How to Make The Most Out Of Your Marketing Internship

Deciding to take up an internship a big choice (it definitely was for me). Yes, you might not be getting paid but the opportunities that await you afterwards are fantastic. So, how do you make the most out of your Marketing Internship (or non-marketing)? Well, read on my friend…

Question Things

As an intern you’re sometimes expected to just listen and get on with what you’re meant to be doing. Asking questions is the best way to learn. If you don’t understand why something is done in a certain way, then question it. The worst answer when asked why do you do something in a certain way is – ‘we just do’ or ‘it’s the way I was taught’. You’ll learn so much more by asking questions. Obviously you can ask too many questions, so don’t ask for the sake of asking and try ask insightful, meaningful ones!

Find Out How You’re Doing

Don’t wait to be told how you’re doing, instead ask! One-to-one’s, reviews or appraisals are great to get feedback on how you’re doing and how to develop, but you don’t have to wait until you’re told to find out. It shows that you care and are enthusiastic about developing by asking how you’re doing in your role and how you can develop.

Ask to Learn Different Things

If you’re not quite getting everything out of the internship that you wanted or you haven’t learn about a certain area, then there’s no harm in asking! As long as you don’t make it sound like you’re unhappy in your role, instead that you’d like to expand your skills then you’ll show that you’d like to develop yourself further and what employer doesn’t want that?!

Early on in my internship I asked if I could learn about PPC. At the time, there wasn’t any free time for me to learn about it or do any paid search tasks. Instead someone lent me some books about PPC and then a couple of months later, they needed someone to help do a couple of tasks to optimize the PPC account and asked me. Just a few months after that I was managing the entire PPC campaign on my own and if I hadn’t expressed an interest then I might not have ever got that chance (as there was talk about hiring someone else to do it!). That’s how I developed my passion for PPC and I wouldn’t be in the job that I am today!

Don’t Treat Yourself Like An Intern

If you start to think of yourself as ‘just an intern’, you’ll start to do the minimum that is required of you (maybe less) and not push yourself to become more than an intern. For me, it was about proving to my employers that I could develop myself and be entrusted with tasks that weren’t the norm for an intern. In the end that was recognised and I was rewarded for my work as an intern.

For the record, I hate the word ‘Intern’ and the sort of stereotype that comes with it. Every intern is different and should be treated differently in my opinion. One thing that got on my nerves a little bit towards the end of my internship was when I heard managers talking about a task that needed doing and someone would say, “Just get one of the interns to do it”.

Grin & Bear The Tedious Jobs

Tedious jobs come with the title of an Intern unfortunately. But it’s not all bad, you just need to prove you can do the tedious tasks well before you can be trusted with more tasks.

And finally…. think about what’s at the end of the rainbow!

Got any tips on how to make the most out of an internship? Feel free to share them below.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Laura