Internships, internships, internships: At my university that’s all anyone seems to talk about, and this time last year it was starting to freak me out!

You see, at the London School of Economics I am surrounded by lots of really clever economists and finance geniuses, not to mention those who study law or management. These are the lucky few who have their career paths laid out in front of them; the ones we give evils to across the library floor, the ones who have it all too easy!

‘But what about the rest of us’, we chant in chorus, ‘what hope is there for us?’

Well today I am here to tell you not to panic. There are in fact a huge number of internship opportunities out there for people just like you and I in a wide variety of industries and roles, two of which I would like to share my experience of.

During the past year I have been working as an intern one day a week at the one and only WEXO, looking at ways to develop their student marketing campaigns. This has given me a great insight into what it’s like to work for a growing start-up and the sort of responsibility this entails.

There are loads of advantages to working for a small firm, particularly as an intern. Because there are fewer employees than in a big corporation you get much more of an overview of how the whole company runs, and hopefully get to help out with lots of different aspects of the firm. This is a fantastic opportunity if you are not sure what role you see yourself doing in future (which let’s face it, most of us don’t). The breadth of experience available at small firms is invaluable and I believe there is a huge amount of satisfaction in seeing your ideas come to life.

It’s a steep learning curve and you may feel like you’re being thrown in at the deep end at first, but I believe it is definitely the best way to learn. From a social perspective, working at a small start-up is usually a lot of fun and more laid-back than may be the case at some of the bigger firms. Moreover the people you work with are the sort of people who are really entrepreneurial and full of great ideas. This is what I really love about being part of the super cool WEXO family.

On the other side of the coin, you have the ‘Big Guys’. These are the firms with thousands of employees, those annoyingly long application forms and really structured internship schemes. I have to be honest the combination of these factors was rather off-putting for me; I was intimidated to approach any of the big firms like L’Oreal and Procter and Gamble because I felt like a very small fish in a very big pond!

I finally plucked up the courage to send my application off to P&G on the day of the deadline and if I’m honest I didn’t expect a response. However, it turns out the work I had been doing at WEXO was pretty interesting to the ‘Big Guys’ and I was fortunate to be offered a summer internship working in Sales at P&G.

This was a fantastic experience and I was able to learn a huge amount about the world of business, how to persuasively present my ideas and how to effectively manage a group of people as well as sales skills relevant to my role. I met some great people at P&G and made some excellent contacts. I’m not going pull the wool over your eyes however: there were some really long days, and the work was challenging but fortunately there were lots of people to help me through and teach me the ropes. It was great to be able to work so closely with some really knowledgeable people.

I truly believe that getting yourself an internship is an invaluable career opportunity. For me personally, it is really a case of: ‘You don’t realise just how much you don’t know until you’ve done one!’ I truly feel in a much stronger position applying to jobs now than I would have been without these experiences on my CV. Of course for employers, the fact that you have gone out there and used your free time to learn new skills and take an interest in the world of work is a big tick in their box!

Whether you chose to intern at a small start-up or a big corporation is a personal preference. Both offer fantastic opportunities to learn and personally develop your own skills and confidence. If you can, try both. You can never have too much experience! WEXO have some amazing opportunities on their site that I would definitely advise applying for. Equally you should have a look at some corporate schemes and really work out what you feel suits you best.

There really are so many opportunities out there for people just like you and me.
Now it’s up to you to make them your own!

Emma Roberts

Upon graduating with a degree in Management Studies from the University of Nottingham in July and waiting until the new year to travel and start my graduate job as an Executive Management Trainee at HSBC the following September, I had a fair bit of time to do something challenging.

I was fortunate enough to find out about GroupSpaces.com as a member of SIFE Nottingham at university. When I saw they were about to launch an aggressive roll-out to UK student groups – a market I was very familiar with – I jumped at the opportunity to be part of such a promising young Web 2.0 start-up. GroupSpaces was founded by two students back in 2007, and is working wonders at helping real-world groups like student clubs and societies manage themselves online. The company is based in Old Street, London – an area quickly becoming known as ‘Silicon Roundabout’ for breeding innovative internet companies such as TweetDeck, Last.fm and of course, GroupSpaces! Only a few weeks into my role and GroupSpaces were lauded by The Telegraph as one of the “Top 10 European Technology Companies to Watch” after just securing $1.3 million of investment.

