One Day, One Internship » Michigan

Organic

Willy Franzen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:16:28 +0000

I hope the title of today’s post didn’t make you hungry, because we’re not talking about internships in organic food. Organic is a San Francisco based interactive marketing agency with a brand that has gained a lot of keyword competition over the past 16 years. Yes, people were eating organic back in 1994, but the word wasn’t nearly as common as it is today. Doing research on Organic is tough because the organic search results (excuse my SEO pun) have all kinds of other stuff in them (at least they own Organic.com). Either Google needs to get inside my head to discern my intent, or Organic is going to have to hope that artificial packaged, processed foods go back in vogue. Ok, enough of my ripping on their name—Organic was ranked by AdWeek as the #1 interactive agency in 2007. That fits in perfectly with my impression of Organic from browsing their website and looking at their work. In fact, I’m blown away by how good Organic’s website is. It’s easy to use, it’s full of information, and it’s gorgeously designed. Their corporate mantra is “Exceptional Experience,” and they certainly live up to it.

Live Organic

I’ve found that interactive agencies sometimes go too far with their websites. They get too fancy and end up making an unusable piece of garbage. The way Organic has built their website shows that they’re good at what they do. Beyond San Francisco Organic also has locations in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Toronto. The company’s clients include Bank of America, Jeep, Nike, Guitar Center, and plenty more. I could tell you more about Organic, but you’re much better off visiting their website, because it does a great job of telling their story. Organic even does a great job with their Careers site—they even make a usually crappy applicant tracking system look good. The interesting thing about Organic is that most of their 40 job openings are at pretty Senior levels, but they do have a number of postings (one for each location) for their paid Summer internship program called “The Farm.” There are opportunities to work in areas like Delivery / Project Management, Creative, Technology, Strategy, Media and Marketing Intelligence, and the whole program looks awesome. They only want rising college seniors and recent grads, but if you fit the bill, go ahead and apply online.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you think of Organic’s name?

TechSmith

Willy Franzen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:58:30 +0000

One of the more effective ways that I’ve found to teach online internship search tactics is to use screencasting. I do a number of screencasts in Found Your Career, and they seem to work really well when walking people through how to use sites like Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook for job search. TechSmith is an Okemos, MI based company that is “the world’s #1 provider of screen capture and screen recording software for the individual and professional user.” They’ve been in the business since 1987—which is an insanely long time for a company in their industry, and they’ve actually been doing screen capture for most of that time. I’ve never used any of their products, but I’ve heard from a number of people who rave about Camtasia, TechSmith’s main screen recording software.

ScreenCast Your Way to a New Job

Although Michigan got some bad news last night with the Tigers’ loss, you have to like seeing tech companies that are doing their best to revitalize the state’s economy. TechSmith is doing just that. Although they may appear to be a small software company, they actually have about 200 employees and are hiring more. In fact, they even do on campus recruiting at a few select schools. Their internships offerings show a nice mix of technical and non-technical positions. TechSmith currently has paid internships posted in Customer Engagement, Product Management, Software Engineering, and Web Development. They go into a lot of detail about what they’re looking for, so read the internship descriptions carefully. You can apply online; however, if I were applying for an internship at TechSmith, I’d probably find a way to get them to watch a screencast of why they should hire me. That’s just me, though.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you ever used TechSmith’s software?

College Hunks Hauling Junk

Willy Franzen — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:54:37 +0000

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.

Are You Hunky Enough?

College Hunks Hauling Junk certainly has a provocative name, but that’s part of their success. Finding someone to haul away your junk isn’t that hard, but it’s really easy to go with the brand you recognize. College Hunks Hauling Junk is all about grabbing attention so that they’re the company that you choose when you need to get rid of some junk. It doesn’t hurt that they can call themselves green, as they recycle 60% of the junk that they collect. Now, College Hunks Hauling Junk obviously has plenty of jobs available. If you want to get in the business of hauling junk to pay your way through college, they can help, but they’re also a growing company with growing needs. They have a bunch of corporate job postings that consist solely of titles, and this includes a Marketing Intern position. You can apply here, although I don’t know if the position is paid or not.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you used College Hunks Hauling Junk?

