DeJaegher Earns Recognition for Tinder-based Tool

Here’s an internship experience swiped right!

Madison DeJaegher, a Communication Studies student set to graduate this year, got a write-up in publications including AdAge for her work this summer in Cincinnati where she helped design a Tinder-based recruiting tool!

Madison credits her Communication and Mass Media course with helping her learn about team management and says talking with professors for helped her know how to communicate with executives and mentors. She answered a few questions about her project.

How was the Tinder Recruiting tool a group effort and how do you feel you contributed to that?

The Tinder campaign was a group project in the sense that we all contributed our disciplines throughout the campaign. We had strategy and marketing sciences contribute to the preliminary research of the greater ask of the project, and then we all brainstormed together to sift through different ways to bring the idea to fruition.

From there, once we had a clear creative vision (our creative intern David Harris was the brains behind the Tinder idea), me, David, and Chloe Borah (our copy intern) started creating our microsite where the video would live. I was the digital marketing intern (with a focus on project management), and created timelines for the team, and made sure we stayed on task, while also creating surveys to gather research, helping to create the design and copy of the microsite, and managing the budget and communication with outside companies and agencies.

What is your advice to other students eager to propose outside-the-box ideas at an internship?

I think we, as students, sometimes feel confined in what we are allowed or able to contribute in our internships. The fear of being wrong is often limiting, especially when you’re an intern and are so eager to impress everyone around you. But the sky is the limit. The worst that can happen when contributing a thought or idea, is people not prescribing it. If you are at the right company, you should be surrounded by the right people who want to hear what you have to say. If you’re not, push through and prove that you are worth listening to and have great ideas. There are no bad ideas worth hearing at least once.

Anything else students or faculty or alumni should know about your excellent achievement?

DO AS MANY INTERNSHIPS AS YOU CAN AS A STUDENT. Internships get you jobs; furthermore, the people you network with at an internship gets you jobs. I would highly recommend students to make career moves, not money moves. Your resume should tell a story- whenever you make career moves, you should be able to think of reasons why you switched companies without thinking of “more money.” Network, network, network! Get in front of senior leadership, and make as many connections as you can in whatever job you have. Lastly, work for the job you want, not the one you have.