Success Story: Samyukta Pareek ’19 in summer internship at Verizon

Success Stories | Sep 28, 2018 | admin

While many MBA students revise their résumés multiple times when searching for internships, Samyukta Pareek, MBA ’19, says “I worked on my résumé over 100 times.”

It was a version numbering somewhere in the hundreds that she used to land her summer internship at Verizon on the B2B, or business-to-business, marketing operations team.

She had decided to get her MBA after working in creative roles in media and public relations. As she worked her way up, she found that “suddenly the game changes. Now you’re a manager.” Because of that, she says, “you need to change your approach.”

When it came to finding an internship, Pareek’s approach was to follow the advice of the Career Development Center. “I did everything by the book,” she says. It was her first time looking for opportunities in the United States, and she wanted to set herself up for success.

“I used all the tools that CDC recommended, in phases,” she recalls. One month, for example, she would work on her résumé; the next month, she would try to land informational interviews.

“What stood out to me was the Gabelli career network because these are people who have actually raised their hand to help you,” she notes.

After taking advantage of networking events and CDC experts, Pareek says she turned to LinkedIn as a “backup,” but that was what connected her to the Verizon opportunity she eventually accepted.

“It’s a numbers game,” she admits, so “just keep applying.” If you don’t get the internship you want, it’s “not the end of the world,” she emphasizes, believing that eventually you will find an opportunity that fits you and a company that is meant for you.

While at Verizon, Pareek worked on projects that combined finance, strategy, bringing in efficiencies, and coming up with design solutions, but she says her favorite was a real business challenge she completed with other interns for a product launch in October.

“I think my biggest takeaway was collaboration with different departments,” she says. Pareek found that each person must interact with many people to complete a project, and an extra perk was being able to learn how other departments work—she set up informational interviews almost every day with someone new.

She also found that her biggest gap in knowledge was in finance, so during her final year at the Gabelli School, Pareek plans to focus on that area.

“No matter what industry you’re in,” she says, “numbers are important.”