Engineering Student Lands J&J Co-op, Named NJIT's Intern of the Year

When Jeremy Bedient was navigating Career Development Services’ (CDS) Spring 2019 Career Fair, seeking a co-op with Johnson & Johnson was nowhere on his radar. But at the moment he passed by the company’s supply-chain booth and saw there was no line, he figured “why not” and took advantage of the opportunity to network with the recruiter. They wound up engaging in a great conversation about Six Sigma, and Bedient was invited to interview for a spot later that week. With help in preparing for the meeting from his Alpha Kappa Psi brothers, he aced the interview and landed a six-month, newly created co-op in J&J’s Digital Identification and Traceability group that began this past July in Titusville, N.J.

There, the third-year industrial engineering major and Albert Dorman Honors College scholar from Plainsboro supported pharmaceutical serialization for compliance across global markets. The process involves acquiring serial numbers and assigning them to products to facilitate data tracing. Bedient assisted in implementing a new system, developed a way to track his team’s daily report and updated training materials. In doing so, he learned Excel, Tableau, SAP and other technologies and gained critical skills in database management and analysis.

His resourcefulness and contributions not only were touted by his supervisor — “The ownership and responsibility that Jeremy has taken for his work, and the level at which he completed the work, is what truly sets him apart from other co-ops,” noted Senior Analyst Steve Lucarelli — they also garnered him NJIT’s Intern of the Year honors for 2020. Bedient was chosen from among 33 contestants by a CDS selection committee for the annual competition and will receive a $500 cash award.

In addition to Lucarelli’s remarks in a recommendation letter, “the committee was very impressed with Jeremy’s initiative and persistence, from his journey to securing a co-op, to excelling in a newly created co-op role, to embracing learning new technology to streamline and enhance team projects,” said Casey Hennessey, CDS assistant director of employer relations.

Bedient, who has continued with J&J part time to finish a project he had been working on during his co-op, will join Ernst &Young (EY) this summer in its Technology Advisor Program. The two- to three-year program enables participants to develop core skills in business consulting by demonstrating to diverse clients how technology can improve their business performance.

Shortly after being notified of his CDS win, Bedient shared what the recognition means to him, why he thinks he was picked and how the J&J co-op exceeded his expectations.

You wrote on LinkedIn that you were a sophomore with no real work experience and had been rejected for 50 other internships before landing with J&J. Did you feel discouraged? If so, how did you overcome it?

Yeah, I definitely felt discouraged. I had been mostly applying to small companies thinking that there was no point in applying anywhere else without experience, but a friend of mine who was doing a co-op at J&J helped me realize that bigger companies have more roles and more resources to develop someone without experience. That advice, along with the empty line at the J&J supply-chain table, gave me the confidence to approach the recruiters and give it a shot. 

J&J was your first co-op. How did it meet your expectations?

It absolutely surpassed my expectations. I'm thankful that I was on a smaller team, because it meant that I had the opportunity to get to know my co-workers well and take more responsibility than I would have been able to on a bigger team. I had expected to do a lot of support work like generating reports and doing data entry, but because of the nature of my team's work, I got to work on meaningful projects for a new system implementation and create processes for managing data quality. The level of independence that I was given early on also surprised me, but definitely made the experience an even greater learning opportunity. 

Do you anticipate segueing into a job there after graduating?

I definitely think there's a chance of securing a full-time role after graduating. My team doesn't have any entry-level roles, but I'm in the pool to be considered for a role elsewhere in supply chain. I'm also interested in doing consulting for a few years after graduating, and I'll be doing an internship in technology consulting with EY this summer. In any case, I loved my time at J&J and hope to return at some point in my career.

What does being named Intern of the Year mean to you, and what do you think made you shine among the other contestants?

Being named Intern of the Year really reinforces the value of trying to be proactive, persistent and passionate in everything I do. I think it also shows that you don't need outstanding technical skills going in as long as you've got a good foundation of soft skills and an eagerness to learn. A mentor once told me that he really differentiated himself when he did an internship at Prudential by automating his work with VBA and using the extra time to take on additional projects. I really took that advice to heart, so as soon as I saw the opportunity, I spent a day writing some code that would go on to save me a few weeks of work. My supervisor was impressed, so he started giving me more meaningful work because I'd proven that I was able to handle the easier stuff.