Scott Sims: Sam’s Club

Scott Sims, a senior accounting and finance double major, beams at everyone we pass in the Rogers Sam’s Club, greeting the workers like old friends. He throws back samples of orange juice and pineapple, putting everyone at ease with his infectious enthusiasm for the multicolored displays of cereal boxes, fresh-baked flour tortillas and wasabi-flavored Doritos that stock the wholesale grocery. Where the customers see great deals, Sims sees product placement, Excel spreadsheets and careful planning. Once you know what happens behind the scenes to make a Sam’s Club run smoothly, he says, you never look at the place the same way. “It’s so interesting to go in and see how they’re incentivizing items and interacting with customers. There’s a whole ecosystem at work.”

Back at the Home Office, Sims knows everyone in the halls by name. He is a member of the Sam’s Club dry grocery team, and one of 25 Accounting and Financial Development Program interns working at Walmart this summer.

Dry grocery team leader Mark Knisley has assigned Sims an extensive project that involves integrating sales data from featured products into a user-friendly tool for merchants, allowing them to more easily plan for the future based on this year’s financial results. This sort of task is one of the many benefits of the internship program: students are able to make a genuine difference in the company. “There is no ‘go get me coffee,’” Sims says, “No ‘send this fax.’ Your project is valuable.”

The internship, as Sims puts it, is a “10-week interview of sorts,” and could result in a full-time position that involves rotations through different company departments. This sort of constructive training is a hallmark of the program. “It’s that constant building upon what you have until … you have this whole toolbox of skills,” Sims says.

In addition to getting this hands-on experience, interns are encouraged to network heavily within the company. These connections are integral to students, and can help them go far once they’re in the work force. They don’t all end up working for Walmart or Sam’s Club, but as Knisley notes, “We’ve got a lot of jobs; we’re always looking for good talent.”