Marketing Intern Review

I worked under the Retail Brand Manager for one of the Skincare brands. I typically worked in cycles on key projects for internal business operations as well as working with retailers, Data Insights, New product processes, Info and Asset Creation, and much more. Day to day activity is about 60% typical projects as listed above and 40% ad hoc work. You might officially get given one role and end up doing something quite different.

Regardless of how much you enjoy the placement year you do learn a lot about yourself, the kind of work you enjoy and dont enjoy, how you like to work etc. You do learn specific skills too on certain softwares and also obvious things like Excel or Powerpoints. Overall, I do feel more confident about starting my career, the jobs I want to consider, and my knowledge of corporate environments and navigating them.

The work interns do is absolutely necessary for business operations but it is largely the stereotypical intern work, which in fairness, is to be expected. They might exaggerate the importance of certain projects like internal presentations but ultimately as an Intern you will never sign off alone on anything that a consumer might see, which again is tobe expected. I would say there is much more accountability than responsibility which can incite stress before motivation.

I felt that I got thrown in the deep end a bit and learnt how to swim afterwards, My handover document was pretty terrible and I went through multiple changes in line manager, each time they changed they would assume what you should know and some were pretty scathing if you weren't 100% certain on some aspects of projects. Some friendlier managers use the carrot and some prefer the stick.

It varies a lot between teams and divisions. It doesn't take long to detect that underneath the surface of intense and outspoken bubbliness there is quite a lot of bitchiness. I never had any problems but I heard of many. I think the office politics are the same as any company, if you want to climb the ladder you have to pretend as if you'd do this job even if you were unpaid.

It was ok. Most of the other interns were great and there was plenty of lovely people who I worked with but from my experience most people are stretched, teams are too small and the expectation is that you work past 5 to demonstrate dedication. For some people, in some teams I think it would be an amazing and supportive place to work but for others, if you are unlucky, it could be the opposite

Yes

Make sure to always ask for help and try and establish contacts early on for all elements of your job role. Know that your manager can make or break your time at L'Oreal or really any company. Remember that this year is just about learning and you have no obligation to ever come back.