Dataset, Go
A three-part internship series about where to find ’em, why you need ’em, and how to turn one into a full-time job
Part II: Sector Searching
Before Harris School student Melissa Howard finished her first quarter in the MPP program last year, she was already considering post-graduation plans. The thought was somewhat vague, a hunch that city government and urban social policy could be her niche. “I had never worked in government,” she explains. “I just thought it would be right for me.”
And how. After months of persistent emailing and follow-up phone calls to California, Howard landed an unpaid summer internship with the San Francisco city budget office. The following ten weeks not only confirmed her compatibility with government work, the experience offered a potential springboard for her policy career. “If you have an idea of what you want, an internship is definitely the best way to test that,” she says.
Such soul searching has always been a major part of job hunting at the Harris School, says Gail Zurek, executive director of the Career Development Office. She and her team meet with students like Howard on a regular basis to discuss their academic interests and possible career paths. “We want to work with them to craft and refine their goals,” she says of these meetings. “It’s very individualized, which is beneficial, but it can also be frustrating because there’s no formula.”
Many students can get paralyzed by either being too specific or too vague in their career aspirations, Zurek admits, causing them to overlook one of the most important tools for figuring out whether they’re on the right track: summer internships.
Howard, for example, took the position in San Francisco because she knew that the budget office deals with a wide range of departments, giving her more time before specializing in a specific area. In addition to doing policy analysis and writing the mayor’s response to civil grand jury reports, Howard set up informational interviews in her spare time with various departments of the San Francisco government. This gave her face time with potential employers, but it also allowed her to figure out where she could use her policy skills most effectively.
In the end, the budget office seemed to offer the best opportunities. “You serve as an advocate for the department to the Mayor,” she says. “You work long hours, it’s really stressful, but when you leave every department wants you because you know the budget.”
Approaching the end of her two-year degree, Howard now works part time with Fiscal Management Associates, an initiative with the Wallace Foundation that provides pro-bono consulting services to nonprofits that do after-school programs for youth. Though the job boosts her fiscal skills, she says consulting work only bolsters her love for local government.
She’s still in touch with her supervisors in San Francisco—her direct boss is now deputy budget director—and plans to move back after graduation, hopefully stepping into a position if the office is hiring in the fall. “San Francisco is a cutting-edge place to do policy,” she adds. “At a young age, very quickly, you can have a lot of impact.”
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