Lunch With the Owners

Yesterday, all of the teacher externs had the opportunity to have lunch with the founders and owners of the company. I had this opportunity last year as well and it neat to sit down and discuss my experiences and how the company has changed over the last year. The owner gave some really good advice last year to all of the interns and externs. He said if you really want a good job opportunity in the science industrial business world, then become a sales person with a science background. He said all science businesses always need more and more sales people to sell their product and they would highly prefer them to have a science background so that they know their product. Since, science businesses are a business, and know just a research company then they have to have knowledgable people to sell their products. So, I took the owners advice last year to let students know about this type of opportunity that most people do not think about. I had students do presentations about model science products that they made, for example a wind turbine, and try and sell them to me as the customer. I understand that a future in sales is not for everyone but I did have several students at the end of the year tell me that they wanted to go to school in order to become a science sales person. Not only that, students who have no interest in sales, work on their communication and sales skills which will help them for any type of job that they go into. Anyway, after having lunch with the owner, I told him that I took his advice to let students know about science sales career options, and he said that was wonderful because he believe most high schools do not let students know about that particle career path so people with science backgrounds usually do not go into sales. He also commented that they get some of my future students as science sales workers. I think this is the whole goal of this program, to actually interact with the business that I am working with, and get ideas from the people working here, and carry them back to the classroom. If I did not have this experience then I would have never had the opportunity to get these ideas from the owner and that is why I think this experience is great.