Nolan Melson (McCombs, ‘21) spent his summer as a Product Management Intern at Samsung where he got the chance to immerse himself in the role and responsibilities of Product Management. In this interview, Melson spoke to the projects that he worked on and the skills that helped him successfully navigate his summer internship
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship, and what did you work on?
This summer, I was a Product Management Intern at Samsung, supporting the Mobile B2B team.
During my internship I got to work on three main projects.
- Developed innovative Buy Online, Pick-up In Store (BOPIS) recommendation for Samsung Electronics America President & CEO, while collaborating with team under short time constraint
- Performed price sensitivity analysis, regressions, and data modeling of top 267 account SKUs for mobile B2B Federal Government team, presented on strategic recommendation to division executive leader
- Executed extensive market research and team interviews, creating plan of action for R&D funding, feature prioritization, and piloting for emerging tech interoperability feasibility study
I had to use my skills in excel, feature prioritization frameworks, and the ability to draw valuable insights from team member interviews. I also had to research technical terms and integrate my findings as they related to cell phone networks, carriers, radio, and other areas.
MBASchooled: What were your favorite aspects of your Product Management Internship?
I greatly enjoyed working directly with industry experts with 20+ years in various federal agencies. Additionally, the team had a solid number of military veterans, therefore I enjoyed connecting with the fellow vets on the team.
MBASchooled: What were some of the things that helped you be successful in your summer internship?
I had an outstanding mentor / manager throughout my internship who took a vested interest in my development throughout the entire 8 weeks. He was consistent and thorough in his guidance, and set me up to succeed. I never felt like I was off on my own or that I didn’t have the necessary resources in order to be effective in my work.
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually? What helped? What was hard?
While it was not ideal to have a completely virtual internship, I was still able to connect with my co-workers through virtual happy hours, professional development workshops, and virtual fireside chats with executive leaders.
MBASchooled: What was an important lesson that you learned from your summer internship?
I learned the importance of being adaptable, and honed my skills at staying focused on my project work amidst a global pandemic.
MBASchooled: Knowing what you know now, what would you do to prepare in order to be even more successful in your internship?
Knowing what I know now, I would have become more familiar with a data analysis tool like Alteryx before my internship so that I would not have had to rely on Excel. I also would have read more technical manuals on Samsung mobile devices (phones, tablets, wearables) and cell network infrastructure in order to have a deeper technical foundation going into my internship.
MBASchooled: What was a challenge that you had to overcome or work through?
A challenge I had to overcome was figuring out how to analyze data that came from disparate sources, and quickly draw insights in order to get to the big “so what?” In an MBA internship versus an undergraduate one, it’s important to remember that the project team is not just looking for you to do a bunch of research and conduct analysis. They ultimately want a strategic recommendation. I had to remind myself of that multiple times as I was comfortable just getting bogged down in data analysis, and not focused enough on the strategic direction of my recommendation.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students considering internships in Product Management?
My advice would be to stay flexible and be willing to learn. Some days you’ll be working more on the business side, some days you might be knee deep in technical manuals and having conversations with developers and sales engineers. Also do not be afraid to speak up and share your ideas!