September 24, 2022, by UoN School of English

My summer internship experience at a marketing firm

The skills and disciplines you gain from an English degree are extremely wide-ranging, which can make deciding which career path to follow difficult. Until around the halfway point of my degree I, like many others, was unsure of what career path I wanted to pursue.

Although I enjoyed all the modules I had taken on the English course, my favourite was the ‘Language in Society’ module. This consisted of teaching covering Professional Communication and Advertising Discourse and essentially focused on the power of language on people. I was fascinated by the linguistic and visual creativity involved in the work produced within the Marketing and Advertising industry and was keen to learn more and gain experience in this field.

The Careers and Employability Service at UON is second to none, offering an incredible variety of schemes and opportunities to help students gain industry experience. One of these schemes includes the Nottingham Internship Scheme (NIS), which provides work experience opportunities exclusively for UON students and graduates. After speaking with a careers advