Digital Marketing Intern Review

At the beginning of my placement I struggled slightly to settle in to my role as I didn't believe it was particularly the role for me. However, over the course of the year I have become very confident within this role and feel proud to be in such a great team. I have very much enjoyed meeting new people, working within such a fast-paced organization and working within such a great team. I wasn't directly involved with the execution of campaigns and was only on the analysis side, so at times it could feel quite repetitive as I was doing very similar tasks throughout the year. However, I have been involved in a number of exciting projects that have allowed me develop and show off my skills and made me feel as though as I have really adding value to the business.

I was given a lot of responsibility which really made me feel like a valued member of the team, and management in my team would always recognize work that I had done well and provide me with positive feedback. My team were also keen to show off about my work as I probably don't shout about my successes as much as I should, which is great. After being in my role for a few months, individuals across the business would reach out to me to help them with research/analysis which made me feel appreciated.

After working in the company for around 3 months I was appointed with a new line manager who could not have been better. He made me feel like a really invaluable member of the team and helped me whenever I had any concerns or issues. We had bi-weekly catch-ups to go through my current priorities and projects, ensured I was getting everything I wanted to out of placement and ensured that I had the opportunity to explore every area that I wanted to. The management within my whole team were extremely friendly and motivating so I felt very lucky.

I was quite busy and often worked through my lunch hour, but an average day I would be in the office from 9-6 which isn't too bad. Often I would receive last minute requests which I would have to work fast to resolve, which meant at times I would feel slightly under pressure but this helped excel my time management skills and helped me re-prioritize my tasks daily. Some weeks would be busier than others, as there are often visits from central teams that I would have to work to prepare for as well as continuing with my everyday tasks.

Interns at L'Oreal are given quite a lot of responsibility, more responsibility than I thought prior to the placement, which is great. Teams across the business relied upon me and my work to inform business decisions, and as mentioned above many individuals would reach out to me as a source for information, which gave me a great sense of responsibility. Interns aren't given laptops like normal employees though, which I think should be changed as being restricted to desktop can be limiting to many opportunities eg. presenting to other people in the business or meeting with individuals around the building. Although you can request a laptop if you believe you have reason to have it, I think all interns should be given a laptop at the beginning of placement.

I think that the skills and knowledge I've developed have helped inform my dissertation topic choice for my degree studies. Improvement in time management and organizational skills will also be beneficial to me when I return to my studies, and the development of interpersonal and analytical skills will be useful to me in future careers However, the training at L'Oreal has fairly lacked. There is online training that you can do but this only consists of videos followed by fairly basic questions, which isn't useful and is time consuming when you have other priorities at work. I have attended some training sessions for different areas of digital marketing, which have been quite useful to expand my knowledge and may be in some way useful to my future career - but these training sessions were generally only hour long sessions and not frequent.

The atmosphere in the office is definitely not a fun atmosphere - very corporate and formal as you would probably expect. Everything is fast-paced at L'Oreal so everyone is under pressure and so the office is not a very sociable place. The company tries to portray a 'coffee culture' but this isn't really true. A lot of the time, people keep themselves to themselves when they are sat at their desk, and it's quite a stressful place to be.

I think the integration of interns into the company is not very good. I think the company could do more to ensure interns have the opportunity to meet other interns across the company and I think more training should be put in place at the beginning to interns are more comfortable in their role and the company in general. However, considering the number of interns the company takes on it is still, overall, fairly well organized.

I have found that I've had to be very proactive with training myself in areas - I don't think the company appreciates that many interns will have done nothing like this before and do not have extensive knowledge in digital marketing. As mentioned earlier, apart from online videos and the odd hour-long training sessions there is not much training put in place. Google has been a great help this year for me, in learning how to use tools I am expected to use everyday. More initial training at beginning of placement should definitely be put in place.

I am definitely keen to stay and progress within the company, however would not stay within my current role as I still believe it's not 100% for me. I know my team values me massively and believe I will be a great asset if I get a place within the grad scheme - but this decision doesn't lie with them. Although it can be quite a stressful organization to work in, it has given me invaluable experience and there are so many areas of the business that I would love to explore.

No. This is the main downfall for the whole placement for me, and goes back to my earlier point of how I think it is critical to integrate the interns into the company better at the beginning. There are intern socials organized, probably one every other month, that are ok but not frequent enough and interns don't all socialize together and go off in small groups that they work more closely with. My team have probably been for after work drinks about 5 times over the whole year so, even though I think my team are great, there is definitely not a good social scene.

I have really struggled with the cost of living this year. Rent within this area is fairly expensive and socializing is very expensive. I have had to budget a lot and have not been able to live as comfortably as I did when I was at university studying. After tax on my salary and after paying for rent, bills, travel and food I don't have a lot of disposable income. I'm not from near London so it has been difficult and I wouldn't consider coming back on a similar salary to the internship.

Hammersmith itself has a few pubs/bars but no proper actual nightlife. At the very beginning of placement we used to go to Queens Head after work which has a great beer garden for when it's sunny. There's also a Be At One around the corner from the office. I don't live in hammersmith but with the introduction of night tubes this has made it much easier for me to visit places with a decent night life and reduces the cost of having to get a taxi there which is good. You're never too far from somewhere with a better night life in London so as long as you don't mind travelling there you can make the most out of the night life.

There was talk of a netball team being created which never happened which was disappointing and would have been good to get to know other interns across the business outside of work. Hopefully this is something that will be pushed more next year as the sports secs haven't really done very much whilst I've been here. There has been some good volunteering opportunities too that the company will inform you of throughout the year.