An Introduction to Danaher University Programs

Parker Pell: On this episode of the internship show, we speak with Norman Jones from Danaher. Norman talks about their internship and full-time opportunities within their university programs, shares why he loves working at Danaher and so much more. Stay tuned, the show is coming up next.

Parker Pell: Norman, thanks much for taking the time and joining the show.

Norman Jones: Thanks for having me here, Parker.

Parker Pell: Super excited to dive into all things Danaher and Danaher’s university programs in our conversation today. But just for starters, do you mind just introducing yourself and talking a bit about your role at Danaher to the audience?

Norman Jones: Sure. My name is Norman Jones. I am the Global Director of University Recruitment here at Danaher. I’ll hit my two-year mark at the end of August of this year. And my main job is to make sure that we’re bringing in early career talent, whether it’s interns or full-time hires from universities. And I could be undergrad, masters, PhD and MBA talent to be the future leaders of our company. So happy to be here with you and to engage with you.

Parker Pell: Excited as well. And I mean, let’s introduce Danaher for a second. For an audience that might not have heard of the company before. Can you talk a bit about who is Danaher and talk about what the company does as well?

Norman Jones: Danaher is a leading global life sciences and diagnostics innovator, helping to solve many of the world’s most important health challenges. Ultimately, improving quality of life for billions of people today while setting the foundation for a healthier and more sustainable tomorrow.

Parker Pell: And I’m always curious when we bring guests on the show. To hear your perspective, Norman, what do you love about working at Danaher?

Norman Jones: I love that at the end of the day, our main mission is to ensure we’re improving people’s health. It makes me proud to say I work at Danaher. Also, I have an amazing manager who believes in me and is actively developing me, which is important to me as a working professional. And lastly, I have an amazing team of recruiters that I get to lead as we bring on the future leaders of our organization.

Parker Pell: I love that Danaher is so invested in bringing in early talent, whether it’s intern or full-time individuals to the company to really make an impact. I’m curious, Norman, as your team is going out and recruiting this awesome talent, could you talk a bit about maybe some of the skills that you and the team are looking for in a candidate for whether it’s your internship or your full-time opportunities?

Norman Jones: Of course. For our intern and full-time, entry-level associate roles, we recruit for talent that has, that wants to leverage their degrees in whether it’s in the corporate environment, the R&D space, or the manufacturing supply chain space. So some majors we’re recruiting for include accounting and finance, biology, chemistry, engineering, whether it’s mechanical, biomedical, electrical, computer, industrial.

Parker Pell: I love to hear that, Norman. And I mean, for students that show those skills and get that opportunity to come and join Danaher, I want to focus a bit on the internship program for a second. Can you give us an overview of what the internship program is going to look like for a Danaher intern?

Norman Jones: Yeah. So our internship program here at Danaher is 12 weeks long. Typically, sometimes 10 depending on a school timeframe of some students and where they go to school at. But typically, it is 12 weeks long. And even before you start our internship, our intern program lead is reaching out to you to get to know you, to get you excited about coming on to Danaher. We work with the hiring manager to make sure that there’s meaningful work that the interns are going to be doing, that they’re going to find to be a value add to their future. And then once you come on board, it’s all about how to make sure you’re doing great work that’s going to be beneficial to Danaher but also having fun. So we work hard to make sure that while you’re learning a lot that you can add to your resume, you’re also building camaraderie amongst other interns here. So we work very hard to build engagement, bring people together, celebrate you, do lunch and learns, do executive talks where we bring leaders in to engage with you. And just make sure at the end of the day, you had a great experience overall.

Parker Pell: We know that community and that engagement is really what students are looking for when they’re choosing a company, obviously, to go in intern for. You talked about those lunch and learns, maybe the executive speaker series, any other kind of workshops or events y’all are hosting throughout the program that you could speak to, that interns are going to have the opportunity to attend?

Norman Jones: Yeah, I think one of our biggest things that we do is we bring the interns together for what we call DBS week. We DBS stands for Danaher Business System. It’s our core values. It’s our culture. It’s what we live and breathe here at Danaher.

