Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that mine the Be Epic Podcast for lessons and insights that students and practitioners can apply to their lives as business leaders.
Rachel Mooreland’s career as a social media “influencer” began as an intern.
What? You didn’t know there were internships for would-be influencers?
Influencer marketing — where companies hire online influencers, as well as celebrities, to endorse their products — has grown from around $1 billion worldwide in 2016 to somewhere between $10 billion and $13.8 billion in 2021.
While that segment of the marketing industry is spreading faster than a viral video of a cute cat, it seems a bit strange that anyone would get their start with an internship. But the way Mooreland sees it, everything that’s happened with her career goes back to the internship experience she had from 2012 through 2014 at Tyson Foods while working on her degree at the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
Mooreland, who is now works in Chicago as a brand manager for Tyson in addition to her side gig promoting products through her social media accounts, described the value of her internship when she was a guest on the Be Epic Podcast hosted by Walton College Dean Matt Waller. Here are six things I learned from that interview that I think would help current students working as interns or preparing for an internship.
- Intern early and often.
- Let school and work inform each other.
- Treat the experience as a class.
- Build relationships as well as skills.
- Take what you learn and apply it to whatever you do.
- Be easy on yourself.
Mooreland landed an internship with Tyson Foods during a Walton career fair the summer after her sophomore year at the University of Arkansas. She ended up working for Tyson until she graduated in 2014 and then took a full-time job with the company.
“Even if you don’t end up with that company, you just get that real life experience and it’s just so valuable to have in addition to your classes,” she said. “That way, when you do graduate, you’re already set up to get started and you’re not having to learn from scratch after graduation. Me starting earlier definitely helped me out with getting that offer as well.”
Working at Tyson allowed Mooreland to take what she was learning in class and apply it in real-time in a real job, she said. She also often learned things at work that came up during her classes, which obviously helped her share insights with classmates, added value when she worked on class projects, and prepared her more thoroughly for exams.
Mooreland worked 20 hours a week during the school year and 40 hours a week during the summers, so her internship was a heavy time commitment.
“This was a year-round gig,” she said, “and so I really had to learn how to balance my classes with work. I actually remember I would have all my classes scheduled in the morning, and then I would come home and change, because we were business professional at the time and I didn’t want to wear that to my class at 8 a.m. So I’d come home and change and then drive out to Tyson.”
One of the biggest benefits of her internship, Mooreland said, was the relationships she established at the company and the insights she gained about its corporate culture.
“I was able to make a lot of connections, network, learn the culture and processes, which then ended up being beneficial to me to getting a full-time job offer before I graduated,” she said. “I came straight in out of college, had a leg-up and a head start versus a completely new hire because I was already ingrained into the business. So, having that internship definitely propelled me forward and gave me a really nice head start as I started full-time.”
Mooreland began her website, heyraychh.com, as a creative outlet, not a business venture. It started with a blog that combined her passions for food and fashion. As her social media platform grew – she has more than 20,000 followers on Instagram, for instance – brands began contacting her to promote their products.
One reason she believes they sought her out was because her blogs, website, and posts all reflected the expertise and professionalism she learned from working at Tyson and attending the Walton College.
“That marketing background from Walton College [and] working full-time in professional marketing in Tyson, it gives me an advantage as far as branding,” she said. “I know how to brand myself. I also know what we, the brand on the Tyson side, look for when we look at influencers.”
Mooreland uses professional photography on her site and she’s passionate about being an excellent writer.
“It’s an investment that I make, but it comes back to me through brand partnerships that wanna work with me because of my content,” she said, adding, “A lot of people think of influencing as taking pictures and getting free things. Well, that’s a part of it, (but) a lot of it is a lot of business. You’re signing contracts, you’re doing a lot of different email correspondence, you’re making pitches, you’re making briefs, you’re doing so much work on it up front. That also is what I’m doing over at Tyson for some of these other brands. So it’s a nice cross-tie.”
Even with the advantages of learning through her internship, Mooreland said she still fell into the trap of being too hard on herself during her transition to full-time work. Her advice for students, then is to “be easy on yourself. This is new. You’re learning. Lean on people around you. Find mentors wherever you’re working. If you don’t have a job yet, that’s OK. You can network … you never know when someone may have a role open up and then they can think of you.”
Mooreland pointed out that Walton College students are fortunate to have access to advice from alumni through applications such as RazorLink, which she takes part in. And she said experiences in classes and through internships are invaluable in setting you up for success.
“I really do attribute a lot of where I am today to the college,” she said, “and just the way that I was set up for success before I even graduated.”
