Career Services Summer Update

We're gearing up for the summer after a great spring semester here at Rockhurst University!

The goal of Rockhurst University's Career Services office is to ensure that we're supporting students success as they begin their career journey. One particular highlight for this past semester came via a partnership with Helzberg School of Management faculty member, Erin Standley, for our Spring Mock Interview Day. The day hosted five employers and 45 students in a mock interview setting.

This spring semester's co-op program hosted 12 students through their internship experience. Students had varying majors from accounting, finance and economics, English and marketing. We saw partnerships with State Street, CliftonLarsonAllen, The Disney College Program, Department of Homeland Security and more. Please see all our intern updates from this semester in our previous post. 

The summer co-op program currently has 12 students preparing for summer internships from areas of applied mathematics, marketing, biology and physics of medicine, and finance and economics.

We also joined the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce. We're excited for the new business connections this partnership will bring and how we can connect them back to our students. This move allows us to continue looking for new opportunities and expanding our reach across the KC metropolitan area. 

This will be our last post for the RU Career Ready blog as we are transitioning to a new platform on the Rockhurst University website. Stay tuned to our web page for updates on the blog and for exciting new content from our partner NACE, student intern updates and more!

Spring 2018 Co-Op Interns Update

Spring 2018 Co-op Interns Update

Zerina Adrovic
Senior, Marketing Major
Marketing Intern, TLC Marketing Consultants

This is a picture of me at my desk at my marketing internship with TLC Marketing Consultants. There I am working on a social media content page for one of our potential clients to present to them our marketing plan for their company. My internship has given me the opportunity to expand my knowledge on digital marketing and get personal hands on experience outside of the classrooms and into the real world. 

Drew Doescher
Junior, Business Finance Major
Teller, Pinnacle Bank

Working in the banking industry has allowed me to gain real world experience as I continue working towards completing my BSBA degree. Today I learned how to explain some of the benefits of our new accounts we are offering to our customers.

Ben Greunke
Senior, Accounting Major
Financial Institutions Group Intern, CliftonLarsonAllen

     For my blog post entry, I would like to take the time to outline the most valuable thing I have learned from internship so far. First a little background, I am currently interning at CliftonLarsonAllen, or CLA for short as, which is fairly large accounting firm with locations all over the United States. I am currently working in the St. Louis office as a part of the financial institutions group. This group works to preform internal and external audit work for various banks, credit unions, and mortgage companies across the Midwest region. I would have to say it is kind of hard to pinpoint what’s the most valuable thing I’ve learned while working at CLA, because I’ve learned something new every day.

      However, I guess if I had to pick the most valuable thing I’ve learned while working at CLA, it would have to be to always prioritize your time. Since beginning tax season, I’ve learned just how hectic and busy this time can be, and that your work can pile up very fast with people asking you to different things at any given point during the day. Thus, to accomplish all the work that is being piled up on you, it is important to prioritize the things that need to get done first, and then so forth. Without having the strength of prioritizing your time, it would be hard to get much accomplished on a daily basis. Lessons like this are definitely why I’m very thankful for my time at CliftonLarsonAllen, from all the little things they’ve taught me about accounting outside of the classroom.

Aaron Horvat
Senior, Marketing Major
Marketing Intern, Malfer & Associates

This is a picture of me on site at the Malfer and Associates Studio in Leawood, Kansas. I work at both the Leawood and Prairie Village location, assisting in marketing as well as helping out agents in the field with different tasks. This job has showed me a lot in terms of knowledge in both marketing and residential real estate. Working at both offices has allowed me to be able to understand what it takes to succeed in both fields and motivates me to be successful.

Mary Hummel
Junior, Accounting Major
Student Intern, Summers, Spencer & Company, P.A.

