Please briefly describe your background prior to Haas
I grew up in Indonesia but have lived in the Bay Area since 2011. Prior to school, I was a sales person for couple of tech companies in the Bay Area. I worked for FactSet, a financial services company, for 4 years before moving to couple different start ups as early sales hire.
I decided to go to Haas to make a career pivot into a strategy role (preferably marketing strategy)
What industries and functions did you recruit for and why?
I primarily recruited for Brand Management roles at first because I wanted to learn how to own the strategy and execution of owning a product. However, I didn’t want to put all of my eggs in one basket so I also applied to tech companies for Strategy and Operations roles. After my startup experience, I enjoyed the strategy side of things more than the sales side so wanted to pivot to a more strategy role.
Briefly describe how you approached recruiting. Anything worked particularly well for you?
After getting some early rejections from Brand Management roles, I decided to apply to big name tech companies in order to get that “brand” name on my resume. My focus was to find any internship experience that wasn’t client facing in order to learn a technical skill.
I think for career pivoters, a cover letter can be useful. It helps tell the story of why you are making a career pivot but also how your previous experiences can translate. It’s usually harder to get a sense of the “why” through a resume, so I found cover letter to be useful for that. I made one cover letter template and adjusted based on role. It’s not fun to make one, but could be worth it to differentiate yourself in a tough market.
Briefly introduce your internship company and your team
I worked at Visa this summer working for the Global Co-Brand team. Co-brand is the partnership between Visa, merchants, and issuers to create a partnership that will promote brand loyalty for its merchants.
Briefly describe your summer project or job description
My project revolved around finding new verticals outside of travel to find cobrand opportunities in.
Fun facts about the company
Visa has intern challenges that we are encouraged to participate in. The idea is to put interns of different levels (undergrad and grad) and from different parts of the company to consult a company on a specific challenge. Our team helped an SF bakery with their brand and marketing problem and won the challenge! It was an awesome experience to use what I learned during my first year into an actual project.
Thoughts / reflections on your internship
During your search, make sure your hiring manager knows the kind of project you will be doing instead of having you do regular “day to day” work. A project is a great way to have a start and an end instead of just picking up random work on a daily basis.
Closing thoughts or advice
At the end of the day, it's 10-12 weeks maximum. You are not going to learn as much as you think you are so just focus on finding a good manager you can learn from and enjoy the process! 10-12 weeks is nothing in the long run, it’s just a great way to learn something new!