How College Skills Translate to Business
My perspective on the overlap between what I’ve learned in my undergraduate coursework and my internship at Skillsoft
As a current student undergoing my undergraduate degree, I have always wondered how similar a classroom environment would be to a working environment. With Skillsoft as my first official internship experience, my expectations have already been exceeded regarding the connection I am seeing between my work in the classroom and my introduction to the corporate world. Specifically, I am currently working on completing an Aspire Journeys course that is covering the Marketing Manager Journey. Aspire Journeys are a part of the Percipio platform, where learners can take guided paths that target a specific area of focus to transform your career. Working through the Aspire Journeys learning path has allowed me to continue learning about the marketing field and make connections between my coursework in my undergraduate schooling and my work at Skillsoft. Furthermore, the integration of learning within my internship role at Skillsoft has ultimately elevated my experience and role as an intern. Just as Skillsoft’s goal is to allow users to “unleash their edge” and grow their potential through the online learning and training that the company’s products offer, I can be a byproduct of this and play the role of a learner throughout my internship. My fellow interns and I are strengthening our skills so we can hit the ground running because of the real-world experience that Skillsoft provides.
During the second semester of my sophomore year, I took a course called Sophomore Success. This program was taught by the director of career planning for the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University. Sophomore Success was an eight-week long development program intended to cultivate career development skills and knowledge within students. This ultimately provided us with a competitive advantage moving into junior year. Through a combination of group sessions and 1v1 instruction, we learned about resumes, cover letters, networking, LinkedIn, finding an internship, and interviewing skills, ending the class in a mock interview. In addition, the instructor of the program was a Gallup- Certified Strengths coach, so she gave us the opportunity and access to take CliftonStrengths for students. CliftonStrengths is an online assessment used for students to explore and define their personal strengths that can be used to reach their full potential. When I learned that Skillsoft’s mission included the mentality of “unleash your edge” for consumers, this resonated with me as it reminded me of my experience in taking the CliftonStrengths assessment. I then learned that Skillsoft offers something similar for professionals, called Skillsoft Skills Benchmark Assessment. Through my completion of the assessment, I was able to discover and define my top five strengths as developer, empathy, adaptability, arranger, and positivity. Learning what my strengths were and what they meant through taking this course helped me elevate my interview skills by highlighting these specific qualities. For example, in future interviews I can highlight my interpersonal leadership style and my ability to notice the potential of others due to my strength as a developer.
Along with this memorable program that helped me to hone in on gaining the college skills that I foresaw being critical to the business world, there are numerous courses that I have taken in my undergrad that prove their relevance. One marketing class that I have taken at Fairfield where I can see the applicability in my role is Consumer Behavior. A focus so far in my internship role has been to offer the perspective of an end user of Skillsoft’s online learning and training. In this role, I have been able to apply what I learned in my consumer behavior class to predict how consumers of Percipio will respond to the platform and its benefits. With the knowledge I gained in this class, as well as the background I have in Psychology, I have become better suited to understand truly what a customer’s needs are and how to reach them. Furthermore, I have developed the skills needed to understand the behaviors of consumers and learned how to market to a specific group based on their needs.
Another memorable course I have taken while at Fairfield that has translated to my exposure to the corporate world thus far was Organizational Communication. While the coursework that was included in this class was beneficial, it is important to mention that it was truly the professor’s insight that had an impact on me. The professor I had the pleasure of taking this course with had an abundance of experience. While it sounds like a simple thing, he taught me the importance of being timely and professional. He emphasized the seriousness of meeting deadlines, and ultimately how far this would carry us in our professional lives. The mentality that my professor used as he taught his course was as simple as this; if you hit the deadlines, act professionally, and pay close attention to and follow specific instructions that are asked of you, then you will succeed in my class.
Something that I have learned from Skillsoft so far is that the world is constantly changing and evolving. Due to this, it will be important for me to maintain the skills that I have already learned from my time in college, but I also expect to further the connections that I see between my coursework and the business world. Through both the skills I am learning from my role as a Product Marketing intern, as well as by personally taking advantage of Skillsoft’s offerings, I believe that I am better suited to adapt to the changing world we live in.
