An internship you have to do as part of your studies is something that can be both exciting and daunting. You never know what it will be like until you start – and so, here is what my experience was like once I started my own internship at Katrium.
How did I get here?
Finding an internship to complete my degree ended up being a lot more difficult than expected. While refreshing Jobly for the hundredth time, I came across a fresh batch of offers targeted at business students. The ad promised an internship specifically for those who need it for their studies – encouraging, as you are only competing with your fellow students for the spot and not every desperate jobseeker out there. An email and an interview later, I officially had a place secured – time was to figure out what kind of things I was capable of after a few years of business studies.
What was the experience like?
One thing this internship does for you is demystify the whole working process. When you are a student who has only ever had brief brushes with working life, it is sometimes hard to imagine what an average day looks like and how the things you learned actually apply in practice. However, at Katrium, I got a chance to try out many different things and get to learn a little bit of different aspects of working life – HR, sales, marketing, project management, you name it. Seeing these sides of work in practice does wonders – you suddenly understand that you are a lot more capable than you thought you were. While at first you always rely on those who are here to help and teach you, very soon you are comfortable doing more and more on your own, and, after a while, you become the one who answers questions of those who are only just starting the internship.
What I learned?
A lot of the tasks were tied to communication one way or another. Writing to job candidates and answering their many questions, communicating with clients and managing the workers on a project, reaching out to potential sales’ leads or creating advertisements and replying to comments on social media – there are always a lot of different conversations, with different people and different goals, that you learn to navigate successfully. And when you are needing a break from all the conversations, SEO articles and SEO optimization await you – I also learned to navigate WordPress, which was a skill I really wanted to acquire one way or another.
Communication is also one of the main words to describe the experience with Katrium team itself – there is constantly some discussion going on in one of the multiple chats. At first, it may seem overwhelming, but the upside is that you are never left alone with whatever trouble you are facing. There is always an opportunity to directly ask for clarifications, details or help without worrying about “doing it properly”. This really helps you to quickly gain confidence and grow into a skilled member of the team.
Final thoughts
I feel like this internship has been an important step for me in-between the studying and the working life proper. It really helped to see value in myself and what I can do, and make it clear that, given the chance, I can be not only a capable student, but a capable worker. Now I will be looking for my next job with all the things I experienced at Katrium on my resume and the confidence I gained in my mind.
I have not mentioned it earlier, but when this internship is advertised as the one for students, this is absolutely true – you get training and support, opportunity to get acquainted with many different tasks if you aren’t sure what you want to focus on yet, as well as a flexible schedule that can be easily adjusted to work around your study plan. This is all very important when you are seeking to make a transition from studying to working, and I feel like this internship at Katrium can be a perfect step between the two.
