A Career Built on Three I’s

Even now, more than 15 years later, Kayla Woitkowksi remembers the advice that changed her life.

It came from Shannon Davis, an associate dean in the Poole College of Management who later became a mentor. And it was something she told every class. 

“She said to focus on the three I’s while you’re here, internships, involvement, and international experience.”
–Kayla Woitkowski

“She said to focus on the three I’s while you’re here,” Woitkowski recalled, “internships, involvement, and international experience.”

Two of those I’s—the intern experience and an appetite for involvement—came together during Woitkowski’s junior year and set her on the path she’s still traveling today as Director of Global Emerging Careers at SAS. While co-oping with BMW’s training and development team in Spartanburg, S.C., she had extra time on her hands and wanted a way to get more involved in the work happening all around her.

“I was like, ‘I can get paid to do this?’” Woitkowski says. “It was through that co-op that I fell in love with university recruiting, and it’s been my career ever since.”

So she asked a BMW recruiter how she could fill those free hours. The answer: tag along on some interviews for our co-op program. 

That insight came in Woitkowski’s junior year, and it followed a considerable amount of trial and error. As an out-of-state, first-generation college student, she came to NC State with no local friends or clear ideas about her major. 

The “what” was cloudy, but Davis had offered a clear “how.” Woitkowski embraced it. In addition to the BMW co-op, she interned for three organizations during her four years. The college’s career services resources connected her with Target and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and she set up her own winter break internship with ValMark Securities, a company near her home in Ohio.

Throughout her four years in Poole, she took “involvement” seriously. She was a student worker in the college administrative office. She was a student mentor, an active member of the Society for Human Resource Management and the American Marketing Association, and a peer leader. In that last role, she met her future husband.

And she went international, spending a semester in Lille, France, studying business and French. At IÉSEG School of Management, she took masters-level classes in niche topics like luxury marketing, became fluent in French, and built friendships that sustain her still.

Each experience added a piece to her career puzzle. Working in the college office brought her closer to Davis, who thought Woitkowski’s mix of empathy, business sense, and analytical skills were a match for human resources. 

As graduation approached in fall 2011, Woitkowski faced a choice. The Environmental Protection Agency was interested in converting her part-time HR admin role into a stable full-time job in the Research Triangle Park. Or, she could take a chance on a contract position as a university recruiter for NetApp.

The decision called on everything she’d learned and gained following the three I’s. NetApp, she believed, could deliver the “high-energy, fast-paced work” she’d been yearning for since her BMW co-op. The mentors she’d gained through her involvement with the college all validated the company as a solid employer. And the skills she’d built living abroad gave her confidence that she could start over and succeed, which proved valuable when her job landed her an assignment in Silicon Valley.

“I took a risk and it was really the start of the rest of my career.”
–Kayla Woitkowski

“I took a risk,” she says “and it was really the start of the rest of my career.”

In nearly three years with NetApp, Woitkowski went from stocking swag for career fairs and stuffing envelopes with offer letters to overseeing recruitment strategy on 13 campuses in the eastern and central U.S.

“Essentially, my job was to travel to various university campuses building NetApp’s employer brand,” she says.

She wasn’t looking for something new when SAS cold-called in 2014 with a rare opportunity: to build an internship program at one of the most highly sought after employers in the Triangle. But she listened, and she saw a chance to do something new — leading a program — and get off the road. She jumped.

Her role as intern program manager evolved into an opportunity to build a university recruiting team from the ground up. She managed to staff the team in six months and develop the mission, vision and strategy to guide them. Over the next three years, she implemented sophisticated systems for allocating recruitment resources, keeping track of candidates across campuses, and enhancing selection processes using technology.

In 2021, her portfolio grew to include recruitment for internships and entry-level programs. That’s kept her close to the college-aged population she loves, but also exposed her to new types of candidates: veterans joining the corporate world after long military careers and mid-career professionals who are switching disciplines.

“We’re being more inclusive of the different talent pipelines that could fill an entry-level position,” she says, “and being thoughtful around the way education is changing, too. There’s so much talent right now in the workforce that’s looking to upscale, rescale and re-educate.

“Poole does a really great job of making sure students are career-ready with experiential learning.”
–Kayla Woitkowski

In more than a decade assessing college graduates for roles at SAS and NetApp, Woitkowski has seen candidates from dozens and dozens of schools. Poole College, she says, stands out as a place that produces truly career-ready graduates. And in 2024 the Poole distinction starts with the same thing it did when she was a freshman in 2008.

“Poole does a really great job of making sure students are career-ready with experiential learning,” she says. “I knew that focus from day one and they’ve only reinforced it more since then: internships. Involvement. International experience.”