Aileen: Hey guys, welcome back to my channel, Lavendaire.
Today I’m so excited to have a special guest.
This is Lauren Berger of Intern Queen,
and she’s made it her goal to give students great career and internship advice.
Lauren: Hi everybody!
Very excited to be on your channel,
we are such fans over at Intern Queen so thank you.
Aileen: Thank you!
Let’s jump in.
So tell me, I’m so interested:
how did you decide to start Intern Queen?
Lauren: I had fifteen internships in college, which is crazy, like no one needs fifteen
internships.
With every internship I learned so much about myself, both personally and professionally.
I would go to the bookstore and I would look online and I was trying to find a resource
or a person or the Rachael Ray of the career space to help me.
And I always came up short.
So when I was graduating college, I was like, “Wait a second.
I’ve had fifteen internships.
What if I could be the person that helps other students, my friends at the time,
land internships and learn how to make the most of them?”
I was certainly not an expert, but I had made every mistake in the book,
and I had learned so much from all of my mistakes,
so I really wanted to tell the world all that I had learned.
Aileen: That’s awesome.
First of all, how do you handle fifteen internships?
How does that even fit into four years of college?
Lauren: You know, I look back and it just doesn’t make sense!
Aileen: Did you double up on internships at once?
Lauren: Yes, I would double and triple them up.
One year between my junior and senior year of college, I came out to LA.
I went to school in Florida so coming here to LA was a big deal.
I interned at MTV, NBC, and Fox all in the same summer.
I’m not sure all the companies knew that I was interning.
Aileen: That’s crazy!
Lauren: So it was a little bit crazy, but I’m one of those people
that thrives on having a lot of things going on and I loved it.
The internships were just priceless and really helped me get to where I am today.
Aileen: So is there a reason why you didn’t go into a career
in one of those internships that you did?
Lauren: I did.
My first career was in entertainment.
I was an assistant
at a really big talent agency and my internship contacts helped me land that dream job SO
fast.
I always say getting a job for me was like ordering a hamburger at McDonald’s
ONLY, only because I had my internships.
Internships totally set me up for success.
But it’s funny, growing up-and I talk about this in my first book, “All Work, No Pay”-
my grandma always told me I would be a writer
and my mom always told me I’d be a speaker.
(That’s how they talk.)
Aileen: I love it.
Lauren: Strong New York accents.
And sure enough, I kind of do a little bit of all of it today.
There’s a lot of different tasks I did as an intern that are incorporated into Intern
Queen today.
Intern Queen is a little bit of media, a little bit of PR, a little bit of writing.
So I kind of do a little bit of all those things I was doing back as an intern, as a
career today.
Aileen: To me it sounds like your drive came before all those fifteen internships.
Do you want to talk a little bit about your upbringing and what created this go-go personality?
Lauren: It’s funny, before internships-when I meet high school students
and they tell me that they’re interning, I’m like, “I was not like you.”
I was on a dance team, I was co-captain of the dance team.
I was worried what cute boy was throwing a cool party on Friday night.
And I was worried about my friends.
I really-maybe I was ambitious deep down,
but I had no direction and I really wasn’t thinking about the future at all
when I was in high school.
I think what I DID have, and I definitely recognize it now,
is that I definitely have parents that are like, “You need to be your best at all times!”
They didn’t really accept anything below that, and of course when I was a bad child,
they were like, “No!
You are bad!
You must be better!”
But I mean, really, they set me up for success and they didn’t want to accept
that I wasn’t going to be successful.
So I think my parents definitely set me up
with that foundation, and then my mom is definitely that mom that is still calling me today
and she’s like, “I watched this on the Today Show and you should call this person.”
Aileen: Oh wow, so they really do help you along the way.
Lauren: Yeah, I think I get a lot of my go-getter-ness-if that’s a word,
it’s definitely not-from my parents.
Aileen: I see.
Do you feel like-I mean there are pros and cons to everything,
so yes it helps you have that drive.
