College of Business

Keenan Seguancia arrived at the College of Business motivated and with a solid strategy: to double-major in business information systems and accountancy, the former adding depth and breadth to his education along the road to the CPA exam and a career in accounting.

But an internship at Nike led to a change in plans for the senior from Honolulu.

Nike, he learned, was making a big push to elevate its data collection, storage and analysis game. Not only would the Beaverton-based company bring on a collection of BIS interns, it would add a chief information officer to the corporate management team.

Seguancia had only a few days to get his application materials ready, but he sensed this was the opportunity he’d been eyeing as he chased internship possibilities.

“You have to swing to hit a home run,” Seguancia said. “I swung many a time and struck out.”

In taking his cuts for the Nike internship, he aimed for the fences by submitting, along with a resume and cover letter as requested, a one-minute video highlighting his skills and how Nike’s mission and values paralleled his own.

All of that earned him an interview via HireVue, which Seguancia describes as “like Skype, but no one is on the other end” – it lets companies record, for later review, interviewees as they answer a series of questions.

From there, he advanced to a 10-minute telephone interview, which resulted in an invitation to intern.

“They usually look for designers or marketing people for their interns, but as a BIS student, I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.

Seguancia spent three months in the human resources technology department and excelled, earning a job offer – he started in July 2015.

During his internship at Nike, Seguancia primarily worked on resume screening software and also testing and developing software “for back-end HR things.”

He also earned the right, along with seven intern teammates, to present a marketing, sales and distribution plan he helped develop to a group of executives that included Phil Knight. His team had vied with about 15 other intern squads for the right to appear before the company chairman – an experience that Seguancia smilingly described as “nerve-wracking,” but also gratifying.

“Just to see the founder of the company sitting right in front of you, I felt really valued,” he said.