The One Day, One Internship LinkedIn Group is growing fast. Join now so you can connect with me and other readers.
Ever get off to a bad start? Maybe it was a class, a sports season, or a new social situation. It’s hard to dig yourself out of the funk, right? Or maybe it was something far more important like life. Millions of people are born into poverty in our country, and that makes it likely that they’ll eventually have children who are born into poverty. It’s a vicious cycle that is nearly impossible to get out of, which means that more and more kids will be born into a very difficult situation. A Wider Circle is a Silver Spring, MD non-profit organization that empowers “children and adults to break the cycles of poverty and poor health.” By providing basic need items to struggling families, A Wider Circle puts people in a situation where success is attainable. Continue reading about A Wider Circle…
Chances are that housing is and will be your biggest expense for most of your life. It’s one of our most basic needs, so it makes sense that we spend a lot on it. Unfortunately, housing markets don’t react quickly to changes in demand, so we often have situations where housing becomes unaffordable for many who wish to live in an area. This may be ok when it’s some posh area of town, but what about when people who have lived and worked in area for years can no longer keep up with the real estate prices? Enterprise Community Partners is a Columbia, MD based non-profit that addresses these problems by creating “opportunity for low- and moderate-income people through fit, affordable housing and diverse, thriving communities.” They want to help people living in poverty “move up and out,” and they do this by helping to develop “a diverse mix of affordable and market housing options, access to jobs and social supports, and a strong commitment to the environment and civic participation.” Continue reading about Enterprise Community Partners…
I remember selling wrapping paper at my Dad’s office to support my elementary school. I’m sure his employees felt pressured to buy from me so I could win some stupid prize. What a terrible way to raise funds for a school or non-profit—it’s such an intrusion. But what if there was a great way to give money to great causes while at work that wasn’t quite so pushy? There is, and it’s called EarthShare. They’re a Bethesda, MD based non-profit that helps other environmental conservation focused non-profits raise money. They do this by giving employees (at any company that participates) the choice to have funds automatically deducted from their paychecks and donated to either specific member charities or a general EarthShare fund that is distributed amongst all of EarthShare’s member charities. Continue reading about EarthShare…
Everybody acts like social media and social networking is a new development, but it really isn’t. Even 15 years ago there was a web service that enabled you to create profiles, connect with friends, engage with communities, and communicate instantly or asynchronously. It was called Aol, and there’s a good chance that you used it. I feel bad for Aol. They had it all. They were the behemoth of the social web before anyone knew what the social web was, but they were too big and not agile enough. They continued to act like an ISP, and their market share eroded as people transitioned to high-speed connections. Today most people think of Aol as irrelevant, but the NYC based company is doing their best to make a comeback. The good news is that they aren’t living in the past. They’re not trying to win at social networking or being an ISP—they’ve repositioned. They now describe themselves as “a leading-edge web services company, with an offering of premium and niche content sites, world-class tools and platforms.” The focus is on content, and in some ways that’s what Aol was always about—making great content easy to access for the masses. The tough thing for Aol is that they’re already a huge company, so they’re going to have to swing for the fences if they want their new business model to work. Continue reading about Aol…
Some of my best “on the job experience” came the summer after my Freshman year of college. I didn’t land an amazing internship nor did I do anything entrepreneurial. I landed a job at my dad’s fish and game club. Another college kid and I were responsible for assisting the club manager in maintaining the grounds on the club’s 250-acre parcel. I only had to work from 8 to 12 every day (before it got too hot), but I worked my butt off. I was filling potholes with sand, weed whacking 6 foot high weeds, and digging ditches. I came home every day dirty, tired, and occasionally with a good story (like the time a 30 ft tall tree almost fell on my head). If you want to experience what it’s like to work hard, and you want to do it for a good cause, you should check out Civic Works. They’re a Baltimore, MD based “urban service corps and an AmeriCorps program” with a mission “to build a future for Baltimore’s youth through community service and skills development.” Continue reading about Civic Works…
I hate the term Millennial when it’s used in the same way that Generation Y is. A lot of career advice these days is focused on generational issues, but I just don’t buy into it. Yes, old people and young people have different attitudes, but that’s nothing new. There are way more important things to be talking about, which is why I get visibly irked when the word millennial comes up. (And I’m proving my point right now by being a 25 year old grumpy old man.) My bad attitude should explain why it took me a second to warm to the idea of Millennial Media, which is a Baltimore, MD based mobile advertising company. By millennial, they mean next generation/futuristic, so they’re ok in my book. The company apparently has the largest mobile advertising network in the country, and they claim to reach 83% of the U.S. mobile audience. Continue reading about Millennial Media…
