Nestle Professional Food Intern Review

I enjoyed my internship greatly as it was a great learning experience and an eye opener into the daily operations of working life. The practical experience has given me great knowledge and understanding of the F&B industry and how the B2B operations work (as I worked in Nestle Professional). This also gave me insight into a marketing role and what it entails. I enjoyed this marketing role especially the digital project that I worked on which enabled me to understand more about the marketing process and about online digital marketing.

I felt valued by my colleagues as they trusted me to work independently and to complete actual work giving me full responsibility. Some of my responsibilities were to liase with suppliers to find quotes and order products, order and send out samples, complete benchmarking work which would require me to be accurate to limit mistakes made. I was also given responsibility to complete my own projects in my own time and to set up meetings with various Nestle employees to find out more information about what I could do with my projects. I felt valued because they trusted me to complete this work on my own time as it was depend on completing their task, my task and to satisfy customers and other colleagues.

I was given great support and guidance by my supervisor and by the whole team. I appreciated being given work by various team members which kept me busy and gave me the chance to work on various tasks. As my main focus was on marketing, I also managed to experience some administrative duties and a bit of the financial side of the business. This gave me a bit of exposure into the various departments of the business. Also, if I needed any help, either my supervisor or someone from the team was supportive by answering any questions that I had at any time.

I was quite busy on a daily basis as I was constantly either working on my projects or other tasks that the team had for me. There was also exciting opportunities where I would work in the kitchen with the chefs for tasting sessions, creating recipes and to witness how the chefs sell our products to customers. I was also busy at meetings either face-to-face, on the telephone or out meeting with our customers.

As I mentioned before, in the 'to what extent did you feel valued by your colleagues' section, I was given a good amount of responsibility. In particular, I was given the responsibility to go to the Amazon HQ to have a meeting with a contact that I had been liasing with to have a meeting and talk more about my project. I felt that I was responsible in representing the company and myself in the way that I presented myself. I also felt responsible to get the required actions implemented for the Amazon project that I was working on which was essential as once these actions were implemented, this would be openly viewed by all of our customers.

I find that the skills that I have developed and training that I recieved will greatly assist me in my degree studies and beyond. In particular, regarding the Presenting with Impact workshop that I had to attend as part of our presentation training. I learnt a lot at this presentation workshop as it taught me how to communicate effectively to an audience and how to present effectively based on speaking, body language, eye-contact and other presenting methods. By having this workshop and presenting in the office, this also gave me a slight confidence increase as presenting is one of the areas that I had wanted to work on before starting my internship.

The general atmosphere was relaxing yet busy at the same time as everybody in my team were constantly working hard and in meetings. I was told that if it ever felt too stressful or too busy sitting at the desk areas , there were seating areas on the ground floor where you could work in peace. This was nice to know as if you ever needed a change of scenery, there was an option to do so and you werent required to sit at your desk for the whole day.

The overall internship was well organised however there were some factors that weren't as good. For example: before we started the internship, some of the interns only found out that they were starting a few weeks before and had limited time to find accommodation which was also extremely difficult to find a place available for only 10 weeks. During our internship, we were also told that for one of our workshop days, we should keep our diaries free because we were going to have a work dinner however, we were not told that this was not going to happen anymore until one of the interns emailed to ask. Therefore, I think we could have had clearer communication and been made more aware of what was happening. Otherwise, overall everything was planned and organised very well especially given the opportunity for the marketing interns to meet with a digital marketing agency.

The company invested a good amount of training and development for me regarding the induction day where we were taught basic knowledge of marketing and how to work effectively with our colleagues through insights. We also recieved training (development) based on our presentation skills through the presenting with impact workshop which was useful in our communication skills and presenting effectively.

It would be extremely appealing to work within the organisation in the future based on the perks of working in Nestle and the job role. I really enjoyed my job role here and thought that there was a good work environment. I think anyone who was interested in the F&B industry would enjoy working at Nestle.

There was a great social scene amongst the interns where we would occasionally go for after work dinner and drinks. We also tried to organise other social activities such as bowling, badminton and attending the races.

I thought that the cost of living in the area was average for London and was not too costly however, there were limited choices available for the 10 week stay. There is not much to do in regards to socialising in the area as the main place to go for dinner and drinks was at Gatwick airport which had average London prices. However, it was a bonus that we got Nestle discount if we ordered items at the airport.

There is no nightlife in the area that we work in and if we wanted to go anywhere for dinner and drinks, we would normally travel to Clapham Junction.

There were no opportunities to get involved in any activities outside of work that I heard of.