Gen Z grad landed an internship by wearing her university baseball cap to her pizza joint job. Now she works at Cisco | Fortune

Ayala Ossowski, a 26-year-old first-generation graduate, faced the internship paradox in Fortune’s profile: many internships demanded experience she hadn’t yet. After applying to 100-plus roles with little feedback, she wore a university-logo baseball cap to her shifts at a suburban Washington, D.C., pizza shop, hoping to spark conversations with decision-makers. The cap became a conversation starter, allowing her to present a compact elevator pitch about studying public relations and marketing and seeking spring opportunities. After a month of puzzled reactions, the right person noticed her and offered a path toward employment at Cisco, validating her unconventional approach to networking.