Kick Start your career as an SBM Intern - see how our students are developing their skills and preparing for the workplace by gaining experience with SBM.
What you did you do as part of your internship?
I started working straight after I finished my final exams! As part of my internship, I played a key role in engaging with the final year students, encouraging students to utilise Careers & Enterprise activities and to help staff to tailor support to the requirements of widening participation groups. I enjoyed my role as I would call and email students to find out their job search status, sometimes I’d go a step further in my duties and research job opportunities for students and I felt a great sense of accomplishment in helping everyone.
What skills did you learn?
During my intern, I have learnt many digital marketing skills. I promoted job vacancies through engaging newsletters and advertising these to undergraduates, postgraduates and department colleagues on social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. I used a CRM database, Target Connect to support this. I produced newsletters and marketing emails and created poster material using Canva to promote careers events and activities. At the beginning of my intern I lacked confidence, however, eventually I began to work independently without the need to someone to supervise me. Ultimately, I have built confidence in working with senior people within a small & friendly team.
How has this internship affected your longer term career plans & confidence about your employability in the future?
As I studied Marketing & Management and had no relevant experience to kickstart my career in digital marketing – SBM allowed me to gain professional experience in marketing. This experience not only helped me to add employability skills on my CV, but it made me realise that marketing and communication are the best fit for me for a career option. I also realised that it's nice and fun to work for a small team as you get to know everyone on a personal level and network with them. I have received so much support from staff - they guided me and indicated me paths and places to look for jobs.
My main responsibility was to take lead on the ‘SBM student E-newsletter’. This meant gathering content and designing an email to send out to all academics, staff and students within the School of Business Management. With a fortnightly release, the main challenge was creating a piece in such a short amount of time, nevertheless, throughout the weeks I adapted to this turnaround time and perfected my time management abilities.
The main way I improved each edition of the newsletter was by using statistics and analysis to correct mistakes from previous editions. One of the most important skills I learnt, which will be used in my future regardless of sector and role, is the ability of working in large team and creating the right contacts to compose a successful piece.
I believe SBM gave me the opportunity to use marketing tools and obtain advice from experts within the marketing team. I am now more confident in gaining future employability and am prepared to use my applied skills.
I worked with the SBM Careers & Enterprise and the Students Union to promote volunteering opportunities to students. I helped assess the current volunteering opportunities that were available for SBM students, identifying potential areas for growth, due to student demand and managing relations with charity employers. I gathered new partnerships with charities as well as built on the SU’s current charity partnerships to work on planning opportunities that students at SBM would be interested in.
I learnt how to maintain relationships with charity partners, constantly keeping them updated and having meetings to discuss what opportunities we can bring for students. Preparing newsletters for students allowed me to improve my written communication skills getting the message of the opportunities available over to students. Also, I learnt how to prioritise my workload and work towards varied deadlines in order to make sure I give students enough time to apply for the opportunities as well as sending applications over to charity partners in a good amount of time.
How has the affected your longer-term career plans & confidence about your employability in the future?
This internship it has confirmed to me that I still wish to pursue a career in Marketing as I enjoy promoting and trying to get a message across to others. This internship opportunity definitely gave me the chance to do a communications plan, branding for the new project and communicate these opportunities to students.
What did you do in your internship?
I worked as a Research Intern Support, performing typical office tasks: Assisting with PhD and Staff in the department by updating and maintaining Personal Research Allowance record, financial record keeping (processing expense claim, invoice payments), postgraduate research applications queries and processing applications. Supporting the students with card payments for training and conferences. Updating QMPlus – PhD and research pages and demonstrating familiarity with Microsoft Office.
I have been attending meetings and acquired minute taking skills as this is a useful tool and improving my expertise using Excel was very important as I wish to become an accountant, therefore Excel will be used on a daily basis. Special thanks to Helen, Saima and Monira for giving me this opportunity!
I have gained many skills that will help me in my future career, having the opportunity to work independently and attending events that help build my network. This will benefit me in the long run to obtain a job in the future.