Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
In the beginning of my junior year here at Temple I found myself questioning what I wanted to pursue after college. I am an advertising major with a digital marketing minor. I have heard many stories about fellow students discovering their career passion by pursuing an internship. So, I started the lengthy and stressful internship search for the Spring of 2022 during Fall 2021. I first went to the Klein Career Fair where I met and chatted with several different ad agencies. One that stuck out to me right away was Harmelin Media. It was an agency I heard a lot about from past professors and I really enjoyed my time talking to a current employee there at the career fair. I emailed HR with my résumé who then quickly responded telling me that my résumé was received and I should wait to hear back.
Days went by then weeks and I was constantly checking my email. I was growing weary and thought I would have to wait until summer to reapply for a different position. Then, after several weeks, I received an email from a member of the SEO team at Harmelin. I briefly learned about SEO in my first digital advertising class, but only thought it was about coming up with words for Google Search Engines (I was seriously mistaken). I was also hesitant to accept since it didn’t relate to my concentration of account management. However, I knew I liked the company and the employees I had met so I said yes.
On my first day at the internship, I was tense and nervous that I wasn’t prepared or knowledgeable enough about SEO. When I had my first Google Teams meeting I instantly connected with my team and supervisor. The team was incredibly welcoming to me and wanted to learn more about me as a person more than just as being an intern. My team made sure to include me on their team meeting calls and gave me real account projects to work on. I did way more than just looking up keywords to please Google. I worked on creating content briefs, link-building, and understanding how to pull data efficiently and effectively. Tasks were never boring and I always enjoyed the work I was doing. I ended up completing a lot of different tasks for multiple accounts and finally was able to use my account management skills I had learned in-class after all.
By staying patient not only in the application process, but as well as staying patient during the internship, I have gained a lot of knowledge and skills from this experience. It is important to not only apply for roles that line up with your major, but also apply to ones that you think are interesting or appealing to you. Always say yes to the interview even if you are unsure about the job title/position. As an advertiser, it’s important to learn about all aspects of the industry and we as students can’t learn everything there is to know about the advertising world in just four years.
Apply to anything that interests you and remember to stay patient!