Not many of the companies on Fast Company’s list of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” are non-profit, and not many non-profits generate over $1 billion in annual revenue, but MITRE fits both criteria. I know that many of you want to see fewer technical internships, but I’ve also noticed that most of the non-profit internships that we feature on weekends aren’t very technical. MITRE, which has headquarters in Bedford, MA and McLean, VA offers an exception. They are an “organization chartered to work in the public interest” through “expertise in systems engineering, information technology, operational concepts, and enterprise modernization.” They do this work through “four Federally Funded Research and Development Centers,” with one focused on the Department of Defense, one on the Federal Aviation Administration, one on the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, and one for the Department of Homeland Security. Continue reading about MITRE…
I grew up in Fairfield, CT, which is next to a city, Bridgeport, that is always aiming for “revitalization.” They’ve talked about a building a casino for years, and they even built a minor league baseball stadium. It’s hard to say whether that has helped or hurt, but it seems that Bridgeport is at least doing a little better than it was a decade ago. I’d imagine that the real reasons for improvement have come from smaller projects that are more in tune with the city’s communities’ needs. These are the kinds of projects that The Reinvestment Fund invests in in cities in the Mid-Atlantic. They are “a 24 year old nonprofit financial lending institution with a strong social mission” and offices in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. They started out as a small community development organization, and they’ve grown to become something much bigger. Continue reading about The Reinvestment Fund…
I don’t usually do this, but this is important. I find many of the non-profit internships that I feature on One Day, One Internship on Idealist.org. It’s the best resource for non-profit internships on the web, and it’s a non-profit itself. The organization is in trouble right now, and they need money. If they’ve helped your internship search in any way, go to their home page and make a donation—I just did. Even $5 will help.
If Aspen is known for anything, it’s known for skiing and affluence. In 1945 Walter Paepcke, a Chicago businessman, was so inspired by the town’s natural beauty that he wanted it to be known for something else—”as an ideal gathering place for thinkers, leaders, artists, and musicians from all over the world to step away from their daily routines and reflect on the underlying values of society and culture.” He started by organizing events in Aspen like “a celebration of the 200th birthday of German poet and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,” and then he founded The Aspen Institute. It started as a “forum based on the writings of great thinkers of the past and present,” but now it’s evolved into something more. It is now a non-profit organization that fosters “values-based leadership” and provides “a neutral and balanced venue for discussing and acting on critical issues.” It’s certainly an ideas-focused organization, and it is now headquartered in Washington, DC with offices in Aspen, CO and on the Wye River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Continue reading about The Aspen Institute…
I think that online education is going to be a really big deal in the near future (possibly why I developed an online course for job seekers); however, I still have doubts about online degree programs. I get pitched quite often by online universities that want to advertise here on One Day, One Internship, but it doesn’t feel right to me. I just don’t know how to separate the “degree mills” from reputable online universities, so I stay away. Luckily, this won’t be a problem for long. 2tor, a New York City based startup, is changing the face of online education by partnering “with preeminent institutions of higher education to deliver rigorous, selective degree programs online.” Prestigious college and universities can bring their brand name and time tested curricula online by using the “tools, expertise, capital, and global recruiting” that 2tor provides. Continue reading about 2tor…
A year or two ago I read an interesting book called Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big And Small
This is a guest post by Heather R. Huhman. Heather is the media relations manager at a national health care professional association and entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com.
High-tech companies seem to be beating the recession better than most, so if you’re interested in a public relations career, why not choose a firm that specializes in this sector? DPR Group, which has offices in Germantown, MD and Cary, NC, is a full-service agency that is approaching its 13th year in business. In North Carolina, the Triangle Business Journal recently ranked DPR Group as a Top 10 PR Firm for the fifth consecutive year. Although DPR Group doesn’t include a client list on their Web site, it does mention that their high-tech clients include “software firms, system integrators, electronics manufacturers, telecommunications companies, consulting firms, as well as a manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles and other high-tech devices.” Continue reading about DPR Group…
Today’s my birthday. I’m 25. If you want to get me a present, you can buy me something on my Amazon Wishlist
Today is the last day to enter our Maghound Your Way to a New Job contest. With so few entries so far, there’s an excellent chance that you’ll win a one-year subscription to an awesome new magazine subscription service (3 monthly magazines for free!).