But do you feel like you’re hard on yourself sometimes?
Because I get that personality sometimes.
Lauren: Definitely, definitely.
Aileen: Do you struggle with that part?
Lauren: This morning-embarrassing story-I was late for a shoot today.
Not to meet you, earlier in the day; I would not be late for you.
Aileen: Oh, that’s okay!
Lauren: But I was late today and I was freaking out.
I’m like,
“I’m running late and this and this and the whole team’s waiting for me!”
And what did I do?
I didn’t back out of my garage correctly and boom!
Aileen: Oh no!
Lauren: I think that’s an example of just being hard on myself for no reason
and being like, “Leave!
Leave!
What are you doing?
You’re late!”
We’re all hard on ourselves at times.
Aileen: I want to ask: do you take time for yourself?
Do you have a self care routine?
Lauren: A self care routine?
Aileen: I’m curious.
Lauren: I WISH I had a self care routine.
I would say that I try, by like 11:00 PM every night,
to be like, “Okay, stop.
Okay, stop.
Go take a shower.
Go organize your clothes.
Go do something mindless.
And end your night the way you want to end it,
not the way your inbox wants you to end it.”
So I try to end my nights, I would say, on my terms.
I need to have-I go to bed late-
but I do have that relaxed period at the end of the night, which is important to me.
I try to do that on the road as well.
After a certain time, no matter what,
the computer has to close or else you’re going to bed thinking of emails.
So I do try to make sure there’s an end time, even if it’s late.
An end time, and there’s an activity after that, even if it’s just-
usually it’s just sitting in bed watching TV.
Just so that I can relax and, again,
wind down on my terms not our clients’ terms.
Aileen: I totally love that.
I do believe that you have to set a time to stop working,
especially when you’re doing something-like you’re your own boss, right?
Lauren: Right.
Aileen: No one’s telling you when to start and stop work.
Lauren: Right, and you have to tell yourself.
Aileen: You have to.
Lauren: When you’re your own boss and really, in most every industry and every position
today,
we’re all too busy, we’re all too connected, we all have too many things to do.
At the end of the day, a to-do list is almost becoming unhelpful
because the to-do list just goes on and on and on.
It’s really up to all of us to prioritize
and draw that line and say, “Okay, and now the work is done, because I’m saying it’s
done.”
Aileen: Yeah, exactly.
For me, I have a huge to-do list but everyday I’m like,
“Okay I’m just gonna try to finish three things and if i get those done, that’s fine.”
Lauren: I think that’s great because you have to sort of define your own success
and if you don’t do that, then you’re like, “Oh my god,
I didn’t finish my thirty things on my to-do list.”
Aileen: You’ll never finish.
Lauren: “I didn’t have a good day,” right?
So I think that’s great advice for everybody:
that if you finish three things, that is success.
I think that’s great.
Aileen: Let’s talk about you as you’ve been building your empire since 2009, right?
What has been the biggest struggle?
It’s a big question.
Lauren: There’s so many struggles.
I think that, in running your own business,
there’s a new struggle every year.
There’s like a new theme, right?
Before when I was running my own business for the first two or three years,
it was just me in my apartment with my computer.
So a lot of my struggles were self-contained in a way.
Now my struggles include other people because I have employees now.
I have a team now, so it’s not just about me.
I was telling my employee the other day,
I was like, “You don’t know how much I think about you.”
Aileen: Aww.
Lauren: It’s weird!
Aileen: I’m sure they appreciate that.
Lauren: Yeah, you know, hopefully.
But you think about your team now.
If we don’t succeed, it’s not just me anymore, right?
How the business does affects a lot of other people.
We have our team, we have freelancers that we work with.
There’s all these other people,
so I think a lot of that is just-I wouldn’t say it’s a struggle-
but it’s definitely a challenge and an obstacle.
