National Intern Day is a great time to bring awareness to internship programs and the students who take part in them. Everyone needs to start somewhere, and an Internship program is an excellent way to gain valuable corporate experience, learn how to work in a team environment, and work with a mentor. Interns aren’t the only ones who benefit from an internship; they bring immeasurable value by providing a new perspective and insightful ideas. Every year we work with interns, and every year we are thankful for their hard work and the diversity they bring to our departments.
What Is National Intern Day?
National Intern Day is a day to recognize and celebrate future leaders. We want to make sure we do that today by giving a special thanks to all the interns who’ve worked for our businesses this summer. Whether they pursue their future in finance, entrepreneurship, computer engineering, or graphic design, they have each contributed to our departments in very different but helpful ways.
This year for National Intern Day, Alexander McMurray, Marketing Intern for Bankers Insurance Group, interviewed and wrote an article about some of our 2021 interns. To learn about our current summer interns and some of the projects they’ve been a part of, continue reading.
Samuel Ciulla
Samuel is a Southeastern University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Science in Legal Studies. As he aspires to achieve his master’s degree from the Stetson University College of Law and become an attorney, he works as an intern for Bankers Financial Corporation’s legal department.
Many projects Samuel completed for this department ranged from research and organization to contracting. For instance, he compiled and reorganized data from several contracts with tier 1 vendors into a single, complex spreadsheet. This allowed other legal employees to check and examine important pertinent contract details, such as termination dates and renewal information. Samuel also researched and compiled hundreds of federal and state work departure laws for DecisionHR, providing the subsidiary clarification on which paperwork should be sent to leaving employees.
Before the internship, Samuel had little experience with employment law outside of school. Still, with Bankers, he developed a strong understanding of the government contracting process, learned effective research techniques with helpful databases, and connected with others in the legal industry. While his job was remote, he found the work environment very supportive as employees taught him new things and guided him in applying his skill and knowledge. According to Samuel himself, “the great thing about working in-house for a corporation is that you are exposed to a broad array of legal matters, which is perfect for someone like me who is trying to decide what field of law I want to enter for my career.” Because of how valued he felt like a team member, he strongly recommends this internship at Bankers to other law students.
Matthew Clockel
Matthew is a senior at Southern New Hampshire University, pending graduation in 2022 with a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. With an interest in software engineering and a passion for predicting future data trends, he works as an intern for the IT – Application Development department at Bankers Insurance Group.
During this internship, Matthew worked on five IT stories that make the website’s API much more reliable to policyholders and customers in need of information regarding their policies. In the first story, he designed HTML edits for three different API service pages that include necessary verbiage about water damage, informing customers to contact for support.
Matthew also programmed buttons in the consumer portal policy for the second story that provides homeowners a list of all their HO and PHO policies. The third story was relatively simple, as it involved adding just one word to one of the API’s quote pages and integrating it into SQA for testing. However, it was still a necessary task that could only be complete with experienced computer engineers.
Matthew had a lot of coding experience prior, but Bankers allowed him to learn how that knowledge is applied to the corporate work environment and overcome tough challenges in the industry. “There is a lot of different APIs,” he said, “and learning how to connect everything properly has been a challenge, [but] The IT team has been a great help guiding me in the right direction for success.” By being a part of the IT team, he learned a lot about APIs, databases, and their application. He more than recommends this intern to anyone with a similar major or interest as him.
Matthew Jasiulewicz
Matthew is a 5th-year student at the University of Florida pursuing a Master’s Degree in International Business. Aspiring to become an expert in the analytical field of finance, he learned about Bankers from his school’s career fair and now works for its Actuarial Department.
Since joining, Matthew completed various projects involving competitor research, providing recommendations for how the team should address concerns and update many documents and spreadsheets. At times, they proved to be challenging tasks, such as one Commercial Lines project he described as having an enormous, countless volume of information in need of his organization. However, with the help of fellow co-workers at Bankers, he completed these tasks with flying colors and strengthened both his problem-solving and communication skills. “My team helped by providing me coaching on better usage of Excel and its many processes to organize the information I had,” he claimed. Because of how well he understood the insurance business, business trends, and data organization techniques, he recommends checking out Bankers to other finance majors “without a shred of doubt.”
Alexander McMurray
Alexander McMurray is a graphic design major currently enrolled at the University of Tampa to pursue a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. With interest in helping and inspiring others through design and art, he works as an intern for the Bankers sales and marketing department.
For the company’s 45th Anniversary, Bankers Insurance launched a new brand, which meant that many essential agent and consumer forms needed major updates with these new guidelines in play. These included Bankers’ agency guides, contracting forms, coverage highlight flyers, hurricane survival guides, charts for wind guidelines, letter templates, postcards, and website layouts. Alex stepped in by utilizing his design skills and redesigning many of these documents from scratch. Not only did these redesigns make written information and procedures easier for agents and consumers to read, but they helped give the company a more consistent, professional, and optimistic image to stand out above competitors.
While Alex admits that some assignments were challenging, requiring multiple revisions, and narrowing down many different solutions for one document, he found enjoyment in helping others with his graphic design expertise. He also developed many valuable skills as a graphic designer and employee, learning important lessons about communicating with others and shortcuts to make during the creative process. He highly recommends it to interns who want to help a friendly corporation expand upon its brand and gain experience with design techniques and software in the marketing field.
About The Internship Program
National Intern day isn’t the only day to think about internships. Bankers Financial Corporation and its affiliates provide opportunities throughout the year in areas such as Product Management, Operations, Marketing, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Actuarial, Accounting, Finance, Information Technology, Human Resources, and others. You will gain valuable, real-world experience that will initiate a smooth transition into your career. All internships are PAID! You can learn more about the internship program here, learn more about Bankers Insurance Group or check out the careers page to see if any openings are available.