Earlier this year, at a White House meeting with the president, Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, introduced a moonshot goal of creating five million apprenticeships in the next five years.
I believe that one of the most effective methods of growing your company’s talent pool is through a formal college internship recruitment process. I worked as an intern at a tech company during my graduate studies, which led to my first full-time job as an electrical engineer. Salesforce has developed an incredible pipeline of talent based on our fantastic college undergraduate and graduate internship recruitment programs.
I have had the good fortune to meet and work with several bright student interns at Salesforce. My most recent interaction was with Rob Desisto Jr., a junior at New York University, pursuing a degree in political science, a minor in History, and a joint minor in Mathematics & Computer Science from the College of the Arts and Sciences
Rob began his internship at Salesforce in 2016. Rob was tasked to create reports targeting Healthcare and Life Sciences industries at regional and national levels. Rob proactively developed a rich set of reports that uniquely identified future customer needs. In addition to creating documents, reports, and dashboards used by managers across his team's coverage area, Rob garnered the rare Trailhead Ranger status by completing over 100 internal and external Salesforce Trailhead badge courses. You can follow Rob on Twitter at @robdesistojr.
Rob Desisto Jr. - A Trailblazer Intern at Salesforce
I asked Rob to share his insights on being a successful intern at Salesforce. I believe Rob’s unique perspective and working experience can be a blueprint for future interns at Salesforce or any other company. Below, you will find Rob’s advice on how to thrive at at tech company without having a technology degree or experience - take it away Rob:
10 Lessons on How College students can thrive at at tech company without having a tech degree or background, by Rob Desisto Jr.:
One of the most common topics of conversation at any university in the United States is “where are you going to be working at over the summer?” Not only is the question an ice-breaker between two complete strangers, but it is a way to understand what the individual’s background and career plan. A junior interning in the financial industry, for example, will likely be looking for a starting-level job at a bank coming out of college.
Often times, though, students have desires and aspirations for a job in an industry that isn’t closely aligned with their degree. Pursuing their respective dream jobs can often appear as a daunting task, because of a perceived non-alignment between their degree and the requirements they believe they need to have for a job in the industry. It is possible, however, for someone to get into an industry without following a traditional career path. I have been an intern at Salesforce for three summers now, and I have neither a Business nor Technology undergraduate track of study. What follows are the 10 tips to how you can do what I did—thrive at a company with no formal background or education in that company’s industry.
1. DIVERSIFY YOURSELF AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE
Starting the list is perhaps the most important concept: diversification. You want to seem as multi-faceted as possible to potential employers when applying to a job to work at their company. A resume filled with a variety of content is attractive to employers of any industry because it shows an individual who can think in multiple ways. To say that you have written a blog about sports, as well as stating your proficiencies in Microsoft Excel and previous experience working at a summer camp for children illustrate the following: passion for writing, adequacy in common workplace applications, and ability to interact well with others. Individuals need to know how to position their skills this way to potential employers so as to seem as marketable as possible.
2. BE PASSIONATE FROM THE FIRST INTERACTION
When going through the hiring process, the trait that makes Individual A stand out from similarly-qualified Individual B is passion and desire to be a contributing part of a company’s goal or mission. Enthusiasm towards a company’s goal—both during the hiring process and while employed—is tantamount to becoming acclimated into the company’s ecosystem and thriving with fellow employees. It helps differentiate an individual and indicates to hiring managers and employees at the company that they are the right fit to contribute.
3. UTILIZE TECHNOLOGY TO EXPLORE AND LEARN
The beauty about living in the 21st Century is that it is easy to gain access to information. Companies and industries have created resources for employees and customers to gain knowledge about their product and workplace. Salesforce’s tool that I utilize is called Trailhead, where I complete trails and modules that teach a certain concept about Salesforce or provide information on a segment of the company. For any company, resources are available on websites and through podcasts that help educate on an industry and a company’s role within it. Utilizing these resources is the mechanism one can use to grow and expand knowledge about the company—knowledge that will help the individual contribute more and more as their time with the organization lengthens.
