Students at the Debbie and Jerry Ivy College of Business learn early in their college career the added value of having an internship before graduation.
This summer, Ivy students are engaging in a wide range of internships to add real-world experience to their resumes before they graduate. Meet Regan Saxton, a senior who shared why a summer internship is adding valuable experience to her college career.
Saxton, a senior from Davenport, Iowa, studying supply chain management and marketing, spent her summer as a digital guest loyalty intern with Casey’s in Ankeny, Iowa.
As a digital guest loyalty intern, Saxton worked on the rewards team, which is involved with the loyalty program Casey’s Rewards. The team talks with category managers to build offers to run for Casey’s Rewards members, such as buy one get one, buy one get $1 off, etc. In her position, Saxton created offer images that are placed with each reward offer, built customer segments for the reward offers, and helped with billbacks to the vendors for the amount each vendor owes Casey’s for the reward offer they ran in the specific month, ensuring that they stay within the vendor’s allocated spending.
“I have loved getting to meet and talk with everyone across the company,” Saxton said. “Casey’s does a great job of getting you exposure to people across departments and that has been a great way to see different parts of the business. I am learning about the corporate world daily.”
Interns at Casey’s had plenty of opportunities to engage in hands-on activities. Some of Saxton’s favorites included making pizzas in the kitchen and store immersion, a day where the interns are assigned to a Casey’s location to work in the store for a couple of hours. These activities gave the interns the chance to learn about the entire Casey’s company while getting to ask questions, network, and have fun.
Saxton found this internship position on CyHire, then talked to Casey’s at the career fair. After that, she applied on the Casey’s website and got an interview.
“I decided to apply for the position because the description was an interesting side of marketing that I wanted to learn about. This specific internship position had aspects of segmentation and analytics that I found cool on the marketing side of things. I also thought Casey’s would be a great company to work for, along with the chance to talk with many other areas of the company to better understand what I want to do in the future.”
