Events and Marketing Intern Review

I had a thoroughly enjoyable time during my placement year. Working at Intel in the Events and Marketing role has allowed me to take advantage of a lot of opportunities, and really experiment with hands on projects throughout the year. I managed to travel to countries that I had never been to before, and learnt new skills, programs, functions, and frameworks essential for working in this industry. While tough at times, it has been very challenging and upon reflection, extremely rewarding.

Extremely valued. Even when I had my toughest and busiest times in the year, no one in my team lost faith or trust in me. While I was very conscious that I was just an Intern, everyone else in my team did now view or treat me that way, which was a really nice feeling.

In the beginning, I had a very rough start to the year as I struggled to adjust to the heavy workload through the months of September-November. When I raised this to my Managers, they took immediate action to try and help me through this crucial starting period. My manager put daily one to one meetings in my calander, so that we could sync on anything I was having problems/issues with. I was also given extra training and relief of workload when I really needed it. My team would include me in all face-to-faces and key strategy meetings, to ensure that I had a better understanding of how the business worked in order to help me get to grips with my job. Couldn't have asked for a better support system for a very challenging role.

While I did have occasional quiet periods, they were few and far between. My days were usually very busy with calls, meetings and getting on with the multiple projects I would have to complete at one time. While sometimes tough to manage the workload, it meant that the days went quickly, and I could rarely ever say I was bored or had nothing to do.

A very surprising amount. I was left in charge of making large payments, arranging mass shipments from around the world, and towards the end of my placement - organising, planning and implementing whole events by myself. I was genuinely shocked at how much trust they put into the intern in this role, but it is this that makes it that much more of a enjoyable, challenging and rewarding year in industry.

My degree (PR & Media) and my role at Intel (Events & Marketing) are slightly different strands of the communication fields. I do feel that conducting and working on many of the marketing projects during the year, has aided my understanding and ability to communicate which has already benfitted me massively in terms of my PR capabilities. Learning about and putting in to place the fundamentals needed for a successful event has been a really eye opening experience, even though I cant see massive overlaps as to where it can fit into the tight constraints of my degree.

I was told when I started that I had to be a very independent intern, as my whole team were based around the world, with virtually no one in the UK. I do feel that this is one of the downsides to this role, as I was often left to fend for myself in the toughest of times, and was also sat alone in the office most of the time. However, this is not the case for most of the other interns. The other interns have good team support systems that are physically situated by them in the office, and there is a great atmosphere that stresses the importance of working hard but also taking breaks and rewarding yourself. A lot of the other departments take their teams and interns on planning days/team building activities, which I have heard have been a lot of fun to get involved in!

All interns get a 5 week Handover period at the start of the year, where the old intern trains them in how to conduct their role. Then, at the end of the year, you train the next intern in how to conduct the role. I think that this set up is fantastic, and I don't know what I would have done without it. Having someone who has the first hand experience of this role, teach you everything they know before they leave, gets you off to the best start to a year in industry.

Organisation and time management were clear to be great weaknesses of mine from the very start of my internship. My team really helped me in finding the right training and initiatives to help improve this, as I actively voiced that it was something I wanted to work on. They would fly me out to the international team meetings and face-to-faces, which I told them they did not have to do, but they chose to anyway.

In this role, I am afraid to say there is none. In the wider Marketing department, it is again very limited, so not really any future prospects of permanent roles or graduate jobs for me.

Great social scene. We had an Intern social committee, and Intern Charity Committee, and an Intern publishing committee that worked through the year to put on activities that we could all get involved in. The highlight of the year for me, was the Intern Weekend away that the Social committee organised. We hired a cottage in Devon housing 30 people, and spent the weekend there in October 2016. It was a fantastic weekend, we all had so much fun and it was a great way to bond outside of the workplace. The social scene here is much better than what I have heard among my friends at other companies on a placement year - cant fault the social scene!

Very cheap. Swindon is very low priced in terms of rent, petrol and drinks on a night out for example. Much cheaper than living at university.

Not very good. Swindon has one club, that only opened this year called Tree. While tree is a good night out, apart from that its just a lot of bars that aren't the best for a good quality night out. We often went to Bristol or Bath which aren't far away when we wanted to go out.

I didn't really get involved in any activities outside of work, so cant really share my experiences.