4. DON’T BE AFRAID TO DO THE UNCOMFORTABLE
An internship is not about staying complacent with things you already know how to do; it’s tackling tasks you don’t know how to do. Coming to a tech company with no previous tech experience, I had to do tasks and complete assignments that were well outside my comfort zone. Gone were the days of writing essays and assignments for a teacher that had set out a guideline of what to write about. In its place were tasks fixated on solving problems and reaching solutions, ones that I would have to discover without a clear-cut blueprint. Going about these tasks head-on is key to succeeding. The more open-minded you are about the things that you can complete, the more successful you will be and the more value you will provide.
5. UTILIZE THE TOOL OF REVERSE MENTORING
When you become part of a company at a young age, you will be under people that not only are older but appear to have greater knowledge than you. It is important to not let this influence your mindset going into the role you have. The mindset you have to possess is one that is conducive to “reverse mentoring”. You need to be able to provide value from day one to people more senior than you. Knowing your skills and strong suits is a good starting spot. You take these attributes and what you do best, and showcase it to mentors in your organization. It enables you to generate confidence in how you have value, and it gives people in your organization a fresh perspective and information on many of the topic areas they may be weak in.
6. REACH OUT WHEN IN NEED
The most nerve-wracking part of any internship is getting a task and realizing that you aren’t going to be able to complete it without engaging others. As a non-tech employee at a tech company, I experienced this often. I wouldn’t know how to properly generate a report or what some sort of terminology that my manager used in a presentation meant. I learned that reaching out to the resources in the company would be a huge lifesaver for me. Salesforce has a forum-like space called Chatter that employees can use to ask questions to groups and post common problems they have. I utilized this tool often. If your company has something like this, take advantage of it. It’s in place to not only help you, but provide visibility of answers to common problems others may have. If your organization doesn’t have a resource like this, reach out to your fellow employees, and do it in a polite and respectful manner. They’ve been in the same situation as you have, and are more than willing to help.
7. GET FEEDBACK AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
It’s important to get feedback from your manager and higher ups on the job you’re doing—especially if you haven’t had previous experience with the company or the industry in general. There were many points during my first year that I had to double-check and make sure I was telling the correct story that I needed to with a document or a report. It was important to use my manager and other sets of eyes as references so I didn’t do unnecessary work. Though asking may seem like you’re not “getting” the material and therefore were unqualified for the position, it actually reflects well because of how it shows one’s diligence and thoroughness when completing a task.
8. DON’T LIMIT YOURSELF TO A TITLE
If you get into a company that’s your reach, like I did with mine, a complacency effect can set in. Knowing that one got the role they wanted, people tend to take the metaphorical “foot off the gas” and do things to ensure that they are doing their job well. Don’t limit yourself to the title that you possess. It’s important to branch out from the tasks your manager assigns and expand your repertoire of skills. You can start a blog about your experience with the company, or reach out to other groups and see if there are projects you can contribute to. This helps establish name recognition across the organization as well.
9. TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING OUTSIDE THE WORKPLACE
A common category overlooked during an internship is personal health. Young interns think working tremendous hours churning out content after content is the key. It’s really about turning in quality content, which is only achievable through proper rest, diet, and exercise—all the things that help the human body perform at its best capacity. Despite never being a part of the industry I currently work in, I made sure to take rest and keep up the nutrition I needed to be successful as opposed to overloading myself with knowledge all at once. This enabled me to learn faster at work, come to meetings with more energy, and be better prepared to handle the workload because of how my body was ready to.
10 DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF
One of the issues I still struggle with to this day is looking around and seeing what my peers are doing. It’s not a lack of self-confidence-type of worry, but more of an infatuation with their career paths and trying to model what I’m doing based off of the successful friends I have. It’s important to recognize that you’re an individual. You control, ultimately, where you want to end up. Gaining an internship and being successful wherever you want to work is possible. I did it at a tech company with no tech background whatsoever. The key is not giving up on a goal. Instead of comparing yourself to another student, find the things that are holding you back from achieving the job you want and fix them. Any position is attainable and possible to succeed at. It’s just a matter of focusing on yourself and not your peers.
Thank you Rob for the sage advice. As a former intern myself, I find Rob’s 10 suggestions to be incredibly insightful and relevant for college interns looking to find work experience in today’s digital enabled - mobile, social and data-driven - workplace. As our tech community works hard towards 5 million new apprenticeships in the next five years, we must find ways to learn from our best and brightest young talent, proactively sharing their lessons learned to accelerate and sustain momentum. You can connect with Rob and learn more about being a successful intern, via email at: rpd281@nyu.edu.