The University of Indianapolis provides many internships for students, but junior accounting major Shelby Lannan has had multiple internships and opportunities that she found on her own.
Over the summer and into the school year, Lannan has interned at Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company, where she spends most of her time on the phone, calling potential customers to discuss life and home insurance.
She has also become certified to sell life and home insurance as well as Medicare supplements.
She also controls social media accounts, where she keeps up on clientele and forms good relationships with customers.
Lannan said that she got this internship by meeting people and networking on her own.
“I went to a career fair, and I met a woman there,” Lannan said. “Her daughter, at the time, was dating someone I went to high school with, and she really liked that I was from a small town. Then she looked at my resume, and she really liked it. There are not many females who work at the company, so they really wanted a female that was a business major.”
Lannan is involved in many activities on campus including being a resident assistant and serving as the UIndy Student Organization of Latinos Co-President.
Being so busy, Lannan values the flexibility of her internship and the freedom it gives her to get her school work done and participate in other activities.
“There is a lot of freedom in the internship,” she said. “They are very flexible with my school schedule as well as [my] being an RA. They really let me make my schedule the way I want to.”
In the summer, Lannan will begin an internship with Huntington Bank, doing credit analyzing, where she will assess companies’ credit and determine whether they should receive a loan.
This internship is closely connected to her major and what she wants to do as a career, according to Lannan, so she is excited to start. Lannan got this internship on her own as well and will be one of the first students ever to be a part of the program.
“I won a scholarship through the Risk Management Association, and the lady worked at Huntington Bank. And then she met me, and she has this brand new program which is like a co-op internship, and I am one of three of the first people to ever have it,” Lannan said.
Lannan said she is excited to start her internship at Huntington Bank because of its connection to her major, which will allow her to discover what she actually wants to do with her career.
“I’m really looking forward to the Huntington internship because it’s never been done before,” she said. “And I’m really excited to learn more about banking and see if that is a career I would potentially want to go into. I actually graduate in December, and I’m hoping to be some sort of financial planner or work in the banking industry,” Lannan said. “I’m hoping with the Huntington bank internship, I will really get to see if that’s what I want to do… I think it’s [the Mutual of Omaha internship] been a good experience, but I’m really excited for the Huntington one because I think it’ll be more toward my career and what I want to do. So I think that one will be a different experience.”
Being an RA and participating in other activities, Lannan said that she has learned teamwork and how to communicate with others, which she can apply in these internship opportunities.
“Something different that I’ve learned is actually understanding the business world and a lot of the terms and things like that, that I learn in accounting. I am also learning in my internships,” she said. “So I think that is the most beneficial thing.”
Lannan will finish her internship with Mutual of Omaha this semester, before beginning her work with the Huntington Bank Co-Op Program.