Alter Ego Management

Willy Franzen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:01:06 +0000

When I was in high school, I had a number of friends who seemed pretty serious about pursing careers in the music industry. There was one problem though… they weren’t the most musically talented individuals. Some of them played music – although not that well – and some others just listened and went to concerts. They were passionate about music, but landing a career in the music industry isn’t very easy when you don’t make music. My friends moved on from their musical aspirations, but if you’re still committed to working in the industry, you might want to think about working in management. To do that, you’re going to need some serious internship experience. One place that you can get that is Alter Ego Management, a Detroit based management and booking agency that was founded “to serve both the artists represented and the fans of those artists.”

Internships for Your Alter Ego

Alter Ego’s lineup includes both experienced artists and new up and comers in genres ranging from “hip hop to rock, jazz to funk, techno to even video.” They focus on the business side of the music, so they handle everything from bookings to managing projects – they even do video production, licensing, and contract negotiation. They’re also looking for Summer interns as of a week ago. The internships are unpaid, but extremely flexible and focus on the business of music (no music production internships). They specifically want interns who are passionate about working on artist/project management and artist relations. They’ve done a really nice job of detailing the internship on their site, so I recommend that you check it out. They also want you to show some initiative by figuring out whom to apply to on your own, so I’m not going to ruin it for them by posting the e-mail address.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Are you a fan of any of Alter Ego’s acts?

Compendia Bioscience

Willy Franzen — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:51:45 +0000

It’s not big surprise that jobs are constantly in the news these days. That’s part of the reason Jason Seiden and I launched our course. People need help finding and landing jobs. People in the news have picked up on the need, and now it’s newsworthy if a company is hiring. Take this article from mlive.com’s Michigan Business Innovation Blog – it’s about who’s hiring in Ann Arbor. That’s obviously of interest to me, since so many of you are at both University of Michigan and Michigan State (as well as other great Michigan schools). There were some pretty interesting names on that list, and one that stood out to me was Compendia Bioscience. They’re Biotech meets Software, they’re also part of the future of Michigan, and they’re offering internships

Curing Cancer

There are a lot of people in this world whose lives have been ravaged by cancer. In turn, there are a lot of people who have made it their life goals to cure cancer. Although we haven’t come up with an outright cure yet, it’s amazing how much progress we’ve made in treating many types of cancer. When I think about curing cancer, I always think about medical doctors. That’s shortsighted of me, because there are all kind of people working on beating cancer that haven’t been to medical school. That’s what Compendia Bioscience is all about. Their mission is to “Harness the global collection of genomic data to change the practice of medicine.” Yes, they have MDs on their staff, but they’re using the power of software to help those on the frontlines of oncology. It’s kind of hard to believe that with the same skillset you could intern at a Web 2.0 startup that allows you turn your friends into virtual zombies or you could be working towards a cure for cancer. Don’t get me wrong, I love Web 2.0 startups, but sometimes you need to aim for a higher calling. Right now Compendia is looking for interns. They don’t specify what kind of interns they’re looking for, but a look at their job postings in Bioinformatics Analytics, Project Management, and Software Development might give you an idea of what an internship with them might entail. To apply for an internship, send a cover letter and resume to careers2009@compendiabio.com with “Internship” in the subject line. There’s no mention of whether these internships are paid or not, but in a field like this they usually are. Here’s a little more information from Compendia’s MPowered Entrepreneurship Fair profile.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you think about Compendia Bioscience?

The Henry Ford

Willy Franzen — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:14:56 +0000

Henry Ford was one of the most ingenious men to grace our country’s history. “Fordism,” his philosophy of bringing inexpensive automobiles to the masses through cost cutting and the assembly line has truly changed the face of world history. It’s amazing to think that ideas that we now take for granted were so revolutionary back then. You can find plenty more on Henry Ford on Wikipedia, but what about The Henry Ford. It’s kind of an odd name for what it is, but it’s a place in Dearborn, MI that includes historic Greenfield Village, the Henry Ford Museum, the Ford Rouge Factory Tour, the Benson Ford Research Center, and The Henry Ford IMAX Theater. It’s something between a museum and an educational center. It’s a non-profit organization, but that doesn’t really tell us much about what it is. I guess that’s why they call it The Henry Ford.

