At the beginning of this semester, I was looking for an internship. After researching local companies, I contacted the one that appeared the most interesting to me. It was a marketing internship with a holistic health and fitness center located in downtown Gainesville. An interview date was set a few days after I applied.
When I arrived at the interview a few minutes early, the woman interviewing me, Samantha, informed me that she forgot our interview was scheduled for that time and asked me to come back a few hours later.
When I returned, we had a fantastic connection. After an hour of discussing the business and how I could be part of their team, she gave me a basic marketing assignment to prepare for the second round of interviews with the owner of the business. I had a lot of ideas to enhance their social media platforms, and knew I had a strong presentation.
The day before the next interview, Samantha postponed the meeting until a few days later because of a scheduling conflict. Almost three weeks after my initial contact, I met with the owner of the company, Elena, and Samantha for the second interview. I arrived 30 minutes early to sign some paperwork, but was told my interview would not start until 45 minutes after we scheduled because they decided to have a last-minute meeting.
After preliminary questions, I delivered my presentation. I hit all the points Samantha had asked me to cover. However, the reaction from Elena was not what I expected it would be. She had no idea what to expect from an intern. I had a lot of interesting ideas how to market the business and was enthusiastic to be involved. Unfortunately, after this meeting, I knew her expectations were for a very experienced marketing employee. She was not looking for a university student with excellent marketing experience and education for an internship.
The company contacted me later in the week. I explained I enjoyed learning about the business, but the lack of structure and knowledge of what interns are contributing to a business had made me realize the internship was not what I was interested in pursuing.
By this point, there weren’t many internships available. This taught me a valuable lesson about expectations from one positive interview. I realized I had put all my eggs in one basket, and learned from that mistake. I ended up working as a nanny for three adorable boys and learned other valuable lessons about raising children. I was sad at first because I realized I had wasted a lot of time on an opportunity that didn't play out the way I expected. But I gained interview experience and realized what I expect from a future internship or job. Taking this class helped me come to that realization as well. I have had experience with failure throughout my life, but ENT 3003 helped me celebrate that instead of shy away from it.
Meredith,
ReplyDeleteI can relate fully to this failure. There are very few things in life that are more defeating than the struggle to find an internship. There is this constant misunderstanding, constant judgment, and a constant feeling of competition. It was interesting to me that they asked for an intern, but that's not what they were originally looking for. As a company, they also seem to be extremely unorganized and I think you made the right choice by backing out.
Hey Meredith,
ReplyDeleteI can definitely relate to this, it sucks it was not what you were looking for, but it was probably for the best if you don't believe it would positively benefit you. I too tried to intern at my mom's work and she told me it was a great position so I sent in a resume, but they later said they were looking for interns closer to graduating. I learned not to get too excited.