For Business, Marketing, and Communication Majors
The question usually comes up about the junior or senior year in college — how am I supposed to get experience when no one will give me a job?
I’m happy to tell you that there is some low-hanging fruit that’s been in your backyard for some time but you never really equated the company with a job that could give you all of the experience you’ve been looking for.
The answer is at your local credit union.
I’ve been working with credit unions in the state of Iowa for the past couple of years and most all of them have one main goal: to lower the average member age.
Credit unions are different than banks because all of the people who are customers of the credit union are actually member owners. Because they have “shares” in the credit union, they are actually part owners in the institution itself. Not so with banks…
So, where this poses an opportunity for you is these credit unions are dying to figure out how to attract people your age into their branches. It’s really a no-brainer once you dig into what the credit union offers — lower loan rates, better service, great people.
But the credit unions scratch their heads when trying to figure out how to make what they have attractive to people your age. So much so that many of them are now asking college students to sit on their board of directors to get a fresh perspective.
Many of the credit unions I’ve worked with have asked me how to find interns that can help them with marketing and promotions, social media, and sometimes the high level administration stuff. Just think, instead of casting a wide net for an internship it may just require asking the right person for the gig that would give you all of the experience you’re looking for.
My recommendation is — if you’re not already a member of a credit union, you need to be. Then, get to know some of the people at your credit union and ask if they ever hire any interns. Whether they do or they don’t, you need to present an internship idea to them and see if they bite.
What if you could actually leverage the Facebook experience you’ve acquired to land a sweet gig?!
