Hello everyone,

My name is Seth Tibbs, I’m a senior in my final semester at Chapman University, and I’m a Strategic and Corporate Communication major with a themed inquiry in Data Analytics. The company I had the privilege of interning for is an international solar mounting company called K2 systems. My roles were in Marketing and Logistics. Before I delve into my internship work, I wanted to touch on the interview process. I found my internship outside of Handshake, which gave me some insight into what applying for jobs and the interview process is like. After hearing back from K2, I had three rounds of interviews. After my second interview with this company, I found that being direct and asking things like, “how would you know I was a good fit for this company six months down the line?” offers a significant amount of insight into what a company is looking for. Knowing what the company is looking for helps you better gauge whether the company is looking for problem solvers, critical thinkers, or relentless workers.

Additionally, when you know what a company is looking for that’s normally good insight into the company culture which in turn will help you figure out if they’re a good fit for you and your lifestyle. Moving onto the actual internship experience itself, my internship was incredibly helpful and challenging for the same reason. I was working in two separate fields, marketing, and logistics. While I got to learn and cover a large breadth of tools and tasks between the two fields, I couldn’t delve into as much depth as I would have liked on either end given that my days are split between positions. Going into my internship, I wasn’t dead set on what field I wanted to work in yet, so this was incredibly helpful for me. Still, for those who know what they want to do, I’d recommend steering clear of working two positions as you may not be able to cover as much depth of a given position.

In my particular internship, I was given a significant workload, enough to be in the office three days a week for 8-hour shifts. Since I attended many meetings, some employees in the Mexico office that the company worked closely with began to assume I was a full-time worker and treated me as such by asking more of me. There was a point where I felt that the only way I could get all of my tasks done would have been to take work home, which interns should never have to do. I had to let my manager know that I simply couldn’t get everything done and that school was still my priority. Had I not spoken up, my workload may have hindered my classwork. I have learned to advocate for myself, and you should too. If need be, ask to have hours cut shorter or less work assigned to you when you have weeks with a lot of studying and homework. All in all, I felt that my internship was a great experience and a great way to transition into working in the real world.

Social media post I created for a solar convention

Tableau work