Students Find Magner Center–Led Company Tours Handy Way to Make Contacts, Score Internships

Athletes and rock icons aren’t the only ones who get some special backstage treatment at Madison Square Garden. On June 11, more than a dozen Brooklyn College students interested in careers in television, sports management, entertainment or related industries took an hour-long, top-to-bottom guided tour of the "most famous arena in the world." The most important stop on the tour was the Human Resources Department, where they dropped off their résumés in hopes of landing internships during the upcoming fall semester and perhaps even securing a job after graduation.

"Even if you don’t get a full-time job," says broadcast journalism major Jeremy Reith, "getting an internship by itself looks very good on your résumé."

The trip to Madison Square Garden was one of two internship visits organized this past June by the Brooklyn College Magner Center for Career Development and Internships. Natalia Guarin-Klein, a career education and training coordinator who works at the center, arranged for both tours and escorted more than 30 students on the visits to the Garden and to Turner Broadcasting.

"We did our pilot tour with MTV back in January 2006," Guarin-Klein says. "Since then we’ve had roughly 420 students who participated in 26 tours of 22 well-known companies, many of which offer internships."

Guarin-Klein notes, however, that some of the companies they visit do not actually recruit interns. "Getting an internship is just one of the benefits of these visits. Regardless of whether students get an internship or not, they will more than likely walk away with a better understanding of the working world, the career that interests them and with sound advice about how to better market themselves."

In addition to Madison Square Garden and Turner Broadcasting, a multitude of companies and organizations have hosted visits by Brooklyn College students, including the American Association of Publishers, the American Diabetes Association, Anchin Block Anchin, BET Networks, Bloomberg LP, CBS, Columbia University, Essence magazine, Goldman Sachs & Co., McCann Erickson North America, Morgan Stanley, New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services, New York Daily News, Ogilvy, Penguin Group (USA), PricewaterhouseCoopers, Target Corporation, Teach for America, and Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP.

The Magner Center does not directly track how many students have gained internships through such organized company visits, explains Guarin-Klein. But 314 students who applied for internships listed with the center during the 2007–08 school year became interns, an increase of 25 percent from the previous year’s total of 255 students.

A visit to a company and the possibility that one might achieve an internship cannot be passed up, says student Ricky Barlin, who went on both the Madison Square Garden and Turner Broadcasting tours. "I’ve already got a B.A. in journalism and I’m going for a second degree, a B.S. in accounting," he explains. "These are great opportunities."

Besides, he adds with a broad grin, "I’ve always been a Knicks and Rangers fan."