Jordan Gannon’s more than a quarter million dollars in sales during a three-month internship with 3M led to a full-time job upon graduation with the global innovation company.
Gannon, who will receive his bachelor’s degree in business administration in marketing and professional sales from the UT College of Business and Innovation Saturday, May 3, will join the company as a sales representative in its Building & Commercial Services Division.
During summer 2013, Gannon was a sales intern based in Kentucky, where he built and maintained relationships with more than 100 nursing homes and hospitals. During his three months with the company, he earned $290,000 in sales for 3M, which is more than nine times the average intern goal of $30,000.
“My internship with 3M was a truly eye-opening experience because it reconfirmed one thousand times over how much I love sales and that I had made the right choice in selecting my major,” he said. “3M is such an amazingly large company that makes tens of thousands of different products that help make the world a better place.”
Gannon said 3M only recruits for their frontline sales program at a dozen or so schools across the country, and his introduction to the company only came because of the great reputation of the UT business college and its professional sales program.
“My favorite part of working for 3M was knowing that everything I was doing as an intern was 100 percent of what 3M expected of their full-time employees,” he said. “Being able to realize that you are contributing to a goal larger than anything imaginable is such an amazing motivator.”
Gannon credited the college’s job fairs, mock interviews, networking nights and other programs that helped him hone his professional business tools that went into getting his job.
He also had outside the classroom leadership experience with the Alpha Kappa Psi professional co-ed business fraternity, which included serving as president.
Gannon is the third member of his family to join the Rocket Nation. Both of his parents are business professionals and alumni of UT, which led to his decision to come to Toledo despite growing up in Newark, Del.
His advice for other students searching for jobs after college? It’s not what you know, but who you know.
“It is more about who knows you and what they know you for,” he said. “The day that you start your journey in the College of Business and Innovation, start building your ‘brand’ for what they will know you for. Go to every professional development seminar, network with all of your teachers, remember as many recruiters’ names at every job fair, and make sure that they absolutely remember you. Get involved!”
