really sure what I wanted. However, I did attend some club eventsbefore going to EY. I met one of the managers at EY and she recommendedher field. She said that she was in a very similar position to where I was inuniversity. She didn't really know which department she wanted to go to, so Iwas like, "Okay, I'll follow your advice and apply to the same one."

Ben: But I think Grace was probably downplaying the amount of effort she put in.Grace was involved in lots of student clubs and was a great networker. Sheseems quite chill now about her experiences, but she did overcome somework/life balance issue that she’ll share with us in episode 5. We also talked to:

Dhanuka Nanayakkara: Dhanuka Nanayakkara. I was a student here at the University ofMelbourne, just last year actually. Graduated in December, and I’m currentlyworking in KPMG’s Solution 49 X Team. They specialise in artificial intelligenceconsulting work.

Ben: Dhanuka started out on a strategy bent, but took a detour that worked out wellin the end.

Dhaka: So, it's actually been a pretty weird journey for me getting into this position,specifically. In my undergrad studies I did commerce and I was an actuary but Iwas really into strategy consulting. So I actually interned at KPMG about fouryears ago, in their strategy team as an intern. And they offered me a job but Ireally wanted to go and finish off my masters in engineering ... or start mymasters rather. So I asked them to hold that position for me for the three yearswhile I did my masters.

Buffy: How good must this guy be that KPMG would do that? And when you find outwhat he ended up doing, it’ll make sense.

Dhaka: Last year I actually did another internship at another engineering companywhere I worked in their AI team. And I kind of realised that that's what I wantedto do in my career, that I wasn't really into strategy anymore. So I actuallycalled up KPMG being like, "Hey, I'm not really into strategy anymore butthanks for everything you’ve done for me, I’m actually more into AI" And theywere like, "Hey, we just started an AI consulting team. Do you want to talk tosomeone from that?" So I was like, "Huh, okay. Sure." And it actually kind ofwent from there. So I met some members of the team, they seemed really cool,the work sounded super interesting. So I decided to join up with them.

Ben: We take another look at networking in episode 10.