What did you do?

Within P&G Professional I was asked to perform a market assessment for Hand Soap, Paper, Coffee and Laundry in development of a “How to Win” strategy. My project was primarily research based and involved a lot of competitive intelligence work. From this data I was able to compile recommendations for P&G Professional for continued market penetration.
- Elizabeth Meyer

There were two main projects for my summer internship -
1: Cutting costs through infrastructure cost reduction in six of Global Business Services’ service lines by looking at communication services and end user computing services. This project involved learning how to carefully and tactfully communicate with higher-up employees about communication costs, as well as learning about many different IT services in P&G.

2: Recommending valuation strategies for interactive marketing campaign initiatives. I made a recommendation for one initiative and because my coworker liked my analysis and the recommendation, I was given the opportunity to make recommendations for three more initiatives. This project involved a lot of top-level thinking and analysis, as this was an area about which many employees were confused.
- Nicole Alex

What did you learn?

From my summer internship with P&G I learned that feedback is a gift. Coming into the job I felt confident in my ability to deliver results, but it was not until the first meeting with my manager that I learned how valuable feedback was in the workplace. Seeking out feedback from my co-workers really helped me to fine-tune my final presentation and gain confidence in the work that I had completed over the course of my internship.
- Elizabeth Meyer

I learned the value of listening skills. Listening skills were crucial to my internship success whether it was by asking the right questions and listening to the answers while taking good notes or listening to specific instructions or desires from superiors and coworkers. Listening skills show a person’s intelligence and capacity to learn.
- Nicole Alex

What advice can you give others?

My advice to Fisher students regarding internships is this: seek out companies that you admire. Do not seek out internships only to boost your resume. Many employers use their internship program as a 3 three month interview for full-time positions. Therefore your experience will be enhanced if you truly envision yourself working for the company in the long-run.
- Elizabeth Meyer

If you know what you want in terms of a company or internship, go after it 100% and do not let anyone get in your way. Do your homework on a company. If you know exactly why you want to work for a company, make sure you show your enthusiasm for it and that you researched the company by providing snapshots in your interview of what you know about the company. If you don’t know what you want in a company or internship, I highly recommend researching a broad basis of companies by going online to their websites, reading business magazines, and really talking with employees at the Fisher Career Fairs. Look at as many companies as possible and determine which qualities you like or dislike so that you can describe and go after your perfect company/internship.
- Nicole Alex