Meet Kyle Finneman – a first-year MISM student currently interning with Alaska Airlines in Seattle, Washington. He is building a dashboard that will allow Alaska’s maintenance team to record aircraft repairs and take inventory of the parts needed for those repairs.
As Kyle looked for a summer internship, he wanted an opportunity that would provide him with analytics experience. A job posting at Alaska Airlines piqued his interest and he applied and received the internship offer. Upon arrival at his internship, Kyle has been successful by applying his knowledge of SQL and Tableau.
His favorite benefit of the job is walking around all the airplanes in the hangars and receiving a behind-the-scenes look at the planes and the aviation industry. Another of the perks is the free flights. Kyle said, “If you like to travel, go work for Alaska Airlines.” He has taken advantage of this perk to travel home to Salt Lake City to visit family and also to New York for a spur-of-the-moment trip.
Unlike most interns who work on a team of developers or analysts, he works independently under a single manager. This allows him to create something uniquely his own. “The IS core taught me how to learn,” he says. Not having a team to bounce ideas off of presents a steep learning curve but in turn has shown him his capabilities. “I realized I know more than I think I do.”
When asked what advice he would have for those students currently in the IS Core, he encourages them to build relationships with each other, as well as with the professors. Kyle entered BYU with a plan to major in accounting, but soon realized it wasn’t the right fit. He started taking some IS courses, and it didn’t take long for him to notice just how much the professors cared about their students. “It was their interest in their students that made me want to pursue IS. I felt like someone cared if I was successful.”
The Alaska Airlines internship has challenged Kyle to keep learning and creating in the IS field. He hopes to take the analytics experience he has gained and one day land his dream job as a sports analyst for Utah Jazz. “I’m ready to drop everything else when the Jazz finally call me.”