Building relationships that matter

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of blog posts by LinkedIn’s fabulous summer interns. Today, we hear from Anne Marie Mills who is currently working toward her MBA at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management.

LinkedIn was built on the mantra that “relationships matter”, a mantra I’ve been living and breathing for the past 6 weeks of my internship. I'm a Human Resources MBA intern supporting our Global Sales Organization. I’ve been amazed at the quality of folks that I work with at LinkedIn, especially the great people who surround me in the MBA Internship Program with students from Haas to Harvard.

This week, I joined the Global Sales Organization at their training offsite in Monterey, CA. It was an insightful two days of learning how to sell and the perfect opportunity for me to bond and solidify my relationships with fellow interns. Since there were multiple sessions, I was able to leverage my intern network to exchange learnings from other sessions.  While I spent time with the Marketing Solutions team learning how to identify our customers’ true pain points, my fellow intern David spent time with the Hiring Solutions team building the skills needed to be a trusted advisor. By sharing our different experiences, we were able to learn about different parts of the Sales organization. Of course, sharing stories wasn’t all we did, we also built sand castles and made s’mores on the beach!

I’ve also built incredible relationships with other interns through events planned by LinkedIn to take advantage of the California sunshine. This past weekend, a group of MBA interns went on a glorious tour of Napa Valley in a stretch SUV. On our way up, I talked to a few interns about how our current internships at LinkedIn were giving us interesting work experiences that will help us reach our career goals in the future. Emily Hsiao, a Marketing intern, is focused on making a significant impact while balancing work and life. Brian Craigie, another Marketing intern, is getting valuable experience in big picture marketing. And for me, I want to work at a strategic organizational level. Since I know career success is built on genuine relationships like these, I’m so glad to know that I will be able to call on Emily or Brian for their marketing expertise. To continue this relationship building, we’ll be attending a sushi making class to learn how to roll and tomorrow we’ll be celebrating an intern’s birthday in San Francisco to see who knows how to rock!

So far, LinkedIn has been a great place to connect with amazingly talented professionals as I grow my career. I know that the friendships I develop this summer at LinkedIn will be connections I’ll be able to count on for the rest of my career.