PPL 2017 Summer Internship Experience
Exciting, challenging and useful are a couple of words PPL interns used to describe their summer internship experience. This summer PPL gave 24 interns the opportunity to gain experience in their respective fields, develop skills and make connections.
A majority of the interns attend college in Pennsylvania such as Lehigh University, Penn State, DeSales University and Moravian College, but students also traveled from colleges like Virginia Tech and the University of Puerto Rico. The interns majored in various disciplines such as mathematics, business administration, engineering, corporate communications and paralegal studies, this group of students have an average GPA of 3.59.
Interns are provided with tools for success during the summer. Each intern is assigned a supervisor and a coach. Supervisors and coaches stretch the student’s capabilities and ensure student’s exposure to key people who may provide them with a potential promising career at PPL. Each intern is evaluated at the end of their internship term on the following PPL core values: safety and health, customer focus, diversity and engagement, performance excellence, integrity and openness, and corporate citizenship, as well as other performance dimensions.
The summer internship program at PPL is designed to assist in the professional development of college students by providing various resources. This summer, interns were required to perform three informational interviews to establish a professional network, participated in a professional development workshop where the students learned resume and interview tips from an HR perspective, and participated in Community Day.
Community Day is a day dedicated to service in the Lehigh Valley Area. This year interns volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club of Allentown. Some interns performed gardening duties, while other painted the facility in preparation for summer camp. Engineering intern Matthew Fainor reflects on his participation in Community Days and says the following “volunteering means helping out a neighbor of the community I am so much a part of. However, the fact that PPL invests time, importance and experience in volunteering in the community means they care about the organizations they service.”
Overall, the internship program is a time for students to explore and gain real life work experience in a field they have interest in and even discover new interest. An intern recalls on their internship experience at PPL and says the following “I very much enjoyed interviewing and shadowing others at the company in various departments. Having the opportunity to be exposed to their diverse experiences and get to know their respective departments allowed me to contextualize my work at PPL. Most of the people with which I had the opportunity to shadow/talk with viewed their work differently, which provided greater inspiration and reflection for me. For me, that reflection allowed for the growth of insight and fresh sparks of enthusiasm.”
For more information on internship and career opportunities with PPL, please visit www.pplweb.com/careers.