And the biggest challenge is that
I still have not taken on any investment money and I’ve been running my business for,
we’re going into year eight, which, you know, round of applause for us.
We’re very happy.
But it’s a big math problem.
My mom is a math teacher
and I never thought I would have to use math.
I hate math
and I have to use math every single day.
And it’s always a matter of saying,
“Okay, this is what we want to do, but can we afford to do that?
And if we do that, can we still afford to pay everybody on our team?
And we have an office now, we pay the rent for the office and do all these things.
It’s always a balancing act, and it’s always a big math problem.
So I think that’s maybe been the biggest struggle or challenge.
I like the word “challenge”, right?
Aileen: That’s a challenge, because everyone goes through it.
And I’ve heard that when you’re in that situation, you have to be more creative, right?
Whenever there’s a limit to finances, you have to.
Is there a way-
can you give an example of how you get creative?
Lauren: Yeah, I can give you an example of how we’ve been creative
is by hiring people that are flexible.
I talk about Marisol a lot.
She’s behind the scenes right now, staring at us.
Marisol’s our executive assistant,
and when we hired her, we couldn’t afford to hire an executive assistant full-time.
She was very flexible.
She did another part-time job at the time,
and she came on 15 hours a week.
As we got into a rhythm and we were able to rationalize
the expense of Marisol all the time, as we really saw the value in her work continue
to grow,
we were able to say, “Okay, now we can do 30 hours a week, and now she’s full-time
salary.
That will keep increasing.”
It’s nice to hire flexible people.
I think that’s a piece of advice
I have for other entrepreneurs out there.
You don’t need to hire the crazy Harvard grad
as your first employee.
You know what, I don’t think that I really ever need that.
I found very, very valuable people that have started as flexible and have come on
and become a great big part of our Intern Queen family.
Aileen: As long as they have the passion and they want to be there.
Lauren: Yeah, and I think people being a culture fit is really important too.
With Intern Queen, it’s not just getting people that want a job.
It’s people that are passionate about the message
and want to work with young people on a daily basis.
Not everyone wants to call college students all day and talk about internships.
It’s important to find those people that are passionate about whatever it is you’re
doing
Aileen: This is a great transition into those who are looking to get their dream internship
or job.
First you need the passion and I’m sure there’s so much behind that.
Can you practical tips for people?
Lauren: Practical tips for people looking for a job, an internship, or both?
Aileen: Let’s pick one: an internship, a dream internship.
Lauren: When you’re looking for a dream internship, focus is the most important thing.
I meet a lot of students who say, “Well I wanted to get an internship last summer
and I applied for two things and it didn’t work out, so I didn’t get anything.”
No, no, no, no, no.
You gotta have the “I am going to get an internship”
or “I am going to get a job” mentality.
And if you believe it, other people are going to believe it.
And applying to two places just isn’t going to cut it, so I suggest starting with ten.
You apply for ten internships, then you kind of go every two weeks, you add more to your
roster.
You start by applying for ten internships, you put those applications out.
Two weeks later: crickets, okay you apply for another ten.
And you keep going.
It sounds excessive, but internships, especially summer internships.
Aileen: They’re competitive.
Lauren: They’re so competitive!
A big company like Michael Kors, for example,
they could be looking for one intern.
One intern, they might get 2,000 resumes.
You never know.
So it’s really important to make sure you’re applying for enough opportunities
so you actually walk away with an internship in your hand.
I think focus and determination is really important.
And then just blocking out your time,
because everyone’s busier than the next person, right?
We all have so much going on these days.
You have to block out time
to actually sit down, do the research, and put together your applications.
Aileen: Do you have any more tips for jobs?
Is it any different compared to internships?
Lauren: I think that the mindset is very similar.
I always say,
“When you don’t have a job, your job is to get a job.”
You should be going somewhere 10:00-4:00 PM everyday and doing different things
to look for a job.
So not just going to regular job sites.
We just did a Twitter chat the other night and I said,
“Seniors in college are like farmers.
