500 word essay in response to the following questions (in a single essay):
Why are you interested in doing an Externship?
What do you hope to gain from the experience?
How do you plan to prepare for and make the most of your Externship?
As a reputed liberal arts college with a strong Electrical and Computer
Engineering (ECE) program, Lafayette has provided me with an extensive learning
experience. At this culmination point in(OF my journey at Lafayette) my Lafayette
journey, making a well-informed decision about a suitable career path to successfully
step into the real world has become supremely essential. Lafayette’s externship program
would be the perfect opportunity for me to experience the real-world industry, gain a
clearer idea of my career interests and get valuable feedback from my externship host
about their own experience. My peers, who have been on Lafayette’s externship program
confess that it has provided them with more than just the short-term job-shadowing and
networking opportunities; they strongly value its long-term career benefits. Therefore, I
am deeply attracted by the externship program and believe that it will provide me a
flexible and hands-on career exploration opportunity.
Microsoft, LSI and Chartic Consulting are the top three choices for my
externship. Among the three, I believe that I would reap the most benefit from an
externship at Microsoft. By job shadowing an employee of a large corporation, I will get
an opportunity to experience an environment with high work ethics and get the sense of
the responsibility, time management skills and communications skills that are essential to
thrive in a leading company. Through the many project-oriented engineering courses, I
have acquired a strong understanding of the importance of teamwork skills, project
management skills, and communication skills in addition to the importance of technical
competence. The externship at Microsoft would give me a sense of how these skills
would blend in the corporate culture of a large corporation. As the Microsoft externship
host is also an ECE graduate from Lafayette, I would get an appreciation of how he made
his own career decision and gain a better idea about choosing my own career path. This
externship will also enable me to gain an inside look at the incorporation of new products
into new markets, which is a valuable experience for a technology-oriented person like
me, as I will be able to gain a general understanding of the product market. The
opportunity to network and gain an inside look at the externship host’s day-to-day
corporate life would strongly enhance my candidacy for job applications, as I will be
better informed about the general working style and operation of a large corporation like
Microsoft.
Once I am selected, I would talk to my peers who have had a prior externship
experience to better prepare myself for the externship. At this point, it is crucial on my
part to perform an in-depth research about the particular company, and the position of my
externship host to understand the nature of his work. In addition to observing his work
functions, I would seek suggestions regarding different career possibilities, and network
in an efficient manner while maintaining a clear communication channel. I am confident
that keeping an open mind and being an observant listener would be the keys to the
success of the externship program.