The Internships

The Henry Ford may sound like a fun place to go on a field trip, but it’s also a place where some serious research gets done. Unlike many museums that have their interns work on the operations, membership, or development side, The Henry Ford’s internships seem to center around research and history. They have a Historical Resources Internship Program for undergraduates and graduates, a Clark Travel-to-Collections Research Grant Program that supports “research using the automotive history collections of The Henry Ford,” and a Simmons Graduate Internship Program for “graduate students pursuing careers in museums, historical agencies, conservation labs or related fields.” The application instructions vary depending on the internship, but they have Summer opportunities available with a March application deadline. The internship descriptions are pretty in-depth, so check out The Henry Ford’s Internships page for all of the details.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you ever been to The Henry Ford?

Moosejaw

Willy Franzen — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:59:41 +0000

Now that we’re done with our end of ’08 recapping (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 1 of non-profits, Part 2 of non-profits, Part 3 of non-profits, and Part 4 of non-profits), we can return to telling you about cool new companies that are looking for interns. Today’s company definitely qualifies as cool. You may have never heard of Moosejaw, but the outdoor apparel manufacturer’s customer base is insanely loyal. They sell via retail, catalog, and online, and Every day they get rave reviews and customer photo submissions. Maybe it’s because Moosejaw has really good looking models, or maybe it’s the fact that Moosejaw offers homework help and dating advice to their customers. We’re not really sure what it is, but they’ve got their niche figured out. We waited a long time to write about entry level jobs at Moosejaw, and we’ve had to wait 9 months longer for them to post internships, but they finally have.

Not in Saskatchewan

If you’ve ever searched Google for internships at Moosejaw, your query might have returned internships in a Canadian town called Moosejaw in Saskatchewan. Finally, you’ll be able to find what you really want! The Moosejaw Jobs page says they’re currently looking to hire Marketing Interns at their Madison Hills, MI headquarters. It may only be one internship, but there’s also the opportunity to join the ranks of their extremely good looking models. It’s not an internship, but it might even be better. Actually, the internship looks way better – just look at the job description. It includes gems like “Must know the lyrics to Ice Cube’s ‘It Was A Good Day’” and “I just thought this section should have one more bullet point.” The internship is unpaid, but I’m sure you can score some free or discounted Moosejaw gear while you’re there. They want someone who can work 15-20 hours per week, and they’re flexible on hours. If this sounds good to you, make sure that you follow the application instructions carefully. Here they are: “Email your resume and portfolio to jobs@moosejaw.com. Please use job code NRETNI which is intern spelled backwards. You can also use HI, as in hello, because nretni is a little difficult.” Moosejaw looks like an awesome place to intern, so get on it.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

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Enliven Software

Willy Franzen — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:56:45 +0000

You may have noticed that we occasionally run sponsored posts from companies who want to draw more attention to their internships. Right now, we’re more focused on telling you about other exciting things like the job search training course that we’re working on, our partnership with VisualCV to help you build a killer online resume, and our soon to be announced contest where we’re giving away $6,000+ in HP and Microsoft products. When we do run sponsored posts, it’s always a pain in the butt to get paid. We have to fill out all kinds of forms and jump through lots of hoops to get a check sent. It can be quite annoying. Enliven Software is a startup based out of East Lansing, Michigan that makes the billing process a lot easier for small and medium sized companies. They’re aiming to be the “leading provider of secure, paperless electronic invoicing, online payables and electronic payment solutions.” Our Accounting function isn’t quite advanced enough to need their software yet, but I hope one day that I’ll be able to do all of my invoicing, billing, and getting paid online.

Enliven Your Career

Not to take anything away from what Enliven does, but one of the most exciting things about Enliven Software is their location. They’re based in East Lansing, Michigan, not too far from Michigan State University. We have a ton of readers from MSU, so we’re happy to bring them something local for once. We’re also happy to be featuring a company that is the future of Michigan’s economy. It’s painfully obvious that the auto industry still has a lot of change coming, and tech startups like Enliven Software hold a lot of potential for taking Michigan in a new direction. They’re already doing their best to bring more jobs to the state, and they’re also creating plenty of jobs themselves.

Right now Enliven Software’s Jobs page doesn’t show any internship listings, but I came across one through Twitter for an Entrepreneurial Operations Assistant Intern. Enliven needs someone to help with processing online transactions on behalf of customers, assisting with data entry and analysis, providing online support of customers, assisting in payment processing, and providing reporting and analytics. These tasks sound a little boring, but you can be sure that you’ll also get an up close look at what it takes to run a startup. They say that you’ll come out of this internship having learned “knowledge of how a startup business operates and what it takes to maintain and grow a business, how to make efficient use of scarce resources and create an effective outcome, the ability to manage several tasks simultaneously while maintaining high attention to detail.” If you’re a budding Michigan entrepreneur, then you need to apply for this paid internships by sending a cover letter and resume to careers@enlivensoftware.com

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Where do you think Michigan’s economy is headed?

