Kaleigh Karageorge

Corporate Communication

North American Dental Group

How has your internship helped build skills and clarify your career goals?

"My internship has enabled me to learn how to communicate effectively in a workplace environment. Because of my time at NADG, I feel comfortable working with and communicating with superiors in order to formulate strategy proposals to better our business. I have also learned to work with many HR systems that enable my company to manage employee affairs. Finally, I have learned to effectively prioritize assigned tasks in an efficient way that allows for maximum productivity in the Human Resources department.

How do you apply your Liberal Arts skills in your internship?
Because of this internship, I now know I prefer working in HR to marketing, since I thoroughly enjoy face-to-face interaction. I will be continuing my internship at North American Dental Group, and I have the intentions of working in a healthcare environment because of my time here." Many of my communication skills have enabled me to speak to new hires in a professional manner. Further, I have used many of my interviewing skills obtained from COM 325 in order to construct interviewing guides in order to better assess candidates skills. Above all, I was able to empathize and work efficiently with coworkers to cooperatively complete desired goals.

Describe your typical day as an intern.  

Typically, I work Monday-Friday. I try to get approximately 20-25 hours per week. Since I work from my computer at home, I clock in at 9 or 10am and work for 4-5 hours. During the workday, I am in charge of maintaining our job postings, making new, appealing templates for our open positions, and any other random HR tasks assigned to me. I typically have 3-4 conference calls in a week where I am able to communicate with the rest of my department in order to formulate strategies for filling positions and maintaining our company ratings.

What was the most challenging aspect of your internship?  

The most challenging aspect of my internship is trying to manage tasks. Since our company is growing, I will typically be assigned multiple tasks in a short period of time, and I have to decide the most beneficial order to complete them in. Prioritization is difficult, but I've improved at it a great deal.

What was the most exciting thing about your role? 

I really enjoyed meeting coworkers through conference calls. It was really exciting to see the overall structure of our company and how everyone contributed to our overall mission. I was also able to see how the work I completed was implemented to improve our overall plans.

What surprised you most about your internship? 

 I was most surprised about how much I enjoyed working from home.

Describe the most meaningful experience you had as an intern.

The most meaningful experience at NADG was just overall having a whole summer to really explore the HR field and see what I enjoyed and what I didn't. It was really rewarding knowing I was doing something concrete to help our employees. Because of this, I know HR is something I'm very interested in now.

How did you learn about your internship?

The College of Liberal Arts Career Center had a posting.