My internship would see me work alongside the UK Marketing Manager (and also CEO/co-founder) to scale up the UK student userbase. Being a start-up firm meant there were no daunting hierarchies and very little bureaucracy, so I was thrown in at the deep end as employee number eleven (and six of them were developers!).

Whilst writing this I am only 2/3rds of the way through my four-month role; so far I’ve secured a partnership with British Judo as well as played my part in GroupSpaces acquiring over 1,200 new student groups, bringing the company’s presence in the UK university market from 2,500 to almost 4,000 groups. By the time my internship ends I would be shocked if GroupSpaces hadn’t broken through this number – a figure which would roughly see the firm being used by half of all UK student groups.

My responsibilities have varied significantly. One day can see me planning and executing an email and campus marketing campaign with the UK Marketing Manager, the next I could be sitting down with the CEO and CTO to discuss strategy, and the next I could be visiting a university Fresher’s Fair or personally speaking at a training conference for a national student network. Needless to say, such an intense and diverse schedule has meant that I have developed a truly valuable skillset – project management, strategic thinking, sales, public speaking, customer relationship management and most valuably of all, having to show the leadership to not only run an entire marketing campaign on my own, but to make a real difference in my brief time with one of Europe’s hottest tech companies.

Working with just a handful of fantastic colleagues to build a company from the ground up, and getting stuck into grassroots marketing by speaking to thousands of student group leaders at eighteen fresher fairs up and down the country has given me more tangible results than I could have ever expected. The perks of having a brand spanking new iPad to keep me company and the unwritten Silicon Roundabout rule of never getting into the office before 10am have also been great .

I’m absolutely certain GroupSpaces will push on to become one of Britain’s greatest internet exports to the world stage in the next few years, and I’ll be proud to have played my part in their early growth.

Chris Godwin
GroupSpaces.com | Marketing Internship

Upon graduating in 2009 I was faced with the challenging and daunting task of job hunting; ongoing applications and interviews, plus the possibility of applying for a job which 5 years down the line I may hate! And what do all the employers want? Work experience.

I joined mydeco.com on a paid internship during which I gained practical experience in building and maintaining campaigns to improve on ROI (return on investment). I was given the opportunity to implement my own ideas and test ads in the run up to the launch of our US site. Within the first few weeks I also discovered that at mydeco it isn’t all work and no play. Our weekly meetings, involving everyone in the company, were a great opportunity to gain insight into the ongoings across departments. They have since become a fun way to get know people as they now include who’s-who quizzes and cocktail-making competitions!

One of the great things was the flexibility to gain experience in other departments; during my internship my manager asked me if there was anything I wished to achieve throughout my experience. This was when I started to work with the finance team; working with accounts payable alone was a good way to utilise my numerical and problem solving skills. Following this I decided I wanted to pursue a career in accountancy, and not long after I was offered a permanent role at mydeco as a finance assistant.

I am continually learning about the management of finances of the growing business whilst getting to know what it takes to start up our site in the US. Although this has been challenging at times, I am never alone: there is always someone else in the company also getting to know the business. And work here is not all number crunching either; there are always chances to be involved in on-site developments. The opportunity to be involved in projects throughout the business and off site is an exciting prospect and has made this role fun and varied.

Bhavna Patel

If I learned one thing from interning as a marketing assistant at Abercrombie and Kent Travel, it was the pretty big difference between how new and well-established companies work. I realised after my first month that A&K wasn’t the same as the start-ups I’d interned for before, like Third Year Abroad and Extreme. It was not so free and easy. My managers were much older, more experienced and had their way of doing things: they expected nothing less than perfection! I left with some really useful contacts and experiences in terms of understanding what was expected in a solid, long-running multinational company like A&K.

For example there are things I took for granted when looking through role descriptions, such as

1. the importance of time keeping;
2. working to a deadline;
3. prioritising and organisation;
4. using one’s initiative and;
5. communicating efficiently with other people to achieve a result.

The advantage of work experience with reputable companies like A&K comes from understanding the importance of these skills, and also picking up others. On a practical level, I learned about editing images, using Excel beyond only spreadsheets, using new software like Common Spot Web Content Management as well as how to write press releases, and executive reports. This kind of know-how is what turns into loads of confidence when applying for jobs.

The final great thing about work experience is that you can discover what sort of work you enjoy doing, the kind of people you enjoy working with and what kind of things you want to get better at. And if it’s not going well then you know you can change direction when it’s over, no strings attached, having made some great contacts.

Alex Janson