Major League Baseball

Willy Franzen — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:23:11 +0000

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.

Take Me Out to an Internship

As far as we can tell, there are 3 types of internships that you can get in Major League Baseball, and, unfortunately, none of them are directly with the league. There are internships with MLB.com, Journalism internships with MLB.com, and internships with specific MLB teams. Here’s a rundown of the three types of internships and how you can apply for them.

MLB.com Internships

MLB.com is part of MLB Advanced Media, which is a separate arm of Major League Baseball. They run all 30 team websites and allegedly have editorial independence from the league. Their focus is entirely on multimedia and production, but they offer quite a variety of internships. You can intern with MLB.com in Finance, Marketing, Club Marketing, E-Commerce, Legal, Technology, Sponsorship, Design, and Public Relations. These internships are located in New York City, are paid $12.50 an hour, and last 8 to 10 weeks. MLB.com is currently recruiting for the Summer of 2009, and you can apply by sending a cover letter and resume to Interns2009@mlb.com.

MLB.com Journalism Internships

The second grouping of internships is also with MLB.com, but they separate it out from their regular internship program. These internships are for “aspiring sportswriters” who want to spend the Summer of ’09 writing about baseball. 33 interns will be selected (one for each team, and three total to cover the Minor Leagues) and will be assigned to “work closely with a site reporter to give visitors to a team’s Web site all the information they need to follow the team from Opening Day to season’s end.” You can state a preference for which Major League city that you’d like to be assigned to, but your chances are much better to be selected if you state no preference. Interns are expected to spend at least 10 weeks in the program, and the pay is $500 per week and housing/transportation is not provided. The application deadline is November 30th, and the application is somewhat complex, so you’ll need the time to get things together.

There will also be a small number of copy editor/producer internships available. The application process is the same.

To apply:

Applicants should submit a resume, 5 to 10 published articles (no columns should be included), a list of references and a 750-word essay on why MLB.com should pick you. Please use the essay as a way of showing your creativity as a writer; in short, it should be more than a simple cover letter.

Please mail all internship applications to:

Bill Hill
Assistant Managing Editor/MLB.com
Attn: Internship Application
14825 N. 97th Place
Scottsdale, AZ 85260

That’s right, you need to mail, not e-mail, your application. If you do have questions about these MLB Journalism internships, you can contact Bill Hill at bill.hill@MLB.com. Make sure that you put the words “Internship Info” in the subject line to get through his spam filter.

Internships with MLB Teams

Finally, you can search for internships with individual MLB teams from a different site. This is where Major League Baseball follows what other major sports leagues do and uses TeamWorkOnline to post their internships. Right now there are listings with the Houston Astros, Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins, Oakland Athletics, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and San Diego Padres, but this will probably change over time, as different teams have different hiring schedules. If you’re waiting to hear about internships with a specific team, you can sign up for Internship Notification e-mails or you can subscribe to the MLB Internship RSS Feed. There is an online application process for internships with teams, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to do.

This is all that we can find about interning in Major League Baseball, but we think that there must be some way to intern directly with the league. If anybody has leads on opportunities like these, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Who do you think is going to win the World Series?

Arena Football League

Willy Franzen — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:00:25 +0000

How do you make any sport better? Put the word “arena” in front of it! Arena Soccer, arena badminton, arena fishing, arena skydiving… you get the idea. Putting “arena” in front of a sport’s name is only second to putting “extreme” in front of it. Well one of the sports that actually works (not necessarily better) in an arena is football. The Arena Football League is exciting to watch and offers an option for the football junkies who are bored to tears in the offseason. Getting an internship in sports can be tough, and getting an internship with a team in a major sports league can be near impossible. Sometimes looking to the secondary leagues (sorry AFL) can offer great alternatives.

Arena Internship Hunting

If you need an introduction to the Arena Football League, the Wikipedia page is probably a good place to start. You can also check out ArenaBowl.com. The Arena Football League is yet another sports league that uses TeamWork Online to manage its internship postings. We like the way TeamWork Online does things, so it should be pretty easy for you to get the scoop on internships with a variety of Arena Football League Teams.

