Steve Jobs was an impressive person with tons of achievements under his belt. Did you know that just one cold call to HP’s co-founder helped 12-year old Steve Jobs get an internship?
In an interview in 1994, Jobs shared how one cold call is all it took to land an internship at Hewlett Packard. When he was in high school, he cold-called Hewlett-Packard’s co-founder Bill Hewlett, who was listed in the phonebook, to ask for some leftover electronic parts, and was astonished when Bill actually picked up!
The 20-minute talk with the 12-year old Jobs amused the HP’s co-founder. Hewlett soon recognized the potential talent that the young Jobs had. Just 12 at the time, Steve Jobs received an offer for an internship working on the assembly line of frequency counters with Hewlett-Packard (and also the electronic parts he had been asking for, by the way). The two were complete strangers before this call.
Although his duties were negligible and mostly comprised of screwing down bolts, Jobs was constantly in an environment where he was learning about his passion. Jobs is a motivation for people in the tech industry to follow their gut, and not think much before asking for help. If the intention is right, there is no reason to worry before asking for help.
Steve Jobs reached the peak in his career as an entrepreneur only because he had the guts to seek help. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), internships are a vital step in a path to success. Hiring managers have often stated that an internship in the field of your interest holds much more value than your academic degree.
An internship is where you actually experience the job (sort of like a test-drive) and know whether you have the capacity, abilities, skill set and passion for it. Being able to reach out to people without fearing rejection is what separates the people who dream about things from the people who actually take action, Jobs had famously said.
Go on, make that call you’ve been wanting to make. Who knows? You might get lucky as Steve Jobs!