PepsiCo Intern by Michael Leibovitz

“Wow!” is all I can say as my 2020 Summer Internship with PepsiCo is coming to an end. Given the current circumstances with COVID-19, this year was the first year in which PepsiCo shifted their internship program to be entirely online. Regardless of this fact, they knocked it out of the park and ensured each intern had a fun and engaging learning experience during the program.

While there were over 950 interns this year, with roughly 2/3 being in sales and supply chain, I was one of only 3 interns whose function/title was “Category Management and Insights Intern”. PepsiCo is a massive company with over 260,000 employees and dozens of different brands, 20 of them generating at least 1 billion dollars in revenue annually. Out of these many brands, I was assigned to the Quaker branch who is headquartered at the “Plaza” in Chicago. Given all of this, prior to the internship I was worried it would be difficult to network and learn more about the company and its culture while working remotely. Not only was I wrong, but I was able to meet a ton of amazing people and learn about nearly every brand that PepsiCo has! I learned that PepsiCo has an immersive culture that allows people to feel comfortable and voice their opinions. The many employee resource groups they offer interns to attend internal and external company events (in this case zoom events) where there were different games, discussions, and breakouts for the interns and employees to enjoy and learn from.

As for the day to day, the recruiters were not kidding when they said, “no two days are the same”. The program was broken down into 3 main parts: Functional work, Cross-functional work, and PEP-U Degreed Learning. The Functional work was where the highest priority was placed, this was where I would support the Quaker business by analyzing data and creating Sell-in stories to help drive revenue and grow shelving space. I was assisted by mentors and my direct manager in learning on how to pull and analyze data, as well as key insights for making an impactful story for the customer. Everybody was incredibly helpful, and questions were encouraged. My recommendations were given to real customers and I was able to make a real impact for the company. The Cross-functional work was entirely new for the internship program and was added this year. I was placed on a team with 5 other interns from different functions and assigned to a project to work on which allowed me to work with brands such as Mountain Dew and Doritos. Finally, Pep-U Degreed learning was an online source for taking courses and learning more about PepsiCo and how to “crush expectations”. There were many useful insights and courses that allowed us interns to choose skills to improve on and grow overall.

Ultimately, I highly recommend interning with PepsiCo! I have learned so much and have met so many incredible people even though it was virtual. The learning opportunities provided by PepsiCo are endless and there are surefire connections that will last a lifetime. Thank you, PepsiCo!