Date published: 17 August 2015 by Digital Team
Hi, I’m Dan, a digital marketing intern here at Rainbow Trust. I’m currently a student at The University of Warwick studying German and Business (yes I know, an unusual combination!) and despite already possessing a fairly strong grasp of marketing dynamics, my learning curve rocketed from the 8 degrees of the Rainbow Trust logo to sky high from day one.
Having been settled in by HR and introduced to the friendly faces in the office, I filled out my learning agreement which I later discussed with my manager to ensure that I was engaged with and taking away the most from my internship. So far then, I have learned a vast array of intended skills that I set myself to learn on this agreement, however, having been given the time to contemplate the half way point of this experience, my eyes have been opened to a range of other skillsets that I hadn’t even thought of acquiring, yet I now wouldn’t be able to do without!
Team, team, team! From the onset, I’ve been a fully-fledged team member taking part in weekly meetings and if I’ve been brewing tea for others, it’s been on my behalf! From a hands on perspective, I’ve learned to appreciate the mechanisms of teamwork synergies. It’s cheesy I know, but I wouldn’t be able to do the job without learning from others’ specialist skills or communicating well with team members and other functions in the organisation such as corporate. This is especially important in a part time job where being in the loop is vital to stop a backlog of emails on a Monday morning!
As my first office experience, I’ve had to bring up to scratch my time management skills and was kindly eased in with pit-stop time management workshop where I’ve learned and been able to practice managing my deadlines and tasks which is especially useful when given full roam over projects such as #GivingTuesday.
Being an avid social media fan and a bit of a geek, I was determined to learn how to run a social media portfolio, both front and back of house. Rainbow Trust’s friendly and approachable tone on social media and the website is an art form in itself, carefully balanced with software to analyse our activity. This could include shortening a link to get to 140 characters or working out how to improve the search engine optimisation (SEO) of an article, there’s always something new and exciting to master. This amongst many things is one of the reasons why I’m loving the job, the combination of art and science, linguistics and statistics, it’s a fine balancing act but one that makes the job so much more differentiated and rewarding.
So here I am, almost half way through my internship, having perfected some skills and picking up new ones on the way with training, workshops and eLearning to tame my inquisitive mind. Above all, if there is one piece of advice I can give, it’s love what you do. I’ve changed my future career perspective from this internship in the knowledge that creating good impact starts with enjoying yourself.
