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SALISBURY, MD---Haley Gill of Silver Spring, MD, arrived at СÀ¶ÊÓƵ wanting to work in human resources. Now, thanks to an internship, she has unlocked a gateway to her dream career.

 

A senior business management major, Gill worked as a retail leadership intern for Under Armour at the Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, MD. After graduation, she will go into an assistant store manager position with the company.

 

“This is what I want to do,” Gill said. “During the final week of my internship, I got to run an operations sector to prove my skills. They offered me a job upon graduation.”

 

The internship was part of the Applied Business Learning Experience that is required of all students graduating with a major from SU’s Franklin P. Perdue School of Business. It just so happens that Gill got to the opportunity to intern with her dream company.

 

“I had four interviews before I got the internship,” Gill said. “I had to do research on the company, and I learned every product in the store within a week.”

 

Each day was different at the Under Armour store, but Gill enjoyed the challenge. Sometimes she would open the store and do basic tasks like counting the register and arranging displays. Most of the time, she assumed a leadership role, organizing her teammates, informing them of promotions and helping them achieve their daily goals.

 

She said her biggest accomplishment at the internship was running a sample sale. Before the store opened, she was able to lead a team to get 300 boxes of shoes unpacked, marked and on the floor for the sale.

 

“It’s a huge blowout sale where interns show what they know,” Gill said. “My managers had confidence in me, so I had more confidence in myself.”

 

Gill said one of the most important skills she learned at her internship was how to communicate with employees and interact with customers. Each day was a new situation and every customer was different, so she said getting that firsthand experience and having to think on her feet was important to her growth into a leadership position. That’s exactly where she sees herself going: Ultimately, she wants to work in operations management in a corporate setting for Under Armour.

 

“In operations management, I would be handling shipment processes and online orders, and focusing on the hardware of a store,” Gill said. “If a store needs more receipt paper or screws for their walls, I would take stock and send it to them. It’s more task-based, which is what I like.”

 

Gill will find out next spring which store she will be placed at to start her career. The location at the Montgomery Mall is a brand house, which she says is more customer-oriented, but she could be placed at an outlet store, which focuses more on older products. She could end up in a completely different environment than where she interned, but Gill said she now feels prepared for what’s to come.

 

“My internship changed my whole career path,” Gill said. “Even if you aren’t required to do an internship, it’s something everyone should do because it opens up so many doors.”