Good morning. Finals and term paper deadlines are right around the corner, and somehow I still don’t know who sits next to me in MKTG 680. I guess we’ll never know. On the bright side, we’ve got another intern story to share. Find out how Adaeze got a position in big tech, what she did in that role, and what she thinks you should do to score an internship too.

—Sean Sebers

In today's edition:

🏆 What earned her the role?

📊 What she does

📈 Give us more!

Adaeze Noble

Sales & Marketing Intern

Adaeze Noble recently completed an internship with Western Digital as a sales and marketing intern. Western Digital is a computer hard disk drive manufacturer and data storage company. So, what on earth does that mean? Good question. Essentially, they provide important computer and tech hardware for companies that need more digital real estate. They’re considered a giant in their industry, competing against other recognizable names such as Toshiba, Intel, and Samsung Electronics.

Adaeze is also a senior at UC Berkeley pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science and media studies. She is expected to graduate in the spring 2023 semester.

What earned her the role?

In February of 2022, an external recruiter from a company called Jopwell reached out to Adaeze via LinkedIn. Jopwell is a company that focuses on helping students of color earn internships in business, tech, media, and other industries.

• External recruiters are hired by companies to find talent for specific roles. In this case, Western Digital hired this recruiter from Jopwell to look for intern candidates.

Additionally, Adaeze’s Jopwell recruiter helped her practice for her interview and craft an updated resume. Towards the end of this 1.5 month application/onboarding process, Adaeze aced an 8-round, ~1 hour interview with Western Digital and secured the sales and marketing summer internship!

Okay, that’s how she got the role, but how did she earn it? Well, for starters, Adaeze had 3 prior internships that included…

• A marketing internship for Hygear Technologies—a small hygiene tech company

• A private equity internship for Main Post Partners—a SF based private equity firm

• A digital marketing internship for Uplift campaigns—a media firm for campaigns

Don’t be intimidated by what you see! According to Adaeze, recruiters and interviewers were actually more interested in her experience as a student athlete, campus leader, and strong communicator. The experience that generated the most interest in Adaeze included…

• Being a liaison officer for the Cal Black Student Union (BSU)

• Being the vice president of the Cal Black Student Athlete Committee

While interviewing, Adaeze avoided relying on her school’s prestige and instead focused on who she was outside of the classroom. Ultimately, Adaeze shared that her internship was won by presenting herself as a well-rounded individual who cared about things outside of school and career advancement. So yes, the rumors are true, companies actually care about who you are as a person.

What she does:

As a sales and marketing intern for Western Digital, Adaeze was part of a 12-week program alongside 12 other interns. Every two weeks, a pair of interns would be rotated into a new company team to learn about sales and marketing from different angles.

Adaeze visited six internal teams: digital marketing, original equipment manufacturing (OEM), retail sales, channel sales, channel marketing, and e-commerce. Here’s a quick cheat sheet for a few of those industry terms…

• Digital marketing - This is the umbrella term for all marketing done using the internet. Social media, websites, texts and emails all fit into that category.

• OEM - Original equipment manufacturers create pieces for other companies to use in their products. In this case, Western Digital’s OEM team is solely concerned with selling computer disk drives and other tech directly to large corporations.

With the digital marketing team, Adaeze was able to learn about and work on Western Digital’s Twitch channel, LinkedIn, TikTok, and other social media. They were given the freedom to offer suggestions on what messages/posts should be released on which platforms, but since there isn’t a lot of time in each rotation, a large portion of her internship was spent observing and learning. For one of her big projects, Adaeze was asked to either ideate a campaign or find something that could be changed within the company, and then present on it!

On the channel marketing and channel sales teams, Adaeze created product information flyers that were sent to actual clients. She attended many internal meetings for these teams, but admittedly, Adaeze felt that there was too much industry jargon to understand much.

Overall, though, Adaeze had a great time during this internship and was even able to score another one in Washington D.C. at the end! Learn more about Adaeze below!

📈Give us more!

💼Want to hear more from Adaeze?

• Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel linked here.

🔍Connect with Adaeze!

• Connect with her on LinkedIn here. While you're at it, take a look at her experience history to see where you would stand for a similar position.

📢Advice from Adaeze:

• “A lot of people love to talk about themselves, and they love to talk about their job. If you see someone on LinkedIn that does something you’re interested in, it never hurts to send them a message and set-up an informational interview. You can make good connections, maybe get a referral, and get pointed in the right direction. Or you might find out that you don’t like what someone does, and that their role sounds miserable. So, I think it's important to make those connections because just applying blindly to a position might not get your application seen. And I do think a lot of people who get positions get them because they know someone, sadly, that’s what happens. It’s unfortunate, but if you really want to put yourself in the best position to be seen, you have to do that extra grunt work to get to know people.” —Adaeze Noble

✋Get involved!

The New Intern team is always aiming to write for its readers. If there's anything you liked, disliked, or wished you could have read in this issue, please let us know!

• Know someone we can interview? Reach out and get us connected!