“Stay strong.”
“Keep trying — you can do it.”
Students hear these encouragers all the time from their parents, professors, learning specialists, and others in their lives.
But does it work?
Yes — if you ask Michael Hansen, a computer information systems student at Beacon College, who knows firsthand that once a door closes, another one opens.
With a perfect 4.0 GPA in his web and digital media major, Hansen started looking for opportunities early on at Beacon. He visited the Boven Career Development Center in his freshman year and drafted his first resume.
As a sophomore, Hansen met Theresa Elliott, the center’s director, who helped him apply for a UPS position. But UPS selected someone else. But Elliott, impressed with his tenacity and work ethic, encouraged him to pursue the college’s DELL Technologies summer internship. His pursuit led to another no, however, as DELL was looking for students with more IT experience.
Such rejection might crush some jobseekers. Instead of retreating, Hansen emerged stronger and hungrier.
In late February, he noticed a job fair poster at the career center for an IT support and design internship at RoMac.
Hansen tuned up his resume, borrowed a tie, shirt, and a jacket from the career center, participated in several Zoom mock interviews with Elliott, and leveraged the experience from his failed attempts with UPS and DELL.
At the job fair, he aced his interview with two managers and secured a 14-week, $11 per hour summer internship, totaling 560 hours of experience and $6,160 for the summer.
His duties will include:
- Work alongside RoMac’s videographer, and assist with shooting videos and photos on site, and on location, editing, producing, and creating content.
- Assist the design center and truss department with designing simple projects using a computer and specialized program.
- Assist the marketing coordinator by inputting and editing content, text and graphics for the website. Design flyers, graphics and other marketing material for the company.
Hansen hopes to continue his internship after summer and gain some additional hours of on-the-job seasoning to help set him up for landing full-time employment after graduation when he hopes the next big door opens.