Emily Kamelhar
2016
Majors:
Food Marketing
Minor(s):
Justice and Ethics in the Law
Internship/Job Position:
Account Development FSOP Intern
Internship/Job Company:
Coca-Cola Refreshments
What are your day to day job responsibilities like/what does a normal day look like?
Usually either in the morning or in the afternoon, you work in the print shop briefly with the graphic designers. So mostly you’re doing physical things, like the cutting and mounting of publicity. Then, for the majority of the day we would go out with a Sales Representative into Philadelphia. They would take us on their route, and we would visit different customers and shadow what they were doing. They also bought us lunch every day at their customers’ places, so we’d go to places that sell Coca-Cola and eat lunch there.
How did you land your current position?
I saw the position on SJUcareers, so I applied through the website and then there was an additional online application that I had to fill out, but it was just your basic information, like your resume and experiences. Then I had a half hour on-campus interview with two people from Coca-Cola.
What did you find most challenging in your position?
I think just the fact that I’d never been exposed to sales before since I’m a food marketing major. Also, I wasn’t aware of how much sales this internship was going to be going into the job because it was titled ‘marketing internship,’ so I wasn’t really prepared for it. Working with the sales people and learning their job was all very new. Like, I knew the basics behind marketing and even behind the graphic design, but I had never been exposed to sales before so that was a lot of learning, a lot of numbers.
What is some advice that you would give to students who are about to do their first internship?
I’d say take it seriously, definitely learn as much as you can because it gives you such a step up. If you were to take either that job or a similar job upon graduation, you already know what you’re doing which is such an advantage over people who maybe don’t do an internship or don’t take it seriously because you really are learning real life skills. It’s an inside look.