Virtual internship pays off, ATU graduate says

College graduates looking for a job have been particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Hot Springs native Nick Barthel took advantage of a virtual paid internship with Arvest Bank to get his foot in the door of his desired career path.

“If an intern is debating doing something because it’s virtual, I think they should really consider doing it because I think that it’s going to look good on their resume,” Barthel said. “Especially with the way things are going, I think companies are going to want that virtual experience.”

Graduating from Arkansas Tech University in May with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Finance, he began his virtual

internship with Arvest on June 15 and completed it on Friday.

“I think that Arvest did an amazing job in just keeping the internship, because a lot of companies just decided to cancel theirs, and when you’re in a pandemic and hiring slows down, it’s hard sometimes to get a job,” Barthel said.

“I’m just very grateful that Arvest did the internship because it got me in the door. I think with anyone who’s graduating right now be open-minded with what you’re trying to do because I do know a lot of my friends struggle to get jobs whenever they graduate just because of the timing. We have terrible timing of when we graduated,” he said.

One challenge Barthel said he had with the internship being virtual were occasional technical issues, but he noted Arvest’s strong Human Resources and “Peoples Team” helped to efficiently combat these mishaps.

In comparison to an in-office internship he completed in his sophomore year of college, he said the internship with Arvest was just as fulfilling.

“I think with virtual, there’s benefits to it as well,” Barthel said. “Let’s say I wanted to learn about what a credit analyst does; I could find multiple different credit analysts who work for Arvest and email them and one of them would have a Zoom for me the next day and it’s just whatever’s available, and it’s easy access to get good information from qualified people, and you wouldn’t really see that if you weren’t doing things virtually.”

Arvest’s Public Relations Account Coordinator Caroline

Minor said in an email that with Arvest turning their internships virtual, they were able to give 41 interns positions across the company’s four-state footprint. Barthel was the only intern who worked out of Hot Springs.

“When businesses made extreme changes to their daily operations and processes because of COVID, many also eliminated their internship programs for college students,” Minor said. “For juniors and seniors — that move was devastating. These days, more than ever, hiring managers want to see a recent graduate’s real-world experience on their resume, so the cancellation of internship programs this summer could create even greater challenges for students when it comes time to find a job.”

She said the students interning — whose career interests ranged from marketing, to finance, to I.T. to human resources, among others — were able to be involved with leaders from multiple Arvest Bank markets.

“Those various banking leaders coach the interns in leadership, not just the banking industry, so it’s a great lesson in professional development. Rather than working within the respective market where they live, students had exposure to more of Arvest than they may have in a traditional internship setting.” Some interns do rotate through numerous departments within the bank, while others are assigned to one department, she said.

She added that Arvest does recruit interns for the purpose of potentially hiring them, granting six of last year’s 43 interns a full-time job.

“So the fact that this program was held, despite the pandemic, could result in jobs for some of these students after graduation — great news, given our current situation,” Minor said.