Meet Team UPS

Q&A with Katie

What attracted you to UPS?

The first time I heard about UPS was through a family friend who worked at UPS. We happened to run into him one day and he talked about UPS. It really aligned with my interests and what I was studying in school. He talked about the work environment, and everything seemed liked it would be good fit for me.

At a high level, can you tell us about your internship role?

My boss works with air procurement, which is anything from the ground handlers moving packages to acquiring planes. I’ve been working on various projects but the first thing I did was investigate what starting salaries were for ramp agents so that we could use that in negotiations. On a day-to-day basis, I work with a lot of different excel sheets, manually recording and researching data about starting salaries are and what’s going on in the market. My boss takes that information and presents it to the higher-ups.

What has your internship/co-op given you the opportunity to learn so far?

The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that I had no idea what procurement was prior to coming into this role and I didn’t realize how much goes into transporting the packages. It’s so interesting from start to finish. You need so many things in place and there are so many different contracts and people you must work with. If someone’s not fulfilling their duties, you must break that contract and find someone else, figuring out who is going to be good for the best price. It was interesting to learn how much goes into the network.

Share some tips for making the most of your UPS internship, such as networking with other interns and learning about the company’s culture.

UPS has a lot of different intern events such as the passport series and Townhalls. Go to these, talk to the people there, and start a group because a lot of the time when you’re an intern you’re not necessarily working with the other interns. You’re usually working with your specific team which can be isolating if you’re in college and everyone is older. You want to have that interaction with people your own age because the intern experience is very different from a full-time experience. You can also learn about different parts of the company because everyone is doing something different. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out for help. Everyone’s always helpful and nice.

What do you enjoy the most about UPS’s company culture?

I really like that you can be sitting in your cubicle and someone you’ve never spoken to before can just knock and strike up a conversation or invite you to do things. I originally worked entirely remote, and this is my first time in the office, so it’s nice to have that kind of personal connection with people.

In what ways has your work felt meaningful thus far in your internship?

This is my first time working in contracting so I’ve done research for a lot of reports. It seems like busy work in the moment, but when I hand it to my boss, he’ll come back and say how helpful it is for the next phase of the project. That’s when the work feels meaningful, because I can see that it’s going to help in future contracts or negotiations.

What are your career goals? How do you feel your internship will positively impact your career goals?

I would love to do a lot of traveling in my work. I really enjoy working with different people from different backgrounds. I’d also love to dive more into the analytics side of things. I would like to work in a big company and be able to move up and know that I’m doing well. I’ve developed a lot of skills here that I can use anywhere. Coming into the corporate world of UPS, you get to see how you can use skills from school and develop applicable skills to use in the future—especially my work in Tableau, Powerbi, and SQL. I know these skills will translate to other companies or help me grow if I come work for UPS full-time.

What separates UPS’s internship program from the other internship opportunities you looked into?

I’d say there’s a lot more variety. I’ve had friends tell me about their internships at other places and it always sounds boring because they either do the same task every single day, don’t get any projects, or get the tasks that no one else wanted to do. My internship here was a different experience. I liked mine more and have a lot more insight to UPS. My projects and meetings let me dive into the different parts of UPS and develop different skills.