Internships often play a critical role in job hunting as employers increasingly seek graduates with some real-world experience. A 2012 Marketplace and Chronicle of Higher Education survey found that employers place more weight on experience, particularly internships and employment during school, rather than academic credentials, when evaluating a recent graduate for employment.

With that in mind, Bostonia reached out to five undergrads who interned this summer, asking them about their experience. We are featuring a different story each day this week.

Name:

Paige Seibert (SHA’15)

My internship:

This summer I worked as a winery intern at my parents’ business, Knob Hall Winery in Clear Spring, Md. The winery currently makes 18 different wines. We concentrate mostly on dry wines, including Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and some Bordeaux-style red blends. This internship was paid and was not for college credit.

How I landed the internship:

My parents started Knob Hall Winery several years ago, and it is still a small operation. There is always a lot of work to be done in the vineyard, in the winery, in the tasting room, and more. Someday my parents hope to pass the business down to my older sister and me. So when I was thinking about where to work this past summer, I decided that it would be beneficial to work at home again, to get back in touch with the winery. My parents know that I have access to great internships through the School of Hospitality Administration, so they have not pushed me to come work at home for years. This year, I went to them and suggested the idea of working at home.

Once I made the decision, I laid down some ground rules. I wanted to be paid, and I wanted to work 40-hour weeks. I asked my parents what jobs I would be needed for, and they gave me a list. During the course of the internship, I worked from that list and also took on some other projects I came up with myself.

A typical day on the job:

My responsibilities changed constantly. Some days I would be pouring wine at wine festivals around the state; other days I would be in the winery filtering eight wines. At the beginning of the summer, there were wine festivals every weekend. My work began with loading the truck full of wine and driving however far across Maryland to the festival. Then we would typically have a 10-hour day, setting up, pouring wine samples, and closing down.

At the beginning of the summer, we had wines from 2013 to filter and bottle. During the first round of bottling, we did six wines. This took two 12-hour days of filtering through a diatomaceous earth (DE) filter and then one 12-hour day of filtering through a lenticular filter. During this process, I assisted my mother, the winemaker, and John, our wine consultant. Following filtering, we had two days of bottling. We hire a traveling bottling truck, and everyone takes his or her spot on the assembly line. My job was dropping the screw caps on each bottle after it had been filled (some of our wines are screw-tops, some are corked).

Some of the other things I did included working on social media, specifically the winery’s Facebook page and Instagram account. I would help out in the vineyard if needed. For instance, one of the things that needs to be done at a certain point in the summer is de-leafing one side of the rows of grapevines. The leaves need to be torn off in order to expose the grapes to the morning sun, so that they can dry out (moisture in the grape clusters leads to mildew).

One project I came up with myself was to work on landscaping the property. Our family farm is more than 200 years old, and there is a lot of property. This means that it takes some work landscaping to turn the rustic old barn into an inviting wine-tasting room.

We have an old renovated stone house. It’s a big house and my sister and I are gone, leaving my parents with at least four empty bedrooms. So another thing I did was to help my parents create an Airbnb webpage. It’s a bit easier running an Airbnb than running an official bed-and-breakfast, but it still helps with expenses.

Career skills I acquired:

When working in a small business such as the winery, it is easy to see all of the different aspects of it. My father is the business manager, and he handles pretty much everything. His days shift between meeting with groups to try to get funding for our business, and delivering wine to Baltimore. I’ve learned so much about how a small business owner needs to be a multitasker. From getting all of the licenses and permits necessary to send wine to other states to coordinating filtering and bottling dates, there are constantly pressing things to think about. Because I lived at the winery in addition to working there, business discussions happened at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In this way, I definitely feel I gained some real insight as to how much it takes to run a business like this. This knowledge will definitely come in handy in the future, wherever my hospitality career takes me. I am glad that I worked at home this summer in order to get a feel for the business. This way, I know what to prepare for regarding my future with the winery, and I can keep coming up with ideas to improve the business.

Seibert during the vineyard’s bottling process, just one of several tasks she was involved in.

What it taught me about the real world:

Small family-owned businesses are a dream to many, and many people also romanticize the idea of working at a winery. But in fact, it is a lot, and I mean a lot, of hard work. Since they started the winery, my parents have put in countless hours of work each week. During the busy weeks when we’re filtering and bottling, my mom can put in four 12-hour days in a row. And during harvest, the job is even more time-consuming. The demanding nature of the business makes it hard to get any time off. My mother was fortunate to get a few breaks at slow periods during the year, but my father has hardly gotten a vacation day since we started the business. This summer I experienced the hard work firsthand. My first week as an intern included filtering, bottling, and a two-day wine festival. I put in about 65 hours that first week.

Biggest mistake I made:

My biggest mistake was failing to plan ahead for a wine festival. It was new and local, so we thought it would not be a big deal. But the festival was absolutely insane, with people waiting in line for an hour and a half at each winery, and there were only three of us to serve and sell at our stand. We had to make two trips back to the winery to bring more cases of wine.

Most frustrating thing about the internship:

Working at home for parents can sometimes be frustrating. Work and personal life completely overlapped, so sometimes it was hard to feel like the workday was over. When a day ended, there were some times when business discussions or arguments were brought up over dinner. It’s hard for my parents to stop thinking about the business. However, they have gotten better about dropping business talk at the dinner table. It was hard sometimes when I was trying to take a day off and relax at the farm and my mom would call me over to help clean the wine filter from the day before. There’s always something that needs to be done.

My proudest accomplishment:

Coming home with a fresh pair of eyes, I was able to see what expenses we could cut and what really needed to be organized. I am really happy I was able to help my parents with this (even if they were sometimes annoyed with my nagging during the process). I helped them get rid of vehicles that were no longer necessary for the business. We’ve had interns from around the country recently, and they have their own cars to drive when they work here.

I also organized a shed area next to the tasting room. Previously, there had been vineyard equipment, tasting room equipment, and landscaping equipment all mixed together. Now, the tasting room can have easy access to extra tables, the crew can easily access the harvest lugs, and others can access the extra mower. I realized that organizing is something I really enjoy. I also helped to organize the recycling system at the winery and in my dad’s office.

Most important lesson I learned:

The most important lesson I learned is that as a business owner, organization and preparedness are absolutely essential.

My most surprising or unexpected experience:

I was really surprised when the Taste of the Valley Food and Wine festival in Hagerstown was so busy. None of us expected the crazy day that awaited us. People waited for more than an hour just to taste the wines, and we sold more than 10 cases of one of our wines.

What I learned about the real world that inspired or frustrated me:

The wine industry is a very friendly one. My parents know many other Maryland winery owners, and they all exchange ideas and expertise and help each other in hard times.

Overall grade and whether the internship lived up to my expectations:

A-.

If I had it to do over, I’d…

Take more initiative to work more closely with my dad and get hands-on experience with all of the paperwork and coordination he does on a day-to-day basis.

My advice for others seeking an internship:

It is never too early to start looking for an internship. I interviewed for my first one in October of my freshman year. Especially at SHA, it is really important to have work experience in addition to what you are learning. I have had four internships with small family-run operations. For those who like having many different roles and tasks, smaller businesses will be exciting for you. If you are looking for a clear-cut set of guidelines in an internship, however, it would be better to look at a bigger, more corporate atmosphere. Another way to see if an internship is going to be a good fit is to ask some questions yourself in the interview. By asking specific questions about what you will be doing, it will help give you a sense of what the internship will be like.

Tomorrow, part three of our summer internship series: Getting to the Heart of the Matter.