Procurement Intern, Cami Meddows, has spent her summer at Prairie State working with purchase orders, suppliers, and electronic records.
One of Cami’s projects involves ensuring certificates of insurance and purchase orders exist electronically. She scans and includes these where appropriate. Another of her projects involves communicating with suppliers to obtain order confirmations, determine delivery dates, change purchase order status, or obtain updated conflict of interest certificates.
Cami has also been reviewing electronic records to identify duplicate records, move records to the appropriate folder, or archive the record. This will be an ongoing project, but she will finish a good portion of it before her internship ends. Her other tasks include adding appropriate appendices to terms and conditions, along with shadowing buyers twice a week.
One thing Cami has enjoyed is having guidance with all the tasks she is assigned. “I feel comfortable asking Angela, Glenda, Rachel, or Susan questions at any time if I need help. I love the environment I am in while at work too; everyone is so friendly and sociable.”
The most important thing Cami has learned this summer is the overall process of procurement. She said, “I came in with no knowledge of procurement, but I will be leaving with a good understanding of the process and why it works the way it does. Angela does an outstanding job of explaining the reasoning behind everything I do so it makes more sense as to why I am doing it.”
Cami will remember shadowing with each of the buyers, noting, “All three of them have taught me different things in their area of expertise. It helped me understand what I liked and what I didn’t like so I know for a future job.”
At first, Cami was overwhelmed by everything she was experiencing in the first few days; after understanding a bit more about everything, she can see herself having a career in procurement in the future.
This year, she graduated from Missouri Baptist University with a degree in business administration and a minor in management. Cami’s future plans may include getting a master’s degree, but her main goal for now is to obtain a full-time position after this internship.