6:30 am… the coffee pot goes off, my blinds open, and that signals it is time for another day at the (home) office. Prior to Covid-19, my mornings would have been a bit different, including a Starbucks stop for coffee and breakfast on my walk to CDW’s Chicago office on Adams Street in the Loop. However, until September 2021, my mornings are spent all within the walls of my 900 sq ft apartment.

CDW is a Fortune 200 company that employs more than 10,000 coworkers throughout its 28 different locations. I work for the Chicago corporate office. CDW is known for having great office space culture. Pre-Covid times, CDW always has in person events, meetings, and gatherings to get coworkers united and together. With Covid-19, many events have been shifted online to keep company morale present and CDW as a united force.

Each day at CDW starts the same for me. I am logged into my computer by 7:30 am, sifting through any emails that came in while I was away, checking in with my coworkers and manager via Microsoft Teams, and checking my calendar for the current day’s meetings. Once all my administrative work is set up, I dive into new and on-going projects.

CDW’s sales internship program is 10 weeks long. I started on June 1^st, 2021. Since my first day, I have been given the opportunity to work on solo projects, group projects, shadow account managers, interview my team about their recent deals, meet with managers throughout the company, practice cold calling customers, and learn extensive information about the IT industry and CDW as a company.

The first four days of my internship consisted solely of sales training. Within those four days, I was educated about CDW, what it takes to be a great sales person, and what the most important first steps are in becoming an account manager at CDW. The sales training I received helped me feel confident as an intern. Prior to this internship, I had no past experience working in sales, especially inside sales. Throughout my first eight weeks at CDW, it is clear that this company heavily invests in their coworkers to make sure that each person is set up for success.

After training concluded, I jumped right into projects with my team. My favorite solo project, to date, has been interviewing account managers on my team about recent deals they have done. I find this to be a great way to meet my coworkers and learn about what and how CDW sells within the IT industry. Currently, I am working on a group project about personal branding as part of CDW’s community service day, which is July 23^rd, 2021. I have also enjoyed and taken benefit from practicing cold calling and shadowing cold calls within my team. Each call I practice and hear provides me the opportunity to improve my technique and skill set.

Throughout my time at CDW, I am learning about the IT industry and sales; however, I am also uncovering more each day about what I want to do when I graduate and how I plan to execute that. This internship has taught me that, if given the opportunity, I would love to become a CDW account manager. This internship elevated my level of excitement for the sales industry, especially the IT sales industry. I always knew that post-graduation I wanted to enter the sales industry. Being a CDW sales intern sealed the deal for me due to the great atmosphere, training, and daily work tasks that I experience. CDW excites me to wake up and go to work each day!

Hi everyone! My name is Valentina Martin, and welcome to a day in my life as a Services Sales intern! I am currently interning for Dell Technologies, a multinational technology company headquartered in Round Rock, Texas, known in the technology industry mainly for its computers and company culture. However, it also offers solutions and services, and the awareness of these two has been increasing over the years. As I said, I am a Services Sales intern, and learning about the different services that Dell offers has indeed been a fantastic experience.

My internship is fully remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has still been extremely fun and rewarding. As a full-time employee, I start my day at 9am by logging into my email account and ensuring all my tasks are up to date, double-checking the weekly schedule I am given, and sending emails to people I want to have a 1×1 with. At 9:30am, I have a daily “morning meeting” with my team of twelve interns, where our Lead Intern, Ryan, makes sure we have all of our zoom links for the day ready to go and goes over any announcements he may have for us.

The twelve of us have the task of learning about a particular service each week by attending zoom meetings, taking online courses, and having mentoring sessions with Services Sales Representatives. The following week, we must pitch the service we learned about the previous week to a group of managers. Pitches are done in teams, which are usually given to us on Mondays in our “morning meeting” with Ryan and are always different as they want us to learn how to work with other people.

Following the morning meeting, I usually meet with my pitch group of the week for at least an hour to work on our presentation and scripts. Some weeks I may have to pitch on Thursdays, and other weeks on Fridays; we are randomly chosen for a specific day. Pitches are usually eight minutes long and end with a broken deal presented by the managers. Once the managers have finished explaining the scenario, my group and I must quickly ask questions to develop the best solution (service) for the “client.”

After meeting with my pitch group to plan our presentation, I usually attend zoom meetings. Different executives may be speaking or employees that are experts about the service we must learn about. Once those meetings are over, I spend my time researching and learning about the different services on my own by taking some online courses provided to us or asking my mentors for helpful information.

