My experience and advice
My name is Mike McIntyre, and I am currently interning at EFK group in Trenton, NJ. Now that I only have about a month left of my internship, I figured I would make this post about sharing my thoughts about my internship, as well as give some advice on how to succeed at an internship.
For starters, this internship is basically everything I thought it would be. Since I’m just an intern, I didn’t really expect to get to do crazy important work, but I was able to so some meaningful work to help the company. However, there are some days where I don’t really have much to do. If that ever happens to you, go to your superior and let them know you have nothing to do and that you want to do something, they will like that you took the initiative to ask and it shows that you want to work. But sometimes, even when you do that, they might not have anything for you to do at the moment, so your manager might just tell you to fill out a spreadsheet for them, or just send you home early, both of which have happened to me. Its understandable though, sometimes the agency is super busy and there is important work to be done and the last thing on anyone’s mind is if the intern is happy. Usually though, there is always something to do.
A lot of times the work you are doing might not be very fun or hands on. Much of the work that I have done has been researching contacts for potential new clients. For the first month I worked here that’s about all I did. My job was to find the email addresses and phone numbers of CMO’s and marketing directors, it wasn’t the most fun job, but it was a starting off point. Since then I helped with email marketing, sat in on client meetings, wrote copy for the company website, and soon I will be doing some analytical stuff. Overall, it has been a great experience working here. I am enjoying the work that I do, and I really enjoy all of the people I work with.
If you want to be successful at an internship, you have to be assertive, don’t be shy to ask for more work, and don’t be shy to speak up at meetings during a creative brainstorm session. Your managers will be impressed if you are someone who speaks up and gives ideas. Also, show up early. If you have to be there at 9am, show up at 8:50, that’s another thing your managers will like, and that goes for any industry that you work in. For those of you reading this and aren’t sure what you want to do in advertising, get an account management internship, because in account management you will get to experience a little bit of everything. Well, that’s all of the knowledge I have to share for now, thanks for reading.
