Career Experience

My Experience Taking a Semester off to Pursue a Co-op Opportunity at Wayfair

First-gen college student Rachel Li shares her experience of giving up a part of her sophomore year for a unique career opportunity.

“We need to revamp the SKU Inbox, a tool to source different products. How about investigating and coming up with a proposal on how we can make it more user-friendly?” My manager said to me. 

“What is SKU Inbox? What process? How?” I thought to myself. 

There was an awkward silence. I didn’t even know where to begin. I had only been here two months, and this was the spring of my sophomore year. 

At the beginning of November 2021, I was scrolling through Handshake and saw some six-month internship opportunities. The job description’s hands-on responsibilities and real-world skills caught my attention. What if I do a deep-dive Co-op rather than studying companies in the classroom? 

I talked to many upperclassmen and professors to get their perspectives. Even though I knew this opportunity would be valuable for long-term growth, I felt compelled to stick to my already-made four-year plan and take the same classes as my peers. When I talked to my Asian parents, they strongly opposed the idea of taking a leave from school. “You have plenty of time to work after you graduate,” they said. “Why now?” 

However, I knew that exposure to the real world would gain me better insights than any informational interviews with current employees. Therefore, I wanted to take this time to extract myself from peer pressure, to experience and understand what I want. 

As I weighed my four-year plan and the thought of missing out on college life against this seemingly fantastic opportunity, I accepted a job offer from Wayfair on my 20th birthday. 

At home, I started my 6-month Co-op in January 2022 due to the rise in COVID cases. I found the best way to learn was through shadowing others while they were working on the project, which allowed me to understand the whole process from start to finish. Then I would do a reverse shadow session to ask questions and learn on the spot. 

After connecting with my manager and asking clarifying questions about the SKU Inbox project, I dug into 40,000 datasets. 

I processed data, manipulated variables, created visualizations, and revised proposals in the following months. Of course, some days are more challenging than others. 

I found a massive discrepancy where 10% of the critical indicator data was missing from the database. No one had ever done this work before. I raised the concern to my manager and contacted the script owner to make edits. After two months of analyzing, interviewing cross-functional partners, and revising back and forth, I finally delivered the presentation to the team and started working with the engineers on the next steps. My work had a legitimate impact on the tenth-largest E-Commerce retailer in the country. 

After my time at Wayfair, I learned these five lessons from my experiences and coffee chats with all levels of people: 

1. Have a master spreadsheet to keep track of the major projects you worked on in STAR (situation, task, action, result) format. This comes in handy for performance evaluation and interview preparation. 
2. Own your work and regularly solicit feedback from colleagues and managers on your strengths and opportunity areas. 
3. Keep an open mind and communicate with your manager about the things you’ll be interested in trying one day. 
4. Keep your long-term goals loose but definitely have them. Tell the people you know that can help you get there. 
5. If you are in the middle of exploring, think about how you want to feel and what kind of people you want to work with. 

Now back on campus, the business world makes much more sense. I can connect the dots between the classroom and the boardroom. I see different possibilities and that my life is more than a linear path.

So is yours.