Assistant Media Relations Manager Review

I had a great 10 week internship working in one of Britain's busiest Press Offices. I was given real work and responsibility from my first day alongside a plan to expose me to as much as possible in order to develop my skills and experience. I worked with an incredibly welcoming and encouraging team who helped and pushed me in equal measures enabling me to grow and develop more than I imagined possible in 10 weeks.

I felt extremely valued by my colleagues and made to feel like a regular member of the team. As I was in the team during a restructure, there was an opportunity to get involved with more work and a business demand requiring my capacity be utilised. In short I felt valued because I felt trusted. My colleagues would not have let me speak to and engage journalists with the Group's reputation at stake if they did not trust me. That made me feel valued.

Having had an internship with the Group last summer in a completely different area, the support I received this year came in different forms. The structure of the team I was in was very flat, meaning that there was little hierarchy to tip toe around and made everyone very approachable and easy to engage with. I was given enough support from my manager to feel confident that I could approach them on any issue whilst also feeling like I had a remit to explore the Group and get involved with additional work where I pleased.

Due to the reactive nature of the environment I was in, there were definite peaks and troughs in terms of business. However, this meant that I sometimes had time to work on additional material and at others I needed to reprioritise and drop work to meet demand. This was an incredibly rewarding experience through which I learned a lot and felt like I had been stretched without being overburdened or out of my depth.

I had much the same remit and responsibility as any other member of my team as you would expect possible for someone that came in with no experience of their work area for a 10 week internship. I was working on real time reactive media enquiries with real implications for the Group's reputation as well as proactive press releases to enhance the Group's reputation. I feel like I was given far more responsibility than the majority of my intern peers which I thrived on.

The oral and written communication skills as well as the decision making skills and experience which I have developed will be a benefit for my degree studies, but more importantly stand me in good stead for any future career path. Being able to quickly understand what matters, build relationships and rapport and communicate effectively are skills that will see me well for the rest of my career.

The general atmosphere was collegiate and friendly in a corporate London headquarters office. My rapport with my immediate team and colleagues was far more informal and rewarding than the formal and corporate atmosphere outwith my immediate team. There was a restructure and job losses on-going when I worked there which naturally led to a sometimes tense atmosphere, but my team was largely unaffected.

Generally speaking the overall work placement was well set up. I would say that once I started the set up and direction of my placement was very much directed and decided by me and my manager alongside the work our team had on. This is entirely open to change and variation from placement to placement however.

The Group's Emerging Talent department put together some educational and development material which was overall useful. However, dependent upon your placement and focus, this was very much the first thing to be dropped in favour of work demands. As my placement progressed, I started to gain more responsibility which I wanted, but meant that time for these sorts of things diminished. Having looked at it, I don't feel that I've missed out and that the work I was involved with was more beneficial for me.

At the outset of this placement I would have said very appealing. I still find the Group an appealing place to work, and will pursue a place on their graduate programme. However, changes to the grad schemes and the application and referral process to them changed during the 10 week internship. This was poorly communicated and timed very badly. I have not been invited to feedback to them on this and finding a contact to ask questions about the schemes on offer and the way it has been handled seems almost impossible bar emailing a generic mailbox. It has left a lot of the interns affected feeling like they have been let down and misled, as we would expect the organisers to have this in place before welcoming so many interns. I expected to be going for a very niche and highly competitive grad programme with no longer exists. As a result of this I have focussed my internship on this very niche area, whereas the grad schemes I can apply to are broad and non-specific. I would have spent more time exploring other areas had I known this before the last two weeks of my internship. To be clear, my internship was superb, but I cannot enter the area I was interning in, which makes it all the more difficult as I have enjoyed it so much.

Yes and no. I was in Edinburgh last year and there was a good social scene there. In London there is a good social scene, but much more fragmented due to the number of interns down here. Regardless, it was still easy to make friends and socialise with likeminded people.

The cost of a weekly shop was comparable to elsewhere in the UK. The cost of eating and drinking out was considerably more expensive.

There is good nightlight almost everywhere in London. We were next to Shoreditch which is no exception, though it is eye wateringly expensive.

With colleagues, no, not really. I did, but this was more down to my relationship with my team rather than anything specific to the internship. With other interns, yes, see above two answers.