I’m still on my Inc. 5000 kick, and today we’re looking at a company whose name immediately caught my eye. They’re called College Hunks Hauling Junk, and that’s exactly what they are. Omar Soliman wanted to make some money during the summer, so he borrowed his mom’s cargo van to start hauling away people’s junk. He then entered his business plan in the Rothschild Entrepreneurship Competition and won the $10,000 first prize. He realized that he had a business that he could grow, and now College Hunks Hauling Junk is doing $2.9 million in revenue. Guess that’s why Omar and his co-founder Nick were named (also by Inc.) as Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30. College Hunks Hauling Junk is headquartered in Tampa, FL, but through expansion and franchising they now operate in Anne Arundel, MD; Baltimore/Howard County, MD; Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Indianapolis, IN; Little Rock, AR; Los Angeles, CA; Louisville, KY; Orange County, CA; Orlando, FL; Phoenix, AZ; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Richmond, VA; San Francisco/San Jose, CA; Tampa Bay, FL; and Washington, DC Metro. Continue reading about College Hunks Hauling Junk…
This is a guest post by Heather R. Huhman. Heather is the media relations manager at a national health care professional association and entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com.
Did you always want to be in the broadcast business? You might want to think about making your start at zcomm, a Bethesda, MD based broadcast public relations firm. What kind of services do they offer? “Radio news releases and video news releases, TV and radio tours, radio and TV PSAs, radio promotions, client-sponsored syndicated radio, satellite radio features, corporate videos in English and Spanish, webcasts, online video and podcasts,” according to the zcomm Web site. I just love seeing small agencies with big-name client lists, and I guarantee there will be a number of zcomm’s clients that you’ll recognize—Hershey’s, American Express, Honda, and Oreos, just to name a few. And like more and more boutique firms today, zcomm was founded by a woman—former ABC Network news correspondent Risë Birnbaum. Continue reading about zcomm…
For most of the internships that we feature here, safety isn’t much of an issue. You may be concerned about internship security given the current economic conditions, but not many of the internships that we cover will put you in harms way—at least as long as you don’t tip back too far in your desk chair. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of dangerous jobs out there, and many of them are in the construction industry. It’s doubtful that the business of building things will ever be completely safe as long as humans are doing it, but CPWR is doing its best to improve safety in the construction industry. Their acronym used to stand for The Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, but now it seems that their full name is The Center for Construction Research and Training. They are a Silver Spring, Maryland based non-profit organization (despite their .com web address) that was created by the AFL-CIO in 1990, and they’ve become “an international leader in applied research, training, and service to the construction industry.” Continue reading about CPWR…
This is a guest post by Heather R. Huhman. Heather is the media relations manager at a national health care professional association. She is also the entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com, a career expert for the CAREEREALISM Twitter Advice Project, the job search expert for Campus Calm and author of the e-book “Gen Y Meets the Workforce: Launching Your Career During Economic Uncertainty.”
What do financial services, home/building and healthcare have in common? All three fields can expect good things to happen when they “converge” with IMRE, a full service digital, advertising, marketing and public relations agency in Baltimore, Maryland.
Let’s start with their financial services practice. Strategically expanded in July 2008 near the beginning of our country’s economic troubles, IMRE saw an opportunity for “financial services companies to gain market share.” Did you know you can buy wedding insurance from Travelers? IMRE won this client by proposing—no pun intended—to launch a campaign on Valentine’s Day about nuptial nightmares ranging from heart attacks to blackouts to hurricanes. They won the account and reached more than 74 million people with their messages. Like most public relations practitioners, I’m not a numbers person, but I do love weddings!
The “green” market is hot right now, so it makes sense for Arxx Corporation to be included in IMRE’s home & building practice. IMRE “moved Arxx away from a product message and positioned them as a longtime leader in energy-efficient solutions.” Despite being a midsized firm with only one office location, their client list in this practice is impressive—ranging from John Deere to The Home Depot to Target.
Their final practice area is healthcare, which is also my specialty. What I like most about healthcare PR is that you feel like you’re helping people live life to its fullest with every tactic you use to reach them. IMRE’s clients in this sector mostly are nonprofit organizations, including American Red Cross, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Shady Grove Fertility.