Time flies by when attending many zoom meetings, but there is always time for a bit of fun and some rest! My supervisor truly cares about all of us, so she includes breaks in our schedule and fun activities such as what we call “Fun Fridays.” Every Friday, we choose a theme and play games related to it for about an hour – supervisor and managers included! It truly helps us connect personally and stay mentally stable, as working remotely can be extremely tiring at times.

Besides the pitches and trainings, I have also been working on my final project, which consists of creating an e-portfolio, shadowing two inside sales representatives to learn about best practices and techniques when performing a customer call, and performing customer calls myself. I have learned how to manage my time as I must find time throughout the week to focus on these three parts of the project. Additionally, I try to make time for any 1x1s I want to have with people I genuinely want to meet in the company. It is essential to build a strong network, especially in companies as extensive and successful as Dell Technologies. Lastly, I am part of two Employee Resource Groups (ERG): Latino Connection and Mosaic. I have mentors from both ERGs that I also must make time for as they have been extremely kind and helpful. I try to do all of these tasks between 9am and 6pm as I cannot work overtime.

Never in a million years would I have imagined myself working for such a big company. To be honest, I didn’t really think Dell Technologies was THIS big when I got the job. I have quickly learned how big it really is and how there is so much room for opportunity. There is a lot to learn, so I have learned to work in a fast-paced environment. As my supervisor says, “working for Dell is like drinking from a firehose.” One must always be ready to actively listen and learn from all the fantastic people who work in the company.

This Summer internship has been by far the most rewarding experience of my life. I have grown personally and professionally. Most importantly, I have gotten out of my comfort zone as I never really considered sales. I accepted the job because I needed the experience and knew Dell was a good company. However, now that I have worked at Dell Technologies for ten weeks, I can say that I enjoy sales, and now I have a sales background.

I am genuinely grateful to Dell Technologies for giving me an opportunity when nobody else did and for believing in me. I have met incredible people throughout the Summer that I will remember forever. Additionally, I now have more knowledge about the technology industry. Lastly, not only have I learned about this fantastic company, but also about myself and skills I did not think I had. I am so excited to see what the last two weeks of my internship look like, but I am sad it is almost over. I will never forget this experience and the life-long friends I made this Summer.

Thank you, Dell Technologies!

My Digital Marketing Internship
Coffee machines, department lunches, games at the start of weekly recap meetings– working in an office can be a ton of fun. Can’t you just hear my excitement? While all these little facets of working in an office can be entertaining, what I really find exhilarating is what happens in between all the quick snack breaks and friendly meetings; work

As a digital marketing intern at Americaneagle.com, a fast-growing digital agency (not the clothing store), work looks like hundreds of pages of missing meta descriptions and titles, excel spreadsheets with countless internal and external links that need to be changed, and CMS platforms just begging for updated content. Does it sound like a lot of work? It is. But no matter how tedious the task, I know what I am doing is important. I and 600+ other employees at Americaneagle.com are passionate about making sure a client’s company can not only be seen by their target market, but be engaging enough to get them to learn more about the company, fill out email subscription forms, or simply buy something. Our job is to make sure that a client’s money is well spent by driving statistically relevant traffic and conversions to their different webpages.

How do you make sure a website has good visibility and engagement you ask? Well, the digital marketing team at Americaneagle.com utilizes a combination of digital marketing strategies based on the needs of a client. We work with companies of all different sizes and industries so what works for one might not be what works for another. The department consists of marketers capable of problem solving in search engine optimization, pay per click advertisement, email marketing, social media marketing, and content writing. While there are some who specialize in one area, most of the team can be dangerous in more than one field.

What I’ve Learned
I’ve come to learn at my internship that each one of these fields within digital marketing is important to building a company’s digital presence. Without search engine optimization, user experience design, social media marketing, email marketing, and content writing, the websites we visit would look and feel bland, boring, and confusing; and in a time where there is nothing that can’t be learned or bought online, bland, boring, and confusing webpages are unattractive and unacceptable.

To make sure websites are easy to find and use, I’ve had to learn both the technical and content sides of digital marketing. Americaneagle.com has made it very easy to do this as there is an endless number of projects to work on, a collection of blog posts and articles sharing the best practices for all areas within the digital marketing industry, and responsive senior team members always ready to help tackle a problem. The combination of hands-on contributions to projects and helpful resources provided by Americaneagle.com has built exponentially upon my foundational digital marketing knowledge gained through DePaul course work.

An Irreplaceable Internship Experience
I believe that my opportunity to join the digital marketing team at Americaneagle.com has grown my interest in digital marketing as well as the skillset needed to be successful within the industry. Along with irreplaceable learning experiences, I’ve also been exposed to wonderful people at Americaneagle.com who are passionate about the work they do and are always ready to help somebody green to the industry learn from and contribute to a variety of challenging and fulfilling projects.