Marketa Jakubcova ’14

Major(s): INBM
Internship Site: Texas Instruments - Prague, Czech Republic

The Internship:   
I wanted to find a summer internship at my home Prague. It was quite challenging since I could only intern for 2 months and in Europe internships for undergrad students are not as common as they are in the US, so I focused on American companies located in Prague. I started my research in the fall of my sophomore year mainly using internet resources and student forums. Then, I emailed around 10-15 companies even though they were not hiring. I only got four responses, where only two were positive with an invitation for a personal interview. I interviewed with Texas Instruments in January while I was still in Prague on my winter break. I was offered to intern in both of these companies, but I chose Texas Instruments since the project sounded much more interesting and challenging.

I was assigned to a specific marketing project – my task was to create and deliver plan to promote the ASKTEXAS organization, its services, and its overall priorities to both internal and external clients. The promotion was focused towards several different target groups including TI sales, distribution sales, TI business development managers, and product marketing managers. My supervisors and I decided that creating a video would be the best option. I wrote a script, directed and recorded the movie, edited in Final cut, made a soundtrack in Audacity, and at last delivered it to the target groups via email and TI website.

The Preparation:   
Classes that added to my internship experience and helped me to develop skills include Fundamentals of Business, International Organizational Behavior and primarily my on-campus job in the Media Center. In the Media Center, they taught me how to use all the different editing programs and gave an access to the online Final Cut tutorials, without which I would have been lost at my internship.

The Future:  
Thanks to this internship I realized my ideal future job needs to include managing people, the international environment, working with media, and being creative. I really like to work with a graphic design (Photoshop), but creating a short promotional video I found even more enjoyable. The whole process, which includes managing people, writing a script, and editing it in a video program, is creative and challenging in every way. I find it better to have a specific project to focus on than to do only administrative work or a little bit of everything.

Tips from Marketa: 
Do not give up, when you get no responses. Be determined and patience is essential. Also try to network with people every time the possibility presents itself. Not everyone will offer you an internship or a job, but at least the word about you gets around. It is great and it looks professional to have your own personal cards you can present yourself with, so you don’t have to write your email address on a piece of napkin.

*To find out more about how to get an internship, make an appointment with a career counselor. Just call the Career Center at 717-245-1740 or stop by Biddle House.