How I Spent My "Selling Vacation" | 2 Days in the Life of an Intern

My name is Dana Emmons and I am a Junior at York High School in York, Maine. This week I am at Glance Networks for York High School's CareerQuest Job Shadow Program. I'm shadowing Tom Scontras, who is Glance's VP of Marketing and Sales.

The goals of the CareerQuest program are for students to:

• Gain appreciation for all types of careers;

• Learn about the duties, responsibilities, education, and training required for a possible career;

• Learn job seeking skills, such as writing resumes and letters of introduction, interviewing, and making contacts with people in the workplace; and then to

• Summarize and share our experiences in oral presentations.

So, here's what my two days looked like...

Day 1
I didn’t really know what to expect when I first arrived at Glance. But within a few hours of being thrown into the "Smarketing Dept." with Tom, Jo Klos, Mike Walsh, Jorge Mestre and Carla Gates, I started to learn a bit more about the software business and I am starting to see how software marketing works.  Some of the things I did include:

• Designed a tee shirt for a Glance corporate sponsorship program;
• Helped set up for, and attended a evening event which included a Panel discussion which was recorded live.
• Helped with software Q/A testing;
• Listened to inbound and outbound sales calls; and
• Learned about blogging and other social media marketing tactics.

Day 2
By the end of my second day, I found that this has been a great experience for me because the workplace here is always different. The day is never routine, there is always something different to do, as well as feeling very relaxed. I’ve learned that trying to sell a piece of software requires patience and the "right skills" -- meaning that you need to be sociable, understanding, and you need to make sure you do whatever you have to, to sell the product. And finally you must be assertive, but not aggressive. The job shadow program has shown me a whole new field of business that I could potentially be interested in.

-- Dana Emmons (with Carla Gates)