At the beginning of July, I was lucky enough to secure a place being the summer Marketing Intern for Animal Courses Direct, with an 8-week internship under the supervision of the lovely head of Marketing, Alex. Whilst 8-weeks might seem like a long time, it has really flown by! I have had some wonderful opportunities to meet and learn from the Animal Courses Direct Team, to build new skills, discover new resources and gain some valuable work experience. The internship has really prompted me to think about how I’ve been able to gain so much from the experience, so, to anyone considering taking on an internship, these are my 5 top suggestions on how to make the most of them!
1. Take all opportunities
Taking each opportunity available to you during your time as an intern is essential. As an internship is not a permanent role, your time with a company will be limited, so it’s wise to try and make the most of all the opportunities available to you while you can! For me personally, I was extremely lucky to be offered many different opportunities through the various tasks and projects I helped with at Animal Courses Direct. From copywriting, content creation, survey data analysis, research, managing social media accounts, weekly team meetings and more, I was able to gain experience doing so many different things and build valuable skills in a variety of areas of digital marketing.
2. Be open-minded
With any job or work experience, there will most likely be some tasks that you aren’t as keen on. This could be because it’s something that you think won’t interest you or you may have concerns about how to complete it. Just because you think a task may not be the most exciting, try to keep an open mind because you’ll likely learn something new from doing it and you could end up loving it! For me, I was apprehensive about using some of the online editing tools, such as Canva, that Alex had suggested to me when it came to designing content for the new Instagram. Over the following 8 weeks, she showed me how to navigate Canva as well as many other social media content creation tools and resources, and I ended up loving it. I now am thankful to say I feel completely comfortable using Canva and am grateful that I kept an open mind when trying out each of the tasks I was given.
3. Listen, and get a notebook
Internships can be intense, with a lot of new information its often just a few shorts weeks! Don’t miss out on some of the amazing advice, tips and information from your colleagues. Remember that this is their field of work, they are an expert who has a huge wealth of industry experience and knowledge that you can learn from! For my time at Animal Courses Direct, I invested in a notebook which meant I could write down everything and anything I heard. Listening and learning from Alex has been a valuable experience, and thanks to my written notes I now have a record of what I’ve done, skills I’ve built and new things I’ve learned about. All this knowledge can also be used to refer to in interviews or your CV when looking for future work too.
4. Think about your aims
When under time pressure during an internship, it may be a good idea to consider exactly what you hope to get out of it. With often such a short period of time, it’s impossible for your mentors to teach you all there is to know, so why not consider some ideas of specific areas you would like to learn more in? At Animal Courses Direct, during my first week, I was able to have a meeting with Alex to discuss my aims and hopes for the internship. So, when I mentioned that I was particularly interested in both creative content and the data and analytical side of marketing, Alex set me tasks relevant to these areas. I was able to take time for myself to explore content-creation sites such as Canva, and I also had the opportunity to analyse data collected from customer surveys, using Survey Monkey. I was even able to participate in a call with an external marketing agency to discuss an upcoming paid media campaign and learn about the data and preparation that goes into running these sorts of campaigns.
5. Enjoy it!
This is less obvious, but probably the most important factor. Genuinely enjoying the internship at Animal Courses Direct has taught me a lot about my preferences in terms of future work.
By enjoying the types of tasks that you are required to do and by having an active interest in the industry, you can easily tell that a particular role is one that you’ll enjoy when you’re older! Similarly, if you dislike the role or the tasks that you are doing, the internship will still be a valuable experience as it can teach you what you don’t like and go on to point you in other directions. For me, my enjoyment of the internship taught me that digital marketing is definitely an area of business that I would like to make a career in, and it’s made me appreciate the upsides to working within a smaller company, like closeness of the team and a better level of communication.
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Overall, I’d like to say a massive thanks to Alex, Kim and the rest of the ACD team for the wonderful opportunity, and to anyone interested in an internship in summer 2021, definitely consider Animal Courses Direct for a great learning experience!
I love the commitment to providing high-quality education to each customer that Animal Courses Direct has. Their comprehensive and accredited courses are ones that I have been impressed by, and proud to promote on behalf of the company. If I were to choose one course myself, it would have to be the Sea Turtle Conservation Certificate Level 3, as sea turtles are my favourite animal and I think the course addresses the important topical issues of plastic pollution and the struggle for conservation. If you are interested in learning more about what Animal Courses Direct does, or you are interested in taking one of their courses, visit the website. You definitely won’t regret it.
Also, if you adore animals, you can keep track of all upcoming animal awareness days and events with our FREE calendar! Download it here.
