At The Johnson Group, we have a history of hiring talented young people who have the potential to grow into company leaders. As part of this tradition, on June 3, we’ll welcome 24 summer interns into our ranks, where they’ll have the chance to put their critical thinking skills and thirst for learning into practice.

Hailing from nine different colleges, these interns will primarily be located at our headquarters in Spartanburg with others based in regional offices in Washington, D.C. and El Segundo, Calif. Filling positions from accounting and finance, to IT and risk analysis, to real estate and development, these interns have an opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way to real business needs during their internship experience. Throughout the summer, interns will participate in extensive onboarding, attend Lunch and Learns, and participate in social and community events that will give them a better understanding of the values and goals of our business.

Beyond gaining valuable work experience, many past interns have capitalized on their time over the summer to earn a full-time position at The Johnson Group companies.

The internship program these students are joining was developed several years ago when leadership across The Johnson Group recognized recruitment as a top priority and saw an opportunity to build a long-term pipeline of talent.

Claudia Albergotti, who leads the cross-company intern recruitment team, was able to see the benefits of this approach firsthand. Says Claudia, “When we made the change a couple of years ago to a unified strategy, we quickly saw the impact of the depth and breadth of The Johnson Group platform.”

Spotlight: Interns to Analysts

Many of our current team members made their mark as interns, whose smart ideas and contributions led to full-time opportunities.

Real Estate Analyst Stormie McDonald got her start with Johnson Development’s Industrial Division as an intern in November 2017. She later joined the team full-time after graduating from USC Upstate in May 2018 with a degree in accounting.

Josh Jones, Director of Real Estate, says, “Stormie is a great example of the type of candidate we hope to see come through our internship program. Though she didn’t have any industrial real estate experience, her attention to detail, initiative and desire to learn created a lot of value during her internship. Since joining us full-time, these same characteristics have made her a key member of our team.”

Stephen McCaffery shares those same qualities. A current senior at Washington & Lee University, Stephen spent two summers interning with OTO Development and will join OTO’s Real Estate team as a Real Estate Analyst upon graduating in June.

As an intern in 2018, Stephen saw an opportunity to explore the hospitality and tourism market surrounding national parks. After taking the initiative to travel to these markets and do extensive research, he presented his assessment of the opportunity to OTO’s executive leadership team.

Todd Turner, OTO’s Vice President of Real Estate, said, “Stephen identified a real opportunity for our business that our real estate team would otherwise likely not have had the bandwidth to explore.”

By the numbers