One nice feature of searching for internships with secondary sports league teams is that they often offer locations beyond the major cities that have NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL franchises. This means that you’re more likely to be able to have a fantastic internship in professional sports while living at home with your parents (hey, it’s free). The Arena Football League’s teams offers internships in a variety of fields, and many of them are still available for this fall.

Current internship opportunities with AFL Teams include: Ticket Sales Intern (Fall 2008) – Grand Rapids Rampage (Grand Rapids, MI), Ticket Sales Intern (Winter 2008-09) – Grand Rapids Rampage (Grand Rapids, MI), Game Operations Intern (Fall 2008) – Grand Rapids Rampage (Grand Rapids, MI), Game Operations Intern (Winter 2008-09) – Grand Rapids Rampage (Grand Rapids, MI), Internship Opportunities (Fall 2008) – af2 League Office (Chicago, IL), Storm Football Operations Intern (Spring 2009) – Tampa Bay Storm (Tampa, FL), Storm Football Operations Intern (Fall 2008) – Tampa Bay Storm (Tampa, FL), Player Personnel/Football Operations Internship – San Jose SaberCats (San Jose, CA), Sales and Marketing Internship (Fall 2008) – Texas Copperheads (Houston, TX), Sales & Promotion Internship Opportunities (Fall 2008) – Dallas Desperados (Dallas, TX), and Ticket Sales & Services Intern – Cleveland Gladiators (Cleveland, OH).

If you don’t see anything that jumps out at you, or your local teams aren’t offering internships right now, you can sign up for the AFL’s internship notifications. Applying online through the TeamWork Online site is easy, so start looking over the internships with Arena Football League Teams and see if any interest you.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Are you an Arena Football fan?

Armstrong White

Willy Franzen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:49:25 +0000

I just found out that my car is on its last legs. It’s a ’97 Ford Explorer, and I’ve loved it since I bought it as a senior in high school in 2001. These days American car manufacturers have a pretty weak reputation with consumers, but I was a happy customer. Unfortunately the decline in reputation has been part of the demise of the Big Three, and it’s seriously hurt the entire Michigan economy. That’s why you see these commercials with Jeff Daniels that try to sell businesses on a Michigan location. Armstrong White is exactly the type of company that is going to bring jobs back to Michigan. They have built a business in Bloomfield Hills, MI that directly serves the auto industry, but is also high tech and extremely innovative. No, they haven’t developed some sort of alternative energy technology. They specialize “in rendering reality out of automotive 2D and 3D assets and digital landscapes for print, broadcast and interactive mediums.”

When You Were a Kid Did You Draw Cars All Day?

If you were one of those kids who was always drawing cars, then interning at Armstrong White would be a perfect thing for you to do this summer. They take technical drawings and renderings from the automotive manufacturers whom they work with and turn them into lifelike images and videos. They have a lot of work displayed on their home page, so take a look at that to get a better sense of exactly what Armstrong White is all about. The work is so impressive that we couldn’t pick just a few to link to, you need to look at their entire portfolio.

Although most of what Armstrong White does is extremely artistic and technical (read: way over our heads), there’s not much more that we can say to explain their business. We do recommend that you take a look at this interview with Eric Bruneau, who is an Executive Vice President / Creative Director at Armstrong White as well as a four time Academy Award nominee. You might also want to take a look at Armstrong White’s YouTube channel.

Armstrong White is looking for a Summer Intern in 3D Animation. The internship covers all facets of 3D animation and should offer an amazing experience for the right student. If you want to get a sense of what kinds of people work for Armstrong White, you can check out their employee profiles, which include pictures and some biographical data about their employees. Some of their interns are featured, so you should definitely take a look! In fact, some of the interns appear to be working in more general areas, so there may the possibility to intern at Armstrong White even if you don’t have a background in CGI. That’s something that you’ll have to cold call about though.

To apply for a job at Armstrong White, you’re going to need to include a cover letter, resume, and portfolio or reel. You can send that (and any other inquiries) to jobs@armstrong-white.com or

Armstrong White
ATTN: Mark DeRidder
800 W. Long Lake Rd. #100
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you like the most in Armstrong White’s portfolio? Tell us in the comments.