To Internships and Beyond! A Major Milestone in my Professional and Academic Journey

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Greetings from Omaha, Nebraska! It’s hard to believe that summer is already drawing to a close; it went by in the blink of an eye. This summer, I completed my first internship, I’m really excited to share my experience with you and how it impacted my professional development!

In February, after submitting an application and doing several phone interviews with various recruiters, I received an internship offer from Kiewit! Kiewit is a Fortune 500 construction and contracting company, with hundreds of projects operating throughout North America, and even in Australia. It’s also headquartered in my hometown: Omaha, Nebraska. I was hired by the Kiewit Supply Network (KSN), a department handling procurement of materials for North American job sites.

Within KSN, I worked for the Technology Group, a division tasked with using technology solutions to make our procurement process more efficient. For me, this meant working with our internal e-commerce platform and completing data analysis to understand our past purchases in order to save money in the future.

As an Industrial and Systems Engineering major, many people were surprised that I wanted to intern in a Supply Network position rather than with a project team, however I think that being an ISE was a great fit for my role. On a daily basis, I was looking at inefficiencies within our purchasing processes, and strategizing with my team in order to save our projects time and money. I applied many of the techniques I learned in my Introduction to ISE class to carefully examine problems and understand existing systems. My work within KSN is another example of the versatility of an engineering degree and how Viterbi has already prepared me for careers in countless fields.

One of my favorite parts about working for Kiewit was the fact that the company engages its interns with meaningful work and cares about their overall experience. In the two months I interned, I worked on countless projects, some of which ultimately ended up impacting the entire company. Additionally, I got the chance to see actual job sites and meet project engineers, giving me the opportunity to see how my division impacts Kiewit’s individual projects.

Working for Kiewit was an incredibly insightful learning experience. I learned skills, such as web development, evaluating suppliers and proposals, and higher level Excel manipulations/analysis techniques, but perhaps more importantly I discovered more about my interests specifically, and what I want to explore further in college and beyond. Throughout the summer, I spent a lot of time working with a range of tech-related solutions, and realized that in the future, I’d like to continue working with technology in an even more hands-on respect.

I’m very grateful to have been able to spend a summer working in the construction industry, it definitely opened my eyes to new interests and provided great experience. I learned a lot about myself, the doors my major opens, and my professional trajectory. I can’t thank Kiewit, my mentor and manager, and everyone else I worked with enough for supporting me this summer!

Now, I’m gearing up for sophomore year; I cannot wait to return to campus, reunite with my friends, and continue my journey through college! If you have any questions about interning, ISE, or how freshman year prepared me to intern, feel free to reach out to me. Don’t forget to check out my page to read more blogs and learn more about how I make the most of my life at USC!

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