Christine Pose - Sales Intern

Major: Medical Sales

As a young woman who likes interacting with people and wants to help people by being involved in healthcare, Christy sounds like a candidate for the College of St. Catherine's nursing program. And yet, she’s about to complete a major in Medical Sales. Why did she choose to take this less obvious track? “I knew I could never be a nurse,” Christy says. “I hated needles and I hated getting shots and I knew I couldn’t do it to somebody.” She tried majoring in Occupational Therapy for a while, but found that it didn’t fit her well either.

In Medical Sales, however, she found her fit. Not only does she get to interact with people and work in the healthcare field, she gets to be her own boss, and Christy loves that it allows her to be self-motivated and free to make her own decisions. She also loves the support she’s found in the Sales department. That support, as well as the knowledge that the faculty and staff have, is one of the main benefits of the program.

That knowledge helped her greatly during her internship with Ecolab. On one of her first days there, training was combined with a mini-golf outing. At each hole, the players would have to stop and role-play a sales scenario. At the end of the day, Christy and the other intern, also a St. Kate’s student, were told by an area manager that they had done very well—better, in fact, than some of his employees.

But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t anything new for Christy to learn. “The internship was a chance to see everything I learned in class come to life,” she says. One of the things she recommends most about the Center for Sales Innovation’s internships is the chance to get in and get your hands dirty. In her work with Ecolab, Christy wasn’t just getting coffee and making copies; she was in the field, going on sales calls and helping sell the products. She even learned electrical work and plumbing, due to Ecolab’s philosophy that that their employees should have practical knowledge of how their products work.

Another benefit of the Sales major, Christy says, “Is that there’s definitely a job when you graduate. There’s plenty of jobs out there, no matter what type of Sales or Business major you are, there’s definitely a job out there for you.” And once you get the job, there are lots of opportunities for advancement, especially as more and more businesses are making an effort to promote women and close the workforce gender gap. Having an internship benefits students in their job search, and not just by providing experience in the field. For Christy, it gave her confidence that she was in the right major, and was doing work she enjoyed and was skilled at. The internship also landed her a job. She’ll be accepting a position with Ecolab after graduating this May.