He spends much of his day on Facebook. Truly not a revelation, considering senior Bobby Hoppey is a college student, thus part of a demographic that lives on social media networks.
But Hoppey doesn’t log in to Facebook for fun. Instead, he’s doing it because it’s what his internship at General Motors in Detroit demands. He’s a social media communications intern, and he says he scours the social media realm to communicate GM’s message with consumers on the World Wide Web.
“A lot (of the job) is interacting with bloggers and getting to know the whole blogosphere,” Hoppey says. “It’s been interesting and kind of eye opening for me. It’s an opportunity to interact with a lot of different people in an informational setting.”
Hoppey is the second social media communications intern that GM has hired. Hoppey says cultivating relationships with nontraditional media outlets has been a boon for GM. Case in point, earlier in the summer, when GM was preparing to unveil the new 2010 Camaro in Detroit and Los Angeles, Hoppey began stirring up interest among online denizens.
“We knew that traditional media would be interested, but we wanted to tap into bloggers,” he says. “(GM) had me identifying who would be the best targets. I had a lot of success. A lot of bloggers showed up.”
Those bloggers who did attend were able to meet the designers of the car, and as a result, coverage of the unveiling was more pronounced online than in newspapers or on newscasts.
Hoppey has also gotten to produce and host his own podcasts, which appeared on the GM Web site, and tow work with the other five communications interns (of whom four are graduate students) on the I Am Next campaign, which centers on interns in the design center.
Hoppey says he originally applied for an internship with GM as a sophomore when he was in Salt Lake City for a Public Relations Student Society of America conference. He did not receive an offer, but he was told to apply again the next year.
The following year, the PRSSA conference was in Philadelphia, where Elon’s chapter won several awards, and where Hoppey gave a presentation and participated in workshops.
“In addition,” he says, “I got this interview with GM. It went really well. It’s a pretty competitive process.”
In December, Hoppey received word that he got the internship he had desired for two years. And so far, he hasn’t been disappointed.
“GM definitely takes the internship program here very seriously,” he says. “They have a big recruiting team. It’s no joke for them. They treat us really well and invest a lot in the program.”
Hoppey says it’s not uncommon for the senior vice president of communications to call up interns and ask how they’re doing. That familiarity should have proved important for Hoppey because of a nerve-wracking presentation he had to do at the beginning of August in front of GM’s Communications Strategy Board, a panel that contains the highest ranking people in GM’s communications department.
All interns give individual and group presentations about what they accomplished during the summer. Hoppey says the joke around GM is that an intern’s individual presentation is essentially his or her job interview. Still, Hoppey says he thinks it’s unique and that a senior vice president would take an afternoon off to watch interns give presentations.
“They value interns here and take it seriously,” he says.
Hoppey credits PRSSA and his training at Elon for help landing the GM internship.
“What we’re doing (at GM) is really cutting edge, and we touched on that stuff in class,” he says. “I never came in here overly intimidated. I can’t say enough about Elon and the program we have.”
Hoppey says because GM gives its interns so much responsibility and freedom to complete projects, he’ll be more prepared for what the real world throws at him when he graduates in one short year.
“It’s really cliché to say that you get real-world experience out of a summer internship, but for me that’s exactly how it’s been,” he says. “This is a corporation that has so much influence both here domestically and abroad, even to just be behind the scenes and see how everything is handled and the wide scope of communication is definitely an experience.
“The real world is right around the corner, and I hope to go back (to Elon) and feel really confident about my ability to be a college graduate and go into the work force. I think I’m learning a lot and I want to bring it back to Elon and apply it.”
This is the last Intern Insider feature to run this summer.