My Experience as an IT intern at Leggett & Platt

Tommy LyI found my ideal IT internship at Leggett & Platt during my final summer of college in 2013. I knew I wanted to stay in Southwest Missouri to start my IT career, so I got input from friends, classmates, my career counselor, and of course, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor. Ultimately, I chose Leggett because of its good reputation and its promising (even mysterious-sounding) internship program name, Doors.

A member of Leggett’s Talent Management group, Rachel Heisten, manages Doors. She guided me and 12 other interns through a well-developed program. Highlights included:

  • Working on real, professional projects that impacted the company
  • Tours of local factories and the Idea Center (Leggett’s R&D facility)
  • Regular leadership training including presentation workshops

The Doors events were great venues to meet other interns, employees, and even business leaders. Our program concluded with a presentation to leadership about our experience. I appreciated that executives attended and were personally interested in what we accomplished.

My project involved the deployment of a company-wide application through the Corporate Network Support team. My IT mentors, James Ewing and Seth Baker, not only helped guide my work, but also taught me about project management and server systems in the real world — experience you can’t get in college.

That being said, some of the best parts about Doors won’t show up as a bullet point on my résumé:

  • Playing soccer during lunch
  • Tripping over people during Office Olympics
  • IT Cake Day
  • Making friends with down-to-earth, friendly people

There’s something to be said about work culture and genuinely enjoying the workplace. I can’t say Leggett & Platt’s Doors program is the right fit for everyone, but it provided me a wonderful internship experience — and it continues to be a wonderful place to work as a full-time member of the IT team. Wherever you end up for your internship, learn as much as you can, but also take the time to make friends and enjoy the ride.

Read other internship stories or visit www.leggett.com/internships for more information.