Interested in any one of those practice areas? IMRE is extremely open about who heads up each, providing their biographies, fun Q&A’s and e-mail addresses. Continue reading about IMRE…
Don’t get freaked out, but imagine an earthquake. Part of the building that you’re in collapses and you’re injured. There’s no way for you to get out, and there’s no safe way in for a rescue team. It’s too dangerous to send people in to get you out, but your injuries are life threatening. You need medical attention ASAP. Luckily, there’s a BEAR. No, not a trained wild animal (although that’s almost a good idea), but a “versatile, humanoid robot capable of lifting
and carrying humans and other items over 600 lbs.” This isn’t some fantasy. It’s a reality because of Vecna Technologies, a high-tech startup whose corporate mandate is “Better Technology, Better World.” They’re based in Greenbelt, MD, but they also have offices in Skyline, VA; Cambridge, MA; and Silicon Valley, CA. Robotics like those found in the BEAR is just one sliver of the things they’re doing to put technology to amazing uses. Continue reading about Vecna Technologies…
After I graduated from college, I decided to take a responsible approach to my personal finances (and I wish I had done it sooner, so all of you current students listen up). It took me a while to get my act together, but once I did I started investing in the stock market through Scottrade, an online discount brokerage company that is headquartered in St. Louis, MO. (And before I go on with more information about Scottrade’s jobs, I need to give Ramit Sethi’s book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Every 10 years our country does a census to collect demographic data about our populous to drive public policy decisions. It’s an extremely big deal, and it temporarily creates 1.4 million jobs (according to government figures). Sometimes temporary jobs like these can be an alternative to an internship, but we want you to get more meaningful work experience if possible. Luckily, the U.S. Census Bureau does a lot more than its once every ten years nationwide census. They are “the leading source of quality data about the nation’s people and economy,” so you’d be amazed by all of the things that they track. For instance, much of the economic data that you have been hearing about in the news lately – as in “Stocks plunge on weakened Monthly Retail Sales” – comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. If you’re fascinated by data or just love counting things, there aren’t many places that offer a more interesting work experience that the Census Bureau. Continue reading about U.S. Census Bureau…
Usually when I’m looking at the job and internship requirements to get a feel for what a company is looking for, I’m looking at things like education, experience, skills, and job functions. It’s not often that I’m thinking about security clearance, but at today’s company, SPARTA, it’s essential for most of their jobs and even some of their internships. (Now, don’t worry if you don’t already have Top Secret Clearance, they still might have jobs for you as long as you didn’t get into too much trouble during your college years or before.) The reason that there’s all this talk about clearance is that SPARTA is a company whose “core business areas include strategic defense and offense systems, tactical weapons systems, and space systems” and whose “major intelligence credentials include intelligence production, computer network operations, and information assurance.” Continue reading about SPARTA…
When I’m working during the day (or night), I like to have the tv on. I’m not usually actively watching – I just like having some background noise. With that said, I still prefer to have something decently entertaining on (otherwise I’ll start yelling at the tv about how bad the show is). Lately the Travel Channel has been putting out a strong effort. Shows like No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain and Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern are perfect for what I’m looking for in a tv show. There are also some cool new shows like Dhani Tackles the Globe and Man v. Food that look like something I might even want to watch when I’m not working. I never used to think much of the Travel Channel, so it’s cool to see that they’re really committing to improving their programming. Continue reading about Travel Channel…
How’s the relationship between your college or university and the town or city that it’s in? Let me guess. Not so hot. It always seems that students and “townies” don’t get along too well. Beyond that, there can also be situations like at Yale in New Haven, CT where the students are generally much wealthier than the people who live in the surrounding neighborhood. This just exacerbates the fundamental gap between the university and the community. National Student Partnerships is a non-profit organization that was started in New Haven by two Yale students who wanted to close this gap. They “designed a program where college student volunteers work one-on-one with community residents, coordinating access to employment opportunities and social services, including job training, housing, health care, child care, and transportation.” It’s a wonderful idea, and it’s working – look at the success stories. Continue reading about National Student Partnerships…
I never thought that moving to Chicago would prolong the baseball season for me. Living in the New York City area gave me 13 straight years of October baseball, and now that I’ve left, both Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium will remain empty for the rest of the fall before they eventually face demolition. It’s lucky for me that I’m now living in a new city that happens to have two teams that are still in it. I get a 14th straight year of local baseball in October! Playoff baseball is by far the most exciting baseball of the year, but it also means that season will soon be over. Those of you who are baseball fans know how long the winter seems when there is only hot stove chatter to keep you entertained while you wait for pitchers and catchers to report to Spring Training. Although it may seem ridiculously early, now is the time to start thinking about your Summer plans if you want to intern with Major League Baseball. It’s pretty obvious that there is a lot of demand for these internships, so you need to make sure that you’re on the ball and beat all of the deadlines. Continue reading about Major League Baseball…
John James Audubon loved painting birds. His seminal work, Birds of America, was a collection of 435 beautiful life-size prints. To this day, when you hear the name Audubon, you think of birds. Interestingly enough, John James Audubon had no direct involvement with the founding of the National Audubon Society. Audubon’s widow, Lucy, tutored a man named George Bird Grinnell and some of Audubon’s love of birds must have rubbed off, as Grinnell was one of the Audubon Society’s founders. To this day, the Audubon Society persists in its mission “to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.” The Audubon Society works to achieve this mission through a national network of community-based nature centers and chapters and scientific, educational, and advocacy programs. Continue reading about National Audubon Society…
