If you think the A-10 championships are competitive, try looking for a job as a new graduate in the current job market. By helping place a UMass swimmers or diver as a summer intern, you will really make a difference in their professional development and greatly improve the odds of them landing their first job.
Long gone are the days when interns just prepare coffee, photocopy materials, and pick up the boss’ dry cleaning. Today, interns are hired and trained like regular employees to carry out relevant and important duties. Clearly, this experience helps students to develop a sense of individual responsibility, while gaining real life, industry-specific knowledge and skills. And as a by product, it will make them a more viable, experienced job applicant when seeking employment after graduation.
But it’s not just the student that benefits. Many employers rank internship experience high during the hiring process, and often look to their own interns as the best potential candidates for full-time positions. If you think about it, an internship is the most comprehensive process for vetting new employees. And there is no better place to find a highly motivated, hardworking group of candidates to choose from than the Men’s Swimming and Diving program.
So do you want to do something meaningful for the UMass Men’s Swimming and Diving Team? Then consider helping a sophomore or junior to find a paid internship this summer.
Contact your company’s Human Resource department to find out if they will be sponsoring summer interns. And if they have an active internship program, then please contact Russ Yarworth (yarworth@admin.umass.edu ) and he will try to line someone up who matches the academic and personal interest of the kinds of positions your company is trying to fill.
John Nunnelly
VP Strategic Planning
McKesson Provider Technologies
Checking in from Puerto Rico again as the UMASS Men’s Swim Team is on our fifth day of training here. The weather the last 2 days has been less than ideal with rain and clouds, but the intensity in practice hasn’t wavered one bit. On Tuesday we had our annual Three Kings practice. The team had a lot of fun with the coin flipping game of chance and still managed to get a great workout in. I am proud to say that not one group settled for the 100 as everyone gambled for the 50/200 option. The risk paid off for most except for Brian Schmidt’s group who had to do four 200’s. After the Three Kings practice we had the afternoon off and the team took it’s annual trip to the abandoned beach 25 minutes from the hotel. The waves were huge and Russ made us “buddy up” for fear of leaving someone behind. Unfortunately after only 10 minutes in the water, the Police showed up and told Russ that swimming on this side of the island was prohibited due to the huge surf. We were all disappointed but went right to the hotel beach where the waves were just as fun for all of us. Wednesday we went back to work as the afternoon practice was a low interval set. Everyone on the team is working hard to improve and make the final push before taper in February. We have lactate workouts tonight and tomorrow morning and I am sure Russ will be expecting fast swims from all of us. I will check back in later this week.