My name is Mary Kate Hummel and this past fall semester, I was offered the opportunity to intern at a CPA firm during the spring semester. The firm has several offices throughout the Kansas area and I interned for the Shawnee office. I accepted the internship because I wanted to gain exposure to the tax side of the accounting career field. As a junior, I am delving into my upper level accounting courses and I am scheduled to take both tax and audit courses senior year. With these classes upon me, I thought it would be an excellent idea to intern at a public accounting firm during the swing of tax season to gain experience about what CPAs and tax preparers do. My position as an intern lasted from the start to the end of the tax season, so predominantly all of my work pertained to organizing and scanning tax documents for the preparers to use to file returns. Prior to this internship, I knew very little about taxes. Therefore, I didn’t have any particular expectations about it. However, after completing this internship, I am satisfied to say that I have learned so much about the tax side!

To students who are working to obtain an internship I would stress that persistence is key. Get your resume out to as many potential employers and recruiters as you can. Make sure to always follow up with recruiters and employers. If you apply for a position, follow up with the recruiter within a few days if you haven’t heard back yet. Be persistent and make yourself, your abilities and your interest in the position and/or company known to employers. Apply for any and every position that interests you. Don’t be turned off by a job description on an application that seems competitive and intimidating. Put yourself out there and employers will identify if your resume and/or credentials are a good match. Don’t be discouraged if you’re being passed up for internship positions. Different companies are looking for different things in their candidate search, such as proficiency in certain programs, particular previous work experience, or certain GPA requirements. Understand that you are not going to be a perfect match for every position. 

Kevin Morris
Sophomore, English Major
College Participant Intern, The Walt Disney Company

Here at the Disney College Program, a professional internship at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts, making magic for others is all part of my role. Through the program, I have developed countless interpersonal skills that are bound to aid me in any career I pursue, as well as serving up some delicious funnel cakes that always ignite the magic for our guests.

Adam Pundmann 
Junior, Accounting Major
Tax Intern, Ong & Company CPA's

My job at Ong and Company CPA’s is unique because the accountants have a personal relationship with all of their clients. My supervisor creates a relaxed, yet efficient work environment, allowing both the clients and the employees to remain satisfied. Being exposed to tax accounting in the workplace has given me insight on the career path I want to follow after my time at Rockhurst.

Deyanara Solis-Najera
Junior, Business Management & Spanish Majors
Immigration Services Analyst, U. S. Department of Homeland Security

With the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, I am able to see the impact every small task has on people and the country. I am inspired every day to continue furthering my education to be able to expand my critical thinking, communication, and team building skills and apply my knowledge to making an impact in people’s lives.  

Oskar Unger
Senior, Financial Markets & Economic Analysis
Research Intern, The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce/World Trade Center KC

My internship gives me fantastic opportunities to attend events, network, and have fun. Here I am with my World Trade Center colleagues at IRC’s Trivia Night where we finished 2^nd. 

Kristen Weber
Junior, Accounting Major
Student Intern,  Summers, Spencer & Company, P.A.

For my internship, I work for SS&C Solutions, Inc.  This is an accounting internship.  Specifically, I work within the tax aspect of accounting.  A typical day at SS&C involves me organizing clients tax documents, scanning the documents, and uploading them for the tax preparers.  I have to go through all the files and determine what is necessary for a tax return and what is not.  This has taught me a lot about accounting and tax.  I have not really been exposed to tax yet, so this has been informative about what the tax side of accounting involves. 

For any student who is looking for an accounting internship, I suggest going to Meet the Firms.  That is an excellent way to get connected and meet firms who are offering internships.  Making those connections is important when looking for internships/jobs.  Additionally, if you are looking for an internship, I suggest going to the Career Center to make your resume and do a mock interview.  I had not had a lot of interview experience, so I needed a lot of practice.  Also, I did not have an up-to-date resume, so the Career Center helped me quickly build one. 

I have learned a lot from this internship.  However, the most valuable thing I learned was whether or not this is the career path for me.  I have learned a lot about accounting in the real world, and I really like it.  It is interesting to see all the documents, and how they are used.  I have learned that I have selected the right major for me.  Overall, this internship has really given me a lot of new experiences.  I am very grateful for this opportunity.  It has taught me a lot about my major.  Additionally, there has been a lot of information that I have learned in class that I am able to apply to the work I do at SS&C Solutions, Inc.  I am grateful for this internship and all that it has taught me about accounting.  

