By: Gloria Liu, Staff Writer

It takes ambition and persistence to land an internship from General Electric (GE).

Every now and then we hear about someone getting a job or internship from our dream company, so we cannot help but thinking that these people must have some great talents that distinguish them from the rest. Well, they do have great talents. But to land a job or internship from a prestigious company like GE, they also display consistent efforts in pursuit of their dream. Jorge Cespedes Flores, a first-year MBA student from Peru, relates his story.

Jorge Cespedes

In January 2015, Jorge received an internship offer from Dell, a company that he networked with at the 2014 NSHMBA (National Society of Hispanic MBAs). But Cespedes could not make a decision. On the one hand he indeed wanted to work for Dell, on the other hand, he was waiting for a reply from his dream company, GE, for which he had done two rounds of interviews. As he thought he was going to experience torture for awhile, he was relieved the very next day. GE, although it could not offer him the full-time Emerging Countries Leadership Program (ECLD) position in Latin America, offered him the ECLD Summer Associate position in Philadelphia.  The moment Cespedes received the notification from GE, he felt so grateful that his months of efforts finally paid off.

December 2014, Cespedes made a phone call to a fellow T-Bird in Miami, checking in on him. From that phone call, Cespedes learned about the exciting news that GE was recruiting for ECLP in Chile. So after the trimester finished, Cespedes went back to Peru and wanted to apply online, only to found that the link was removed. To many, it seemed that was it. Yet to Cespedes, that was an issue that needed to be fixed. He resorted to LinkedIn, trying to find Human Resources for GE in Latin America and make contacts. Through this networking, Cespedes was able to sent his resume directly to HR in Argentina. The first round of telephone interviews was quickly set up, and Cespedes did well. But then GE did not contact him for weeks. Anxiously, Cespedes found out the CMO of GE was a guest speaker for New York’s Winterim. And that was the turning point. Cespedes connected to the CMO, persuaded her to send his resume to the recruiter, and nailed the second round Skype interview. And then the fruit was ready to be reaped.

For the whole time, Cespedes firmly believed that he stood a chance for the position. Firstly, he was a perfect match for the job responsibilities of the position, thanks to his previous B2B marketing background. Secondly, GE’s CEO visited Peru several years ago to develop a long term project there. Last but not least, he has a wide T-Bird network, without which he could not even pass his resume to GE. When asked to describe his job-searching motto in one sentence, Cespedes said,

“Define your dream, and act accordingly.”