The Professional Internship Application Process Experience

I remember as a Freshman in high school, I would tell people that my goal was to work for Disney – and I knew exactly how I was going to do it. I would do the Disney College Program, and then use that foot in the door to get a Professional Internship, which would then lead to a full-time position with the company. It’s surreal to think seven and a half years later, my dream has come true and I’m actually following these footsteps to working for Disney!

What is a Professional Internship?

So, what exactly is a Professional Internship? It’s basically just a regular internship with Disney, but they distinguish it from the College Program by adding the word “professional” because the Disney College Program is technically referred to as an internship too. The Walt Disney Company offers Professional Internships in practically every department of every business line, even with the newer organizations that Disney owns such as ABC, Marvel, ESPN, LucasFilm, and the list goes on. From engineering to animal programs to marketing, there are professional internships for practically every major.

Generally, there are Fall and Spring PI recruiting seasons, and each internship is offered for a school semester-long position, and there are very few, if any, summer professional internships. I’ve heard this is because many interns from Spring actually stay on through the Summer, and it’s also probably because Disney wants to keep their interns for longer than just a 3-month Summer! This, of course, means putting school on hold to complete a PI, or doing what I did and waiting until you are graduated to apply.

I graduated in May 2018 from The University of Arizona, but the application rule is that you have to apply for the PI within 6 months of your graduation date, or directly following the Disney College Program (which I just completed prior to my PI). I am in a uniquely perfect position because I graduated from college in 3 years, so I have an entire year of “slack,” if you will, to do something with without feeling like I am falling behind. Also, because my boyfriend doesn’t graduate until this coming May of 2019, it just works out perfectly for me to do the College Program in the Fall and a PI in the Spring, and then I’ll be finishing my PI right around when he graduates!

My Application Process Experience:

I applied for a total of 7 PI positions this recruiting season for the Spring 2019 PIs. The internships I applied for include:

• Talent Acquisition Marketing Account Management Intern - Spring 2019

• Customer Engagement Planning Intern, FL, Spring 2019 & CA, Spring 2019

• Marketing Strategy Intern, Disney Meetings, FL Spring 2019

• Marketing Strategy Intern, Disney Vacation Club, FL, Spring 2019

• Marketing Strategy Intern, Disney Institute, FL, Spring 2019

• Marketing Strategy Intern, Parks & Resorts, FL, Spring 2019

• Marketing Strategy Intern, Disney Fairy Tale Weddings, FL, Spring 2019

I started applying about 2 weeks the positions began popping up in mid-August. Just one day after submitting my first application of the season for Disney Fairy Tale Weddings Marketing Strategy, I received my first NLIC, which means ‘No Longer in Consideration’. I wasn’t super surprised because this is probably one of the most popular roles out there, but I was still a little bit discouraged and wondered if I should even keep applying for other roles.

I did, however, take into consideration that my NLIC came from a bot reviewing my resume and not finding enough matching keywords, not a real person … so that helped me take the rejection less personally. I decided to stick it out and continue applying, but I wanted to take my time with each application, so I planned to complete one application every evening for a week.

The Initial Application

The initial application for each role was largely the same with a couple different questions on a few of them. Each application required basic information about yourself, the school you attended, your GPA and manually inputting your work experience (this is in addition to a resume), a formal resume, and then had optional uploads for additional documents. I chose to upload a cover letter because I thought having an extra document that I specifically tailored to the role would help me stand out. Some of the applications had additional requirements such as uploading your unofficial school transcript, a writing sample, or simply answering specific questions such as “have you ever worked with XYZ analytics tool in your past work or school experience?”

Round 1: The Screener Interview

I applied for the Disney Meetings Marketing Strategy Internship on September 1st, and I was invited via email to schedule my phone interview with a Disney recruiter on September 4th. The email explained that this was a screener interview just to get to know me a little bit better. From there, I was able to pick from many available times, and scheduled my interview for the morning of September 7th.

At the beginning of my interview, my recruiter informed me that the screener would be for multiple roles instead of just Disney Meetings. I was screened for the Marketing Strategy Internships with Disney Vacation Club, Disney Institute, and Disney Meetings, as well as the Customer Engagement Planning Internship.

The interview itself was very similar to the College Program phone interview consisting of a series of behavior questions. These interviews seem as if the same exact questions are asked to every candidate. My interviewer and recruiter, Jenni, was incredibly sweet and made the interview delightful. I don’t remember every question asked, but they were questions such as “tell me about a time that you had to use analytical problem solving to find a solution.” There was also time at the end for me to ask questions and chat with the recruiter in a bit more casual conversation.

My recommendation for this round is to use the resource Glassdoor to look at past professional internship interview question. You can even keep it very general when searching for past questions and just find interview questions from, for example, marketing strategy internship interviews rather than only looking at interview questions from Disney marketing strategy internship interviews. Looking at past interview questions and recalling specific experiences from your past work that can be applied to the question will be very helpful because chances are, even if you don’t get asked the exact same questions, you’ll get asked something similar and it will be very helpful to have thought about your answer.

Round 2: The Disney Meetings Interview

Following my screener interview on September 7th, I was contacted on September 14th by one of the Marketing Strategy Managers at Disney Meetings to set up my next round interview. We set up the interview for September 21st which gave me enough time to do some major preparation. I knew at this point that it was down to a smaller group of candidates who got to actually interview with Disney Meetings, so I wanted to be sure I nailed the interview. See my PI Interview advice blog post for more about how I prepared for this interview!

The interview itself was a skype call with two Marketing Managers at Disney Meetings. They were both incredibly sweet and this interview felt even more casual than the screener interview. Rather than rapid-fire questions, I was asked more to just explain my experience and talk them through my resume. This was perfect for me because I love to dive deeper into my past experiences that I don’t feel like got enough attention on my resume with the limited space to explain what I actually accomplished in my past school projects and internships.

The Offer

My offer came much quicker than I had expected, especially since my interview was on Friday, September 21st and my offer came the following Monday, September 24th. I was actually on break at work at my job as a Vacation Planner at Disneyland through the College Program when my initial phone screen recruiter called. See more about this super special moment on my blog post about accepting my PI here. It was truly a magical moment to get this phone call at work at Disneyland!

Following my offer, I reached out to the two Marketing Managers at Disney Meetings to thank them and let them know how excited I was to be joining the team! Amazingly enough, another one of the Marketing Managers at Disney Meetings happened to be coming to Disneyland on vacation the week following when I received my offer. One of the managers who interviewed me was kind enough to put us in contact to set up a time to get coffee! I ended up meeting this manager inside the park before work for coffee and I got to hear more about Disney Meetings and the role I’d be stepping into. It was amazing to watch all my dreams fall into place right before my eyes, and I’m incredibly excited to be joining the Disney Meetings team this Spring of 2019!