Finding the Right Internship

"Getting an internship is the first step in the process of transforming practice into performance"

by Nathan Kolmodin

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Nathan Kolmodin
University of Washington
MBA Class of 2009

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I can no longer count the number of times that I have been distracted from my ultimate goal for returning to school by the classes that I am taking. It is tremendously easy to get lost in academia by the amount of work that we are expected to complete, the level of commitment to a team, and sometimes just enjoying the material. However, I did not return to school, nor do many, to be a perpetual student. I returned to the classroom to improve my knowledge base so I could get a job. Getting an internship is the first step in the process of transforming practice into performance, and, in my circumstance, getting the much-needed assurance from an outside source that there is a credible chance of future employment.

At the beginning of the year the problem was not finding a direction. The problem that I faced was that there were too many directions to be found. Each path would ultimately lead to achieving more stability in the life of my family—the motivational force that keeps me from returning to the Army. All first-years learn that the first step in problem solving is identifying the underlying problem. I learned that my real problem was not that there were too many choices but that I did not know enough about the available choices.

Picking Up Pointers

In an attempt to remedy this small constraint I talked with second-years, received excellent guidance from alumni, was allowed to pick the minds of people doing what I want to do, and read numerous job descriptions. I slowly began my information gathering in August but was pursuing it with gusto by November. Through discussions I had and the reading I did, I developed a better idea of what was available to someone with my experience and realized more about what I wanted to do.

I started out the school year thinking that I was going to focus on marketing and strategy, but after a particularly memorable informational meeting at a local Web travel company I decided that I needed to look more into developing a finance background. Many people that I spoke with who are doing what I want to do have studied finance in depth and have held a finance-based role. I decided that it would be a good idea to take as many finance classes as I could while not completely giving up on marketing. I do not need to know enough finance to compete with the potential investment bankers—but I do need to increase my proficiency in the field.

Knowing that I need to take more finance classes was not the only thing to come from the dozen or more informational interviews. I learned that I was fascinated by the consulting and advisory industry. It was best described to me as where you learn to implement everything that you learn in business school for different companies in a range of industries. Ultimately, this meant to me that I would get more bang for my dollar—I would be able to use more of what I had paid to learn—and that I would have the opportunity to do a multitude of tasks.

Off to an Early Start

I began the year uninformed about the application schedule for internships. A good thing to remember as future applicants is that the most competitive internships begin recruiting the earliest and are usually in the fields of finance and consulting. If you want an internship with the McKinseys, Bains, or Lehmans of the world, you will need to be ready to apply by November. I began applying to positions in December and was able to avidly pursue the consulting companies that were at the top of my list, PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM Consulting (IBM) as well as Deloitte, but I would strongly suggest that you search out application deadlines as soon as possible.