So we bring our interns together at a location somewhere in the US for a week long immersion into DBS. We bring on one of our DBS experts who come in and facilitate what DBS is, whether it’s educating them on what kaizen’s are and putting them through a mini kaizen, whether it’s putting them through PSP, which stands for Problem Solving Processes, whether it’s talking about the five Y’s to get to the root of the problem. So we try to have that immersion where you get to learn what we live and breathe here at Danaher because our hope is that you’ll be able to take that back to your school environment and apply DBS as you’re working through problems in class or preparing for exams or team presentations. So DBS is a huge thing for us and bringing those interns together is a great way for them to learn truly what makes Danaher, Danaher, but also allows them to engage with each other in person because we have interns flying in from all over the country.

Parker Pell: I think that’s so cool and such a unique component to Danaher’s internship program, right? Because they’re getting that experience, obviously, of interning, working at Danaher, getting to network, but the practicality behind what they’re learning throughout their internship and being able to apply that back to when they’re in school, right? I think it’s just invaluable. And I’m sure that Danaher interns are loving their experience. Do you have any feedback from former Danaher interns that you could share about kind of what generally they’ve said their experience has been like?

Norman Jones: Yeah, of course. And I’m one who likes to focus on both positives and areas for development. You know, sometimes I’m not going to just tell you all the great things that interns have said because I don’t think that’s realistic. No internship is 100% perfect. But with regards to the positives, we’ve heard interns say that they love the experience because they felt like they really got to do meaningful work. We’ve had interns talk about how they love the culture of the operating company that they’re a part of. We’ve had interns talk about how they love coming together. We really got the network and bond with other interns, how they really enjoyed that DBS week. We’ve had also some other interns who gave us feedback on how we could be better. You know, I mean, like I said, at Danaher, we’re all always about continuous improvement. How can we continue continuously get better because that’s what we strive for.

We feel that perfection is never really something you can obtain or something you’re always reaching for. You know, so we asked our interns for feedback that let us know what we could do better so they could have a better experience. You know, so we do want the instructive feedback as well as the positive feedback.

Parker Pell: I love that though, because it’s a two-way street, right? And I think that the receptiveness for a company like Danaher to feedback from interns even goes farther to elevate y’all’s program overall. And you’re putting a ton into bringing in this early career talent into Danaher to really make an impact. Norman, as your team thinks about the goals for the internship program, what would some of those be?

Norman Jones: Yep. And I can tell you now, Parker, we have four goals that we always set for ourselves. And we stand by the first goal, is for interns to have a meaningful internship experience, where they can put where they can apply what they’ve learned in their classes in a work environment. Our second goal, is for our interns to experience our culture of learning, teamwork, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement. Our third goal, is to make the internship a fun experience for all of our interns. And our last goal is conversion. We want to ensure that all our interns that are successful are converted, whether it’s to come back as a full time associate the following year, or to come back as a returning intern the following summer.

Parker Pell: Norman, this has been so fun to not only learn about Danaher, the company, but also Danaher’s university programs, both intern and full time and all the investment that y’all are putting into delivering this awesome experience for early talent that gets an opportunity to join Danaher. I’d love for us to close out the show, and it’s going to be a tough question. But if you wanted a listener to leave the show, knowing kind of one thing about Danaher or about other of the programs that we’ve discussed today, what would you want to leave listeners with?

Norman Jones: I would like a listener to know that Danaher is a great place to start, grow and end your career. You know, I’ve been here for almost two years, and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. I thoroughly enjoy the work I do. But more importantly, I really enjoy the people I work with. And again, like I said, at the end of the day, our mission here is to improve the lives of every human on this planet. And for me, that’s made me so proud to say how we’re going to Danaher.

Parker Pell: Couldn’t agree with you more, Norman. Thanks so much again for the time today. We really appreciate the conversation.

Norman Jones: Thank you, Parker. It was great talking to you.

Parker Pell: So fun chatting with Norman to learn about Danaher, Danaher’s university programs, and so much more about everything early career going on at their company. Stay tuned for the next episode of The Internship Show and have a great day.