Schuler ’17 hard at work

Aaron Schuler ’19: Handshake – Thanks to the Small Business Internship Fund (SBIF) managed by Wabash College Career Services I’ve been able to learn a lot this summer. The company that I am working for is Handshake. They are a career services platform aimed at connecting students with employers by providing information on internships and employment opportunities. Through this internship, I’ve done many things for the company in many different fields.

My primary function is playing a support role to the account managers here. This role includes a lot of customer interaction. I answer questions as schools go through the implementation phase and are still learning the product. During the implementation step, I am also in charge of creating user accounts for the main career services staff of each school within our training, uploading, and handshake system. I also create reports on data within the system so that the schools have data to understand how the system has improved each school’s services. For example, I can determine the student involvement within the system over a period of time and send the results to the career services staff. Unlike many internships who focus mainly on teaching an intern one position, I also help with the sales and management teams at Handshake. I’ve worked on SDR projects for the marketing and sales team and I have looked at invoice reporting and office management to help management.

Coming into this summer, my career path was focused mainly on sales and marketing and from the experiences that I have had, I think sales, marketing, and account/project management would all be occupations that I would enjoy having post graduation. Mainly I want to be in a position where I have customer interaction. Handshake knows how to talk to and take care of their customers. I’ve learned a lot about the career service industry and made many connections with some of the best directors in the nation, further developing my good and helpful attitude in working with customers. I’ve been able to learn many things in the first four weeks I’ve had with Handshake. Thanks to the SBIF program I have the opportunity to learn many different parts of how a small business operates and what they value compared to larger corporations over the course of this summer.