Fall 2017 Co-Op Interns Update

What have you been up to? A Fall Intern Update!

Zac Crenshaw, Junior, Pre-Med
Scribe America, Scribe
   

This is a picture of me getting ready to take notes with a physician. My job at the hospital allows me to see firsthand interaction between physicians and patients. These experiences will help me moving forward as I have learned a lot of new medical terminology and have seen various procedures. 

          Since the last progress report, I have completely finished training. All my shifts since, I have been on my own as a scribe. I am very relieved the training process is finally over and can start to work on my own. I feel that the training process was very needed but I am very excited to become my own scribe. Just as I thought, being on your own takes more concentration since you are the only pair of ears listening to your doctor. However, with this comes some pros. I have had very personable experiences with the physicians I have worked with since. It now no longer seems as if I am just there following the doctor around, but I am part of their team trying to make sure patients get the best care they can get.

            The biggest downside of the job however is coming up, the holiday season. As talked about in a previous reflection, since it is an ER, the scribe position is still needed during the holidays. We all had to submit holiday availability, requiring us to be available for at least 2 holiday shifts. Luckily, I will be able to go home for the entire Thanksgiving break, the December schedule will come out in a couple of days. I would be very disappointed if I am not able to go home (St. Louis) for a decent amount of the break.

            This holiday scheduling experience has made me realize a couple of things. First of all, that I am growing up, and that my responsibilities are becoming bigger and bigger.  I believe this job will be a key to my resume when applying to medical school. That being said I have to accept that I need to make sacrifices for this job. This experience has also made it clear that when thinking about my future as a professional there are a lot that goes into that. I have to think about the time I will be able to spend with my family, the amount of travel my job could entail, and many other aspects of the job. What it comes down to is that I must learn that there will be give and takes to almost any career, I just have to figure out what matters the most to me.

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Alex Graf, Junior, Accounting & Finance

Union Bank of Switzerland, Director of First Relations  

       My internship at Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) has helped me develop many skills. I have been able to learn so much from some of the top Financial Advisors in the Kansas City area. They have really made me feel apart of their team.

       The past couple of weeks have been really busy at UBS Financial Services. We are trying to get stuff done before the holidays start. We are trying to do this because a lot of people become too busy to have meetings after Thanksgiving and up until the start of the year. We have been setting up a lot of meetings with people lately to try and get some new clients before the holidays.

            I have also started a new task for our team. We inquired about a Facebook ad with a company, but the company was going to charge us a ridiculous amount of money. So, it has been our responsibility to try and figure this out. We have been putting in extra work in the last two weeks to try and get these Facebook ads ready for the holiday season. We are trying to get them launched by Thanksgiving and have them run through the first week of January. They have never done anything like this before and are using this as a trial run. If this works out then we will continue with more ads, spending more money.

            Training the new intern has been going well too. There is a lot to learn. It also takes time to become comfortable on the phone with cold calling. It is hard to teach her the systems we have to use, especially the new contact management system called CRM. I have talked to the tech guy and one of the partners and instead of using it, we got approved to just have a shared folder than we can keep track of our clients and leads on. This is making it must easier on all of us, because it is quicker and takes less time to update. 

       

Summer Co-op Interns 2017

Colleen Pikus, Overland Park Police Department Intern, Accounting 

My internship with the Overland Park Police Department has been an amazing experience. My roles have mainly been to focus on learning and observing. I don’t have many day-to-day responsibilities due to all of the safety and privacy regulations that govern the department. 

During my internship, I participated in the police officer’s fitness test, fire arm training, shooting firearms, police car simulators and defensive tactics. I rode along with the traffic officers, who deal with all types of traffic violations such as speeding, failing to yield, and accidents. I experienced COPPS which stands for “Community Oriented Public Policing” and those officers are responsible for building relationships throughout the community. In the latter half of my internship I experienced the Patrol Unit and CAU or Criminal Analysis Unit. CAU was my favorite unit because they get to help the team understand financial crimes, property crimes, and persons’ crimes throughout the whole city. In my future, I could see myself working with the financial crimes unit so it was obviously very interesting to work with them.

