Senior Steven Preval.
A student's passion for marketing leads to full-time role at Google
Steven Preval arrived at Rutgers Business School–Newark with experience creating social media content and a clear sense that he wanted a career in marketing. What he did not yet realize was all the field encompassed — or that the analytical side of marketing would become his passion.
At Rutgers Business School, “I was able to gain a broader perspective of what marketing is,” Preval said.
A first-generation college student, Preval earned four scholarships — three from Rutgers and a $10,000 award from the Advertising Research Foundation — that eased financial pressure and allowed him to fully immerse himself in campus life.
“All these scholarships were amazing because I was able to quit working. I was able to just fully rely on these scholarships and be able to involve myself more on campus,” said Preval, who commutes to RBS from West Orange.
Internship leads to Google offer
He stepped into leadership roles in RBS student organizations, built professional experience through more than a half-dozen internships and ultimately landed a coveted internship with Google last summer. In January, Google offered him a full-time position as an associate product marketing manager in its New York office after graduation. The role will focus on Google Ads business-to-business marketing.
“I’m really excited to be able to go back,” he said.
Before college, Preval created gaming content on YouTube that attracted thousands of followers and later built an Instagram account that grew to more than 300,000 followers.
Classes in consumer behavior, marketing research and analytics introduced him to the strategic and data-driven decision-making behind campaigns. His favorite course — AI in Marketing — showed how artificial intelligence tools could be applied to marketing strategy.
“We got to see real-life case scenarios … and use them ourselves,” Preval said.
Leadership roles in campus organizations such as the Marketing and Management Society and the National Association of Black Accountants helped him develop initiative and confidence, which he carried into professional settings. “If you can influence people without authority, that is the key thing,” he said.
Building skills through experience
After an unpaid internship with a nonprofit handling social media content, he landed a role with Henkel, a global consumer goods company, working on strategy and innovation initiatives that required closely examining data.
“I like the marketing research aspect, the data analytics, the marketing strategy,” Preval said.
That experience helped position him for his summer internship at Google, where he worked on the company’s Commerce Analytics Payments team and focused on the Google Wallet app.
Preval’s primary project focused on improving promotional incentive campaigns to increase user engagement. He analyzed performance data and created a 70-page slide deck demonstrating how other teams could create incentive campaigns from scratch.
Preval sought out more than 100 informal “coffee chats” with employees across the company to learn how different teams operated and where he might contribute. Those conversations led to his involvement in projects beyond his assigned responsibilities, including work related to Google’s Gemini tools for students.
He also sought feedback routinely. “I asked my manager in every single meeting, was there anything that I could do to improve,” he said, noting he always exceeded expectations in performance reviews.
Preval said Elizabeth Fieseler, a career counseling officer in the Office of Career Management (OCM), played a key role in his success. She helped him prepare for interviews, strengthen his resume and identify opportunities — including the $10,000 scholarship and industry connections.
“She has helped me through a lot of my journey here at Rutgers,” he said.
Fieseler said Preval took full advantage of career services from the get-go, becoming what office staff called a “frequent flyer.” Once while prepping for an interview, she and Preval discussed the STAR interview framework — situation, task, action and result. He added his own twist.
“Steven mentioned that he follows that framework when answering interview questions but likes to take it one step further and add an ‘L’ on the end for what he learned from an experience,” Fieseler said. “So basically he coined the term STARL which I use with students to this day.”
Preval “never stops striving to improve,” Fieseler said. “What stands out to me about Steven is that he is relentless — in a good way!”
Preval is equally committed to supporting fellow students in their career development. “He actively works to ‘pay it forward,’” she said.
Preval encouraged others at RBS to get involved early and “take the opportunities that present themselves.” Join student organizations, attend job fairs and networking events, and “use the Office of Career Management — there’s no con to it,” he said.
-Margaret McHugh
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