Summer of Number Crunching and Making Connections

Over the summer, Gjergj Ndoci’20 became a finance and marketing intern at Blackhawk Transportation, a transport and logistics company in Beloit, which he discovered at a marketing event for local businesses. An economics major from Albania, Ndoci is as comfortable connecting with future employees as he is crunching numbers.

Much of Gjergj’s work at Blackhawk was “going over invoices, sending emails, and keeping track of where orders are being sent,” he says.

But his favorite part of the job?

Recruiting truck drivers to work for Blackhawk. “I love talking to people,” he says. “I’ve had the chance to talk to drivers about why they want to do trucking and what they like about their jobs. It’s definitely been good exposure to people from different walks of life.”

According to Ndoci, the trucking industry isn’t doing so well, mainly because of a lack of interested drivers. The trick to recruiting is establishing good rapport, he explains, which Beloit gave him the skills to do. “All the classes I’ve taken at Beloit and all the extracurricular experiences have helped a lot in building relationships with people,” he says.

The liberal arts experience at Beloit has also given Gjergj a strong work ethic and confidence in making fast decisions.

“I am the president of TKE [Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity], so that has taught me a lot about being able to manage things properly and follow a schedule,” says Ndoci. “I definitely believe that it has helped a lot with [the internship], in terms of experiences that enabled me to think critically and think fast.”