They should just be planting seeds.”
As a senior in college about to graduate, your job is to plant seeds
with as many people as possible and let them know that you’re coming into the world.
You are about to graduate, so that when you do call them when you have graduated
and you’re looking for that job, they already knew.
They already know, they have you
in the back of their mind.
So I think when you’re looking for a job
or if you’re looking for an internship, part of that process is just letting people
know
what you’re up to and what you’re looking for, and doing that in advance.
I would say, three months before it’s crunch time to find that internship,
start planting those seeds.
Circle back to any professional connections.
Aileen: And you’ll be ahead of everyone else because everyone procrastinates
with those kind of things too.
Lauren: Right!
No one else is doing it.
They’re waiting til the last minute.
Just really think ahead of time.
Aileen: Plan your life ahead of time and be super determined
you’re going to get it no matter what.
Lauren: Absolutely, and just make sure you’re catering all your materials
for the position that you want.
We had this situation come up yesterday in our office
when we were hiring-we’re trying to find an intern for a huge fashion company.
HUGE, I mean opportunity of a lifetime.
We had twelve resumes that we were looking at
and we were like, “We don’t want to send them any of these candidates.”
I said to Marisol, who I talk about a lot, “Marisol, what’s the deal?
There’s twelve people,
how come we don’t want to send any of the resumes?”
And it was because no one popped off the page.
No one put-it’s a fashion internship,
so on that resume you need to have something fashion-oriented.
And if you don’t have anything, any other internship experience, start to go fishing.
What DO you have?
Are you involved in anything on campus tha you can talk about,
any clubs, any groups, any class projects?
Just put something relevant on there
and something that makes us say, “Wow, this person has the right experience.
We want to send this resume to the client.”
I think, again, we’re the middleman.
We’re the ones who are passing along the resumes from student to employer.
Give those middlemen a reason to pass it forward, right?
Give those employers a reason to want to read your resume instead of the other eleven.
Aileen: So you sound like you’ve always been very confident
and I know that some people out there don’t have that confidence
when they’re trying to find that internship or job.
And confidence is a big thing
when you go into an interview.
Do you have any tips on people who are not as confident?
Lauren: I think practice makes perfect, so I think the more well-informed you are
on the company you are interviewing with, on interview skills in general, the more practice-
and mock-interviews that you’ve done, the more prepared and the more confident
you’re going to feel because you’re going to be like,
“Been there, done that!
I know how to do that.”
I think a couple things:
one is if you do a lot of interviews, that’s okay.
Don’t let that let you down.
Going to an interview, even if you don’t land the position, just going through
the experience of interviewing is a positive thing.
Also again, if you’re in college,
utilize that career center.
If you’re in high school, utilize your guidance counselor.
They’ll often do practice interviews for you.
In my first book “All Work, No Pay”,
we have a list of practice interview questions.
At career centers,
there’s lists of practice interview questions.
Read those, and then just do your homework on
not only the company but the person you’re interviewing with.
Stalk them on LinkedIn.
Aileen: Right.
I think that’s great.
Do you have any last pieces of advice
for people out there trying to build their dream career?
Lauren: I think that internships change lives.
I mean not everyone
is going to go on to be the Intern Queen, obviously.
Aileen: There’s only room for one queen.
Lauren: You don’t need to make internships your job like I have,
but every successful person I know, they say one thing and that is:
“It all started with an internship.”
So that is my food for thought
that I’ll leave everyone with today.
Aileen: Me too.
I did seven internships in college and they all taught me something different,
got me to where I am now.
Lauren: Yeah, and they all help you get to where you want to be.
It’s a very powerful thing.
Aileen: Alright, thank you so much for this.
You’re so helpful.
Lauren: Yay!
Thanks for having me.
Aileen: Everyone follow Lauren Berger at the Intern Queen.
I’ll put all the links right here on the screen.
Lauren: Yay, thanks everyone!
Aileen: Bye!