How I Built My Own Internship in the Pandemic

By Matthew Rottman

“I’m sorry, but due to the unprecedented environment, we are stopping all hiring for the foreseeable future. Thank you for your interest, and best of luck in your future endeavors!”

Reading that email, I felt defeated. That was the third and final shot I had for an internship in summer 2020. After finally returning to school after years working in industry, going through months of networking and interview prep, and reaching final round interviews with two companies, the COVID-19 pandemic put a significant obstacle in my graduate school plans.

In my field, management consulting, it’s typical for graduate students to have a paid internship between their first and second year. It’s also typical for consultant firms to extend full-time offers at the end of these internships. For me, like many others, a summer internship was my best shot at my dream job, and with that final email, that plan was squashed.

At first, I was worried. How could I get the experience I needed to earn a full-time position after graduation? Fortunately, my time with the DePaul Consulting Club and networking with Kellstadt alumni in the consulting field taught me to see obstacles as an opportunity. This setback was an opportunity for me to step up and show that I would not back down from a challenge. I knew I had to take things into my own hands, and thanks to Kellstadt I had access to resources that would help me do that.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I was in a consulting skills management class that was supposed to have an applied aspect. Students are asked to conduct a real consulting engagement for a local organization. But when the stay-at-home order came, we were instead directed to create a proposal as if we were consulting, and leave it at that. A few students and I realized that we could do our proposed project remotely just as easily as we could in person, so I reached out to the director of the organization we wanted to work with and asked if she would be interested. She was, and I and several other students carried out the project early in the summer.

“This is the best way for me to get experience!” I thought to myself. That first project showed me that my quarantined summer could be just as educational as a formal internship. In fact, because I was interacting directly with the clients, and because I had to seek out validation of my plans from my consulting connections, the project taught me a lot that I might not have learned in a formal internship, which may have been lock-stepped or otherwise limited in scope.

I wondered, could I do more of this? I remembered another company I had worked with in a class project. MGT 504: Fundamentals of Operations Management had us carry out an operations efficiency project for a local company. My group worked for a local brewery and we had good communication with the head brewmaster. I reached out to the brewmaster and carried out more work for his brewery, on some of the problems that we identified in the class project but were unable to address at the time because they didn’t relate to the class material.

From that point the momentum kept rolling. Even after summer ended, I continued looking for and taking on external consulting projects. Although I started out pro bono, I’ve since found paying clients. I continue to learn from the projects: I regularly reach out to consultants in my network to ask their advice on projects. This not only ensures that I’m doing the best work I can for my clients, but also strengthens my connections with consultants in firms.

I’m grateful for the resources at Kellstadt that helped me get those first few projects. The connections I made through my class projects really gave me the leg up I needed to create my own professional experiences during a time where doing so felt nearly impossible.