Marketing Summer Intern Review

I have really enjoyed the 9 week internship and am sad it's coming to an end. I loved working with my team and my projects were varied and interesting. Everyone is so helpful and its a great opportunity to learn/hone skills. There is a good work-life balance, where it's possible to enjoy working in Canary Wharf with a large cohort of other interns.

Everyone I met was friendly and helpful, always willing to sit down and have a catch-up or discuss their role/career with you. I often felt like I was able to give real value to my team.

Every week I had a meeting with my line manager to go through my work, any questions I had or discuss anything else I wanted to. In the middle and end of the internship I also had performance reviews which were helpful to know where I was going right and where I could improve. Outside of these, I sat next to my line manager and team and was encouraged to ask questions whenever.

At the start of the internship, I was less busy as I couldn't start on some of my projects. However this was good as I got a chance to meet people and find out about what they do etc. Towards the second half of my internship I was much more busy which I enjoyed.

The majority of my projects were soley my responsibility (or joint with another intern) which was a great learning curve. For larger, more impactful projects I was given tasks which fed into the work of someone more senior.

Mostly I felt like I gained confidence in the workplace and during presentations of my own work. I know I'll find this really valuable. Additionally, I began to learn the application of statistics in marketing which I hope I will be using a lot in the future.

Everyone works hard, but stops to chat from time to time and joke around, I always felt included in this which was great. People regularly talked about outside of work things like family, what they were doing at the weekend etc. We also had several lunches/drinks events when people were leaving which were really fun.

Straight after the 1.5 days of training, I met my team and was given all the IT help etc in order to get set up. I was then given objectives for the internship and the personal review system explain to me. We then had regular 'speaker sessions' where senior leaders in marketing would come to speak to the four markeitng interns and give us the opportunity to ask questions. I thought the internship was vary well organised and I knew from the start how things would work.

We had 2 days of training at the start which covered: personal branding, presentation skills, financial concepts and a talk from the CEO. This was really helpful, although I felt the financial concepts training should have been streamed according to degree subject. Also, some marketing specific training would have been useful. After this, I was encouraged by my team to explore different skills in order to complete my objectives and had plenty of help with this (eg. help to set up working at a market research agency for a day etc). But there was no more formal training.

We find out in a meeting on the last day whether or not we get a place on the grad scheme.

Due to there being so many interns (over 300), it was easy to find groups of interns to make friends with and socialise with. We would go for lunch together several times a week as well as dinner/drinks. We also met up on the weekends to do things around London which was really fun and really added to the whole internship experience.

Cost of living and socialising is obviously high in London and especially in Canary Wharf. This should still be possible on the intern salary though and by living somewhere further away with a bit of a commute, you can save more money

There are loads of bars and restaurants around Canary Wharf which are great, busy laces to go after work. In terms of clubs, we usually went a bit further and went to places in Shoreditch as these were less expensive. Overall, London is a great place to be interning if you are looking for great nightlife as there is a big mix of everything you could want.

We were able to take part in a citizenship project where we worked on the social media atrategy for a given charity and presented back our findings in group of around 6. There were also other challenges surrounding business innovation, mainly surrounding the tpic of Fin Tech. Other than this, activites outside of work were the ones we organised as groups of interns ourselves.