A Bright Kid Who You’d be Crazy Not to Hire

The interns who work with us a GoNOMAD are often quite successful when they leave us and move out of Amherst and into the real world. A few years ago, we had Amanda Denz as an intern. She was the best writer I’d seen of all the interns over the years, and had a natural flow…she seemed born to work as a writer on a magazine. Over the past few years, I’ve fielded three or four calls from prospective employers. They would ask about what kind of a worker she was, and what her strengths were.

I always answered positively about Amanda. I liked her and I think she would be a valuable asset to any company. A month ago, the HR person from the San Francisco Medical Journal called, asking about Amanda. She was hiring for a Managing Editor. This was a prestigious gig!

I told her “she is a hard worker, a great person, and I’d hire her. She may not know that much about medical editing, but when you find a bright young person, who seizes what it’s all about, and can easily learn, you should grab her.” The woman from San Francisco said, yes, I know what you mean. That’s the kind of person we want. I think we will hire Amanda.”

It tickled me to have a small hand in the hiring of Amanda Denz, to this big new job. And once she was a lowly intern at a travel website in New England!