Summer Internship: A Day in the Life of Alexa Mertzel
Marketing (IMC) Major
Alexa Mertzel, Business Development Intern at UKG.
Hello, my name is Alexa Mertzel and I am a rising senior graduating in May 2023. I am majoring in Marketing with a specialization in Integrated Marketing Communication. Throughout my time at SDSU, I have been involved in the SDSU Dance Team, Alpha Chi Omega, Women in Business, and American Marketing Association. I am currently working as a full-time summer intern at Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) as a Business Development Intern with the Marketing Team. Throughout this internship, I have discovered my passion for Sales and Marketing, while also gaining real world experience within the two industries.
UKG is a software development company headquartered in Lowell, Massachusetts, and Weston, Florida. After talking with my dad, who has worked at UKG for years, I knew UKG would be a great company for me to work for. Once I started my internship, I instantly felt myself gaining experience and knowledge within the sales and marketing industry and continued to express my eagerness each day after this. Throughout my internship, I’ve had multiple opportunities to shadow many different employees from a variety of backgrounds, allowing me to learn about their unique perspectives. I have also had the opportunity to work on many marketing campaigns, attend live sales demos, create and collaborate on projects, and experience one-on-one coaching sessions with employees whose tenures span over a decade. I was even lucky enough to create my own marketing campaign from start to finish which will be utilized by many team members after my internship is over. UKG truly cares about their employees (interns included) and has made this summer unforgettable!
Here’s a day in the life as a Business Development Intern at UKG!
7:00 am - Good morning! I clock in and start my work day by checking emails, replying to messages, and filling out my to-do list for the day. I do this for about thirty minutes, then make a cup of coffee before getting ready for my first meeting of the day.
8:00 am - I log onto Zoom where I meet with my manager, Brian Lynn, and the rest of the Business Development Interns. During this meeting, we talk about our weekly goals and the tasks we are currently working on. I am currently working on a marketing campaign for National Payroll Week that I have been trying to finalize and present to the team. We share our best practices and are constantly supporting and learning from each other. This meeting lasts about an hour.
9:00 am - For my second meeting of the day, I log onto an Intern LinkedIn training session directed by Marc Nudelberg and Steve Nudelberg. During this training, Marc and Steve share the "dos and don'ts" of LinkedIn and how to build strong connections via LinkedIn. Throughout this internship, UKG has really encouraged personal branding and this session continued to emphasize how important LinkedIn is and can be. We ended the training by asking Marc and Steve personal one-on-one questions.
11:00 am - After these two bigger meetings, I have another more personal meeting with Katie O’Donnell, a Business Development Representative that I am shadowing. Throughout this meeting, we discussed the National Payroll Week campaign we are currently working on together and continued to add last minute touches. We created a detailed PowerPoint that I will be using to present the campaign to the team later in the day.
11:30 am - Directly after that meeting, I continue with the same campaign and meet with the rest of the BDR team and Marketing team to present the campaign idea and logistics. This campaign has allowed me to see the true creation of a full campaign from start to finish and the process it must go through.
Mertzel during her remote internship.
12:00 pm - Time to reset and take an hour break. I start by doing a quick workout and finish by making myself lunch. I feel that working out during my lunch break allows me to get rejuvenated and ready to start the second half of my day!
1:00 pm - After my break, I log back in and go through my projects that still need to be completed. I continue to work on my National Payroll Week campaign by adding and changing some ideas the team and I discussed during our meeting earlier in the day. I also took a LinkedIn training session about social selling, “How to Create a Personal Brand.”
2:00 pm - Throughout this internship, I have made it a priority to network with as many people as possible. This is my hour of the day I have set aside to meet with and learn about different employees at UKG. Today, I met with Meghan Setzer, VP of Global Advertising and Product Marketing, who pushed me to explore the many different teams in the marketing department and what makes each team unique. I learned about her journey and how she got to where she is today. She encouraged me to try new things and step out of my comfort zone.
3:00 pm - Time for another meeting! This meeting is with Carly Dickinson, another Business Development Representative that I am shadowing, to discuss what new projects I can help her with. She shows me what she wants me to work on and explains the step-by-step process of how to execute it. This is where I was able to learn about Salesforce and CRM, by helping many different BDRs clean up their accounts.
4:00 pm - I continue to work on profiling and cleaning up accounts. By the end of the day, I have gone through about twenty accounts and have found new contacts who have recently entered the company and deleted old contacts that have retired or left the company. This process is long and intensive but provides a lot of help and information to BDRs.
5:00 pm - Before logging off, I make sure I got everything done by checking off my to-do list and lastly, finish up by sending an email to my manager with a recap of the day. I log off at around five everyday.
This internship at UKG has taught me so much from learning the ins and outs of the BDR position, to allowing myself to network and meet many different mentors throughout UKG. This program has allowed me to further my passion for marketing and sales while encouraging me to take what I have learned throughout these past months and apply it to my everyday life. I look forward to continuing to grow and maintain the many relationships I have made during this internship. I’m very excited to see where this opportunity takes me in the future.
