Michelle Newman
Michelle Newman is a senior at the ILR School. She is from Rye, New York, and graduated from Rye High School. Michelle worked as an intern at IBM Global Services.
“Through my internship I became interested in consulting, and my manager set up meetings where I could talk to analysts and executives in IBM Business Consulting. It was great to explore multiple career options while getting an amazing experience in compensation.
“I was looking to participate in a study abroad program or the Credit Internship Program. I was mainly considering studying in Spain through the Cornell ILR Semester Abroad Program but I also looked into the Credit Internship Program. I thought an internship in corporate Human Resources would allow me to experience HR outside the classroom. When I got the opportunity with IBM, I decided to accept the internship because working in the executive compensation group would be an exciting and valuable experience. I knew that I could visit Spain during the summer.
“When I started, my group was in the middle of the compensation cycle. They were making all the base and incentive pay decisions for the year. I helped by tracking the budget and all reconciliation items. My responsibilities also included making all reports that went to corporate headquarters for approval. After the cycle, I started to work on benchmarking projects. I assisted my supervisor with external benchmarking projects by matching executives’ positions to predetermined definitions. We also compared IBM’s executive pay to the market once we received the final reports.
“Additionally, I worked on a benchmarking project that IBM was sponsoring. During this project, I attended planning meetings with my supervisor. At these meetings we would talk with compensation experts from other firms and determine which executives would be benchmarked, how we would define their roles, and what aspects of their compensation would be included in the survey. While discussing many different plans, my manager determined that we might change one of our executive incentive plans. Therefore, I started an analysis project on this group of executives. I examined their current program and analyzed a few options for the future.
“Because I liked my responsibilities and team, I extended my credit internship through the summer. At this point, I continued to support my executive compensation team, but also worked on a group intern project for corporate HR. We explored IBM’s current workforce commitment and potential strategies to increase the level of employee satisfaction and commitment. After a few weeks, my group had the opportunity to present our ideas to the Human Resource Operations Team.
“Overall, my internship was a great way to learn how you would get tasks accomplished within a large organization. I also made great connections. Through my internship I became interested in consulting, and my manager set up meetings where I could talk to analysts and executives in IBM Business Consulting. It was great to explore multiple career options while getting an amazing experience in compensation.
“I guess one of the biggest surprises was the great amount of responsibility that was instilled in me as an intern. On the third day of work, I received access to over 2500 executives’ compensation profiles and was put in charge of tracking my team’s annual budget.
“It taught me how to interact with individuals in a corporate setting and how I could personally add to a large company. Furthermore, just having my credit internship on my resume was very helpful during on campus recruitment. Having eight months of experience and knowledge really gave me an advantage over students who did not have the same opportunity.
“I would highly recommend this program. You get 16 elective ILR credits in addition to a great internship experience. One semester basically fulfilled all of my ILR elective credits, and I really enjoyed my time. I recently went back to visit my team just to catch up.
“After graduation I will be working with IBM Business Consulting in their financial services management area based out of New York City. While I was not exactly sure of what I wanted to do after graduation, I decided this was a wonderful new opportunity. I am very excited to begin my job in July.”
