GM FYI Blog

Adam Denison, who doesn’t always wear the hat

By Adam Denison
Intern, Social Media Communications

One of the challenges facing recent college graduates is employers not wanting to hire you because of your lack of experience. The “catch 22” here is that you can’t get experience unless you work! The answer to this vexing problem? Internships, internships, internships.

I have spent the last four months as an intern in social media communications here at GM’s headquarters in Detroit. I’ve spent my time blogging, podcasting and social networking. It’s definitely been quite the experience, and I have learned so much.

So how did a young southern gentleman from Louisiana, end up interning at the world’s largest auto manufacturer? Sit back and let me tell you.

I went to school at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and received my B.A. of Communications: Public Relations this August. Having done three previous internships prior to GM, I found myself often applying for internships that I wasn’t always the most interested in. Such was the case with GM. I got an email alerting me that GM was looking for some summer interns and would be interviewing at a national public relations conference in Salt Lake City. I wasn’t so sure GM was the company for me, but figured I would apply anyway. Hey, it would be a good chance to practice my interviewing skills, right? Little did I know how much my opinion would change.

Long story short, I went into my interview with GM still not really interested in interning with the company, and left wanting to work for them more any other company I’d ever applied for! They completely sold me on the internship position.

Ok, so I was sold in the interview, but would what I was told actually live up to my actual internship experience, or would I be simply a “gofer” (go for this, or go for that)? You be the judge.

My first week here I traveled to Chicago for a GM-sponsored fashion show to help shoot some video for an online site. I have been given complete control over numerous projects, including creating a podcast series and populating a social networking site with GM-specific content. I have helped train other employees on social media, hosted bloggers at GM events, given advice to management on social media-related issues and even worked on the process for recruiting next year’s batch of interns. Sound like a typical internship experience? I don’t think so!

That said, there are some aspects of working for GM that are not as fun. The first thing that comes to mind is meetings! They love to have meetings here. They have meetings to plan meetings. I’m an action guy, so sometimes I feel like I don’t get as much work done by sitting in meetings. Part of the corporate culture, I guess.

Another interesting part of GM is the language here. Sure, you have the acronyms to learn, just like at any other job, but GM has some unique phrases. Here’s a sample:

Despite the meetings and GM-speak (which really isn’t that big of a deal, it’s just funny), I have absolutely loved my internship at GM. I have learned more here than I could ever have learned in a classroom. If I had to sum up my GM experience in three words, I’d say: real world experience.