College Students: Be Aware of Opportunities that Present Themselves!

During your college years, getting internship experience will be valuable for getting an entry level position when you graduate. Being able to get enough professional experience through your internships will help boost your resume and give employers a reason to bring you in for an interview.

Whenever you are interning for a company or even working part time, be aware of other opportunities to explore and take advantage of. These opportunities may be out of the ordinary for you, however, the experience can lead to more possibilities down the road. These experiences can help pave the path for more career options and give you more opportunities.

For example, during my senior year of college, one of the best opportunities I took advantage of happened when I was hired in as a part-time producer at a local radio station. My job description was to help run the shows the station aired on Saturday morning but another opportunity presented itself a week after I had been hired.

While doing some training in the main studio during my first week there, the sales manager walked in with a copy of my resume and asked to see me in his office afterwards. I'll admit I was a little baffled as to why this sales manager wanted to talk to someone whose job was to push the buttons on the board, screen phone calls, air the commercials and keep the station on the air. I couldn't quite see the fit at first but eventually found out.

When I went into his office, the sales manager brought out a copy of my resume and asked me about some of the other internships I had done. He saw that I had done a sales internship at another station and a marketing/promotions internship at another. The Program Director (who hired me as a part-time producer) had told him I was really personable during the interview and that caught his attention.

After a few minutes, the sales manager asked me a question I didn't quite expect:

"Jeff, have you ever thought about learning how to do sales?"

I mentioned I had briefly and agreed to come in an extra day or two a week to learn under his wing. This sales manager taught me how to cold call, handle objections, listen to the customer and several other skills that paid off later on. There was a bit of a learning curve involved with this transition but this experience eventually paved the way for my first job out of college and opened up more doors and opportunities after that.

Had I not taken advantage of this opportunity to learn sales, I would not have had more options available to me after college and beyond that. Taking a couple days a week from someone who was willing to teach me how to do sales helped open other career opportunities for me and find my career path. This experience helped open up more opportunities for me and it was worth taking extra time to learn.

If another opportunity presents itself, take to explore it and let it grow. You never know where it might take you in the end.