This photo was taken during my week participating in the traffic unit of the Overland Park police department. During my week with traffic I experienced the police officers giving out traffic ticket violations, dealing with crashes, and also dealing with intoxicated drivers. This is only one unit out of several units in the Overland Park police department. In this photo a Police Officer convinced me to get a photo on one of Overland Parks new traffic motorcycles. I learned so much about traffic safety and received a lot of valuable advice from the police officers in the traffic unit. 

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Tahnee Cooper, Commerce Bank Data Analytics Intern, Applied Mathematics & Psychology

Hi, my name is Tahnee Cooper and I’m an applied mathematics and psychology major. I am currently an intern at Commerce Bank in the Enterprise Analytics and Business Intelligence department. I sought out an internship because of the gap between learning about data in the classroom and actually working with data in the industry.

This internship has been an eye-opener for me in terms of what I thought the world of data looked like. The majority of time is spent on cleaning up data sets and interpreting what the line of business is actually wanting. The hardest obstacle I have had to overcome is learning not only a new program (SAS) but learning an entire new industry: banking. If I had one piece of advice to offer, it is to never stop asking questions. There is no shame in not knowing the answers; in fact, it should be expected that you don’t know all the answers as an intern. Asking questions shows that you are engaged and have motivation.

In addition, don’t be too hard on yourself—it can be easy to focus on the skills you are lacking because of a new environment but you have to recognize your strengths, too. I was pleased that in a meeting with my mentor, a trait that I thought I needed to improve on was the trait that my mentor pointed out as one of my strengths. This leads to my next point—ask for feedback. This shows initiation and offers you an opportunity to improve. Aside from the data skills I have obtained, learning the ins-and-outs of business etiquette has been one of the most beneficial skills I have learned.

To close, my internship with Commerce is to thank for the increase in my skills and the awareness of what a good company consists of. Internships offer exposure to the “real world” and offer valuable experience. Despite the difficulties associated with diving into the big data world, the exposure I have gained is irreplaceable.

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Desiree Sandie, PricewaterhouseCoopers Core Assurance Intern, Business Administration 

While the real work may have started during my second week, the real challenges hit during my third and fourth weeks. These challenges included adapting to a greater work load and to a new supervisor.

            During my second week, I was in the process of learning how to test interest income. And when I say learning to test interest income, I mean I was just scratching the surface. I hadn’t yet understood the why I was selecting certain transactions from certain spreadsheets. Nor had I come to understand what made certain transactions stand out from others. I had only just gotten familiar with the different spreadsheets and how to manipulate them in excel to achieve a simple answer. However, once the third week came around, I was suddenly testing two different types of interest income for two different audits.

            To make things slightly more challenging, I was transferred from working under one associate to another. The two associates had very different approaches to completing their work and very different styles of teaching. The first associate created a laid-back environment where I learned about the testing procedures one step at a time. The second introduced a much more rigid working environment where an explanation was expected to be given once and understood. Despite my taking notes during the initial explanation of the two different audits, I found myself questioning whether I was testing the transactions for the different types of income properly. The briefing was so, I guess, brief that the various steps to testing the different types of income became muddled in my mind. I began to doubt that the work I was doing was correct, so I asked questions. As I asked questions, I realized that my new associate was frustrated with how unsure and confused I was. That frustration only intensified the lack of confidence I had in my work. However, I continued to work and ask questions. Eventually I realized that the associate wasn’t so much frustrated with the fact that I was asking questions, but that there was a misunderstanding about my level of experience.

The second associate had thought I had more experience testing interest income. Therefore, she was explaining the steps and procedures at a higher level without breaking down the information to the basics. It took me a while to come to this realization because I was working so hard just to understand what she was saying to me and I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t understand. Eventually though, I did realize and I was able to explain what I didn’t understand and ask questions that would help me progress with my work.

