Professional Experience Concentration Requirements

To earn your Professional Experience or Internship credit, you need to meet these requirements:

• Be a junior or senior business major in good academic standing (minimum GPA of 2.0/4.0, not on academic probation or suspension from MCB)
• Approval from Professional Experience Coordinator prior to engaging in experience
• Completion of Student-Employer Agreement
• Completion of two pre-requisite workshops: resume and professionalism/interviewing skills
• Employers will complete a survey in Handshake. 
• Minimum of 50 hours of work needed to meet Professional Experience requirement (may be more if required by employer)
• Final Evaluation done by both the student and supervisor. 

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Browse Requirements by Concentration

Each concentration has a list of approved activities for you to do that will count toward your professional experience requirements. Please meet with the Professional Experience Coordinator to ensure that your position will qualify for the professional experience requirement. 

• Accounting

  A job description will need to be provided to the Accounting Chair or his/her designated individual to be used in determining if the activity qualifies as Professional Experience.

  • These activities must be approved by the Accounting Chair or his/her designated individual an the activities must be performed in one of the following areas: 
    • Cost or management accounting 
    • Accounting information systems
    • Tax preparation and review
    • Financial accounting 
    • Audit
    • Governmental 

  The activities cannot be part of the duties of a club official or for a student organization (i.e., keeping the books for a fraternity would not be acceptable). The activities must be performed for an entity that is external to the university. However, upon approval by the Accounting Chair or his/her designated individual, exceptions may be made for such activities as: 

  • Performing monthly financial audits for the athletic department would be acceptable as it is a paid-position conducting accounting activities 
  • Preparing tax returns for low income individuals through the VITA or other recognized tax preparation program would be an acceptable activity 
  • Performing accounting activities for UNC’s accounting department or the UNC Foundation.
• Computer Information Systems

  These activities must be approved by the Accounting and CIS Chair or his/her designated individual an the activities must be performed in one of the following areas:

  • Database 
  • Network technologies
  • Information security
  • Web and ecommerce technologies
  • Systems analysis and design

  The activities cannot be part of the duties of a club official or for a student organization (i.e., designing a webpage for a fraternity would not be acceptable). 

  A job description will need to be provided to the Chair of Accounting and CIS or his/her designated individual to be used in determining if the activity qualifies as Professional Experience.

• Finance

  These activities must be approved by the Finance Chair or his/her designated individual an the activities must be performed in one of the following areas:

  • Assist in daily financial operations
  • Assist with financial compliance requirements
  • Monitor and track key financial benchmarks
  • Work with clients to help create a financial plan
  • Assist with capital budgeting decisions
  • Perform financial analysis
  • Prepare pro-forma financial statements
  • Perform credit analysis
  • Business valuation and/or asset valuation/appraisal activities
  • Activities at financial institutions involving more than clerical responsibilities
  • Cash flow analysis and forecasting activities
  • Assist with short term financing decisions such as working capital policy, cash management, inventory management, and accounts receivable management  Forecasting and financial planning activities
  • Preparation of weekly and monthly financial reports  Preparation of loan reviews, new loan requests  Financial statement analysis  Develop and analyze budgets for local, regional, national, or worldwide operations
  • Assist in the management of client accounts including collection problems
  • Assist with portfolio management activities and decisions
  • Assist in the development of the client base
• Management

  These activities must be approved by the Management Chair or his/her designated individual an the activities must be performed in one of the following areas:

  • Apply principles of program planning, implementation, and evaluation to an organizational setting.
  • Think strategically about organizations and their interaction with the environment.
  • Recognize, understand, and accept own feelings toward the management profession.
  • Integrate theoretical knowledge and skills involved in a professional management environment.
  • How to examine business issues and problems that confront society today.
  • Identify and apply basic supervision concepts with critical skills in how to manage, motivate, and engage employees.
  • Respond to and assist with real-world challenges in an organizational setting
• Marketing

  These activities must be approved by the Marketing Chair or his/her designated individual an the activities must be performed in one of the following areas:

  • Performing sponsor recruitment
  • Working in development and implementation (local, regional, and national)
  • Placing and tracking advertising
  • Media relations
  • Interacting with clients
  • Developing a strong understanding of a company’s products and services
  • Professional selling to current customers and prospecting for new business
  • Coordinating with internal departments to respond quickly to customer requests
  • Attending business tradeshows
  • Assisting with retail events
  • Creating promotional materials
  • Creating sales presentations and presenting to prospects
  • Creating displays
  • Planning special events
  • Performing market research through interviews, focus groups and surveys
  • Developing detailed marketing plans
  • Coordinating special events
  • Assisting in building a projects database
  • Assist in completing monthly forecast and sales related data entry to allow accurate forecasting and supply planning
  • Resolve freight service and claims
  • Resolve invoicing issues and PO credits
  • Review order acknowledgements
  • Review price changes and analyze impact
  • Forecast future requirements for suppliers
  • Monitor and track transportation shipments from inception to final delivery
  • Optimize transportation shipments for our customers while balancing service and cost using the transportation management system 
  • Communicate effectively with customers, carriers and teammates (phone and email communication)
  • Report and analyze key performance indicators
  • Help with the monthly forecast process
  • Review/analyze/update individual SKU’s, create/analyze reports, and streamline the process
  • Help create reports out of Demand Planning to measure forecast accuracy
  • Create new product “actual sales” vs. “sales forecast” report from Demand Planning 
  • Set-up new items into Demand Planning 
  • Document new processes
  • Assist with a wide variety of inventory and inventory control functions
  • Conduct data gathering and analysis or processes
  • Create standardized operating procedure documentation
  • Assist in implementing improvements
  • Provide summaries and analyses
  • Conduct small projects required to enable Quality Team to make process improvements

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Guildelines for Choosing your Position 

ASK YOURSELF

• What advanced skills and knowledge are essential for this position? How will this position enhance my learning in MCB coursework?
• What responsibilities of this position require advanced coursework at an institution of higher education? Am I able to apply my knowledge learned from my upper division coursework to the experience?
• What will I learn or experience from this professional experience position that I have not had the opportunity to learn or experience yet?

A PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE COULD INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING ROLES

• Supervision
• Employee training
• Responsibilities specific to major
• Research opportunities
• Projects specific to major
• Business to business sales

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