Industrial and Systems Engineering Internship Story: Disneyland

Glen Stahl

Industrial & Systems Engineering/Materials Engineering

What company did you intern with and where are they located?

Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

How did you identify and apply for your internship? Are there any specific resources you used to find the opportunity (i.e. Handshake, career fairs, other recruitment events)?

Disney announces application periods for their Professional Internship Program on LinkedIn in August. It has a 2% acceptance rate. Note: the Disney College Program is very different than the Professional Internships.

What was the application process like?

The recruiter setup up a screening interview before the technical interview. Disney’s technical interviews have a behavioral component. It’s as important to explain your thought process as it is to answer correctly. Don’t over explain simple concepts though. I got my offer for summer 23 in October 22. In December, they offered to extend my internship to be both summer and fall, but I had accepted a fall offer elsewhere.

Tell us about your internship experience. What types of tasks and projects did you engage in? Was there a particular project or part of the experience you learned the most from?

Disney engineering is a staggering operation–it manufactures the customer experience as its daily product. Disney engineering interns operate at a higher organizational level within the business and have a more global view of department level processes (and their competing priorities) than is normal. It’s hard to articulate how much I learned, but it was worth every penny of the cost of living and every minute of driving across the country. I worked on security processes for bag checks, processes for loading guests with disabilities into ride cars, quantifying guest interactions with special characters at Disney After Dark Events, supported optimization of proprietary FOS
work order system, back of house support, and 5 S analysis of maintenance bays on 3rd shift. I loved everything I did and never minded being in the empty park at 2am. What I learned most from was Disney’s report out process. IEs at Disney are internal consultants, which means we know both more and less than our clients. The report out process bridges the communications gap between different teams and keeps collaborations calibrated for solving problems without getting bogged down in confusion. Kickoff meetings, process extractions, and data presentations can only take you so far. You absolutely must listen to what the client knows about their own process. Oh, and make powerpoints beautiful.

Special note: Disney is the first place I’ve been that actually has at least 50% women engineers, all the way to the top. It seems like a good place for mentorship.

In what ways did this internship help you prepare for your next destination after Auburn?

This was my first client-facing roll. (Disney treats any department that needs an industrial engineering consultation as a client.) I learned so much about communicating engineering concepts to people from different backgrounds. I learned a great deal about collaborating through professional office products like MS Teams, shared Excel files, and a combination of formal weekly meetings and constant informal contact.

In what ways did your coursework or other experiences at Auburn prepare you for your internships? Are there specific topics or skills you learned from classes that you put into practice on the job?

 I completed 2 co-op rotations at GE Appliances in Louisville, KY before applying at Disney. I wouldn’t have gotten an interview without some experience, especially in manufacturing. Park operations is the primary client of Disney industrial engineering.

Do you have any advice for other students looking for internships like yours?

Write a resume that very closely aligns with the responsibilities mentioned in the job listing. (See question 6. Without experience, you can’t write a resume like this). Keep the formatting simple and clean. If you get an interview, avoid gushing about Disney topics. Focus on technical answers even for questions that seem to be about enjoying the park. Ask clarifying questions that make the original question more technical. This reveals the way you approach problem solving and analyze processes, making it the only way to get to the second interview.