A Paid Search Internship that Surely Paid Off
Today marks the last week of my internship, and I am happy to be able to say that I had an excellent time doing it. My coworkers at Harmelin happily welcomed me, and most importantly guided me through the process of paid search advertising—a form of online advertising hosted on search engine websites and providing relevant advertisement to user searches. While it took some time at first to grasp the entire task of developing a search campaign, after breaking it down and asking plenty of questions, the ‘campaign build’ was learned in a couple of weeks, and I was left on my own (hardly) to assist the entire team with their paid search accounts.
The fluid intern position gave me the chance to work one-on-one at least once with every member on Harmelin’s paid search staff, with a select few whom I had the chance to develop a close working relationship with. In the initial weeks of my internship they were the employees who opened themselves to me as an endless resource for tips and advice, from opinions on developing thorough keyword lists to tricky Excel maneuvers, they shared their experience with me anytime I asked. This certainly was not the type of internship I was taught to fear in my high school days—running mail from office-to-office and making everyone coffee (which is good for the team because I don’t drink coffee and barely know how to make it). Rather, I was treated much like a new employee, and the same mutual respect is felt throughout the entire working environment at Harmelin.
About 3 or so weeks in, I had campaign building to the point that I could create my own strategized search campaign with little or no help from any of my coworkers. This was the point where the workload certainly boosted, but on a parallel level, so did my learning. I’d be lying if I said it was the most exciting work you could imagine, but it was practical and hands-on, giving me an inside look at the science conducted behind-the-scenes of online advertising. At the end of it all, I’ll leave this internship with the marketable skills of ‘search engine optimization’ and ‘Google analytics’, that I’m hoping can give me a step up on my competition when I enter the job market in a year.
It’s a bittersweet moment starting my last week. I leave for vacation in a week and I’m definitely looking forward to it after a hard-worked summer working at Harmelin 3 days a week along with my part-time restaurant job 3 nights a week. My supervisor offered me the chance to continue my internship with Harmelin into the fall, and while I was thrilled to be considered again for the position, it was unable to work out with my school schedule and part-time work in the fall. Regardless, I’ll be doing my best at keeping in touch with my supervisor and the team at Harmelin. They have told me plenty of times that they hire a good amount of their interns, and I would be ecstatic to get that offer in a year’s time.