This learning curve of adapting to a new teaching style while trying to complete new tasks took the better part of two weeks to get through. And to be quite honest, I’m not fully through the learning curve. I’m still working to understand the reasons why I’m looking for certain transactions and evaluating them against different levels of materiality. I’m not satisfied only knowing to pull certain base income amounts from one spreadsheet to paste into another spreadsheet with a formula. And I’m not satisfied with the relationship I have with my newly assigned associate mentor/teacher. So, I’ll continue to work, better my communication skills, ask questions, and build a better rapport with my new teacher, which I hope will aide in developing my understanding of auditing as a whole.

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Spring 2017 Intern Updates

Adam Pundmann - Ong & Company CPAs Intern

My internship at Ong & COmpany CPAs is unique because I am part of a small accoutning firm that values their clients on a personal level much greater than large firms. As an intern, I am trusted to greet their clients and talk to them on their phones. I am also responsible for assembling their tax forms, recording purchases, and reconciling their accounts. 

Luke Meyer - The Winans Group CPA Intern

Most days in the office I am at a computer or laptop processing returns. Here you can see me with the box of tax returns ready to be processed. You can almost always find me with a cup of coffee to keep me focused.

Emmanuel Mangar - Hovee CPA Intern

My internship at a small firm has blessed me with a great one-on one mentor-ship in tax and has sharpened my attention to detail.

Ulziisaikhan Mcgregor - State Street Intern

This is me (Ulzii) as an intern confirming a significant transaction with a long-time customer at State Street Financial Services company. This internship allows me to participate in a global financial network and gives me the experience to launch a successful career after graduation from Rockhurst University.

 

Lukasz Chmielewski - Creative Planning Tax Intern

        This semester I was given an opportunity to get an outside of class experience in regards to my major, which is accounting. Last Monday, I started my training as a tax intern at Creative Planning. To give some background about the company, Creative Planning started in early 2000s as a wealth management firm, which operating and managed the assets of a total worth of 30 million dollars. Last year the company broke the amount of 20 billion and is currently the only firm in the industry, which provides the holistic wealth management. Besides the financial planning, customers can use lawyers knowledge and the experience of CPAs in regard to taxes. 

         When it comes to my responsibilities, I and the group of eight other interns are assigned to prepare nearly four thousand, 1040 and 1041 tax returns. We have flexible hours but as tax season is getting busier we are required to work full-time and some weeks een up to fifty-five hours. So far I really like my position and I have learned that the main thing is to be self-confident to be successful in this working environment.

 

Chris Booker - Gateway Packaging Intern

The time I have spent at Gateway Packaging has proven to be a truly rewarding experience. I went into my first day with a lot of mixed emotions about starting at this company. I was leaving the accounting firm where I had spent the last year learning from wonderful CPA’s how to pursue a career in public accounting. The people at that firm had given me my first internship and I was sad to leave them. The environment here at gateway was a completely different experience that I was accustomed too, not only is a gateway a privately-owned company, It also has 12x the amount of employees that my last firm had in the office. But wit that being said, I really enjoyed stepping into a bigger office, and into a bigger role once I got to gateway. Working at gateway has taught me how to work with a vast array of different personalities from controllers, CFOs, plant accountants, to even factory workers. At some point or another I had to work hand in hand with these different people, which showed me that every person has a different way of working, as well as, different things that motivate them to work.

The most valuable piece of advice that I learned while being at gateway came when the CFO of the company came and asked me my name, and what I was doing in the office. I told him my name, where I went to school, my major, and that I was the new intern that was hired to help in the accounting department. He looked at me and said that “I gave him the wrong answer.” I remember beginning to sweat because I was so confused on how I possibly gave him the wrong answer, I in fact gave him more than he originally asked for. He then goes “you should have said that you’re here to sit in my office and take my job,” and then walked out of the room. The advice that I took out of that was not to go into every job aiming at the CFO’s head but to work hard at whatever task that is set in front of you so that you can one day take over for the top spot.