Internship Highlight- Carlos Bowser

Hello CSS Community: My name is Carlos Bowser and I am a junior majoring in Information Science. This past summer, I had the pleasure of interning with IBM in Chicago as a technical solutions specialist. During the tenure of my internship, I primarily worked in tech sales. In addition, there were consulting aspects which applied to my role. My internship lasted from May 22nd until August 5th, with the first week including an orientation in Dallas. My role was working in IBM’s collaboration brand where I became highly skilled in many IBM products, mainly our enterprise collaboration software called Connections. I began by helping my team generate reactive (deals ending soon) and proactive (deals that just began) customer opportunities to then pursue and develop Connections demos. My biggest accomplishments were the many sales presentations I was able to deliver. I traveled to the Chicago suburbs with my team and gave a small presentation on our product in a client meeting. They were so satisfied with how I had done that they expanded my role and asked me to travel with them to Quebec and Nashville to deliver additional client presentations. In Nashville, I had the opportunity to deliver an hour-long Connections walkthrough and demo, which resulted in a $20,000 sale.

Over the duration of my internship I learned more than I could have ever imagined. I was able to sharpen my professional and personal skills. I traveled across the country and internationally networked with professionals from across the globe. I was rated outstanding across the board and was consistently praised for my initiative, adaptability, and intellectual curiosity.

My internship experience facilitated my growth as a young professional. During my time with IBM, I was given autonomy to explore my own interests. I pursued projects in IBM’s consulting branch and had the chance to help develop a proof of concept for America’s largest distribution company. Becoming a consultant is my primary professional goal however, I recently received an offer to return to IBM next summer. The offer is extremely competitive and would provide me with the option to intern in either San Francisco, New York, or DC. I plan to accept this return offer to work with IBM next summer.

CSS Scholar & Executive Board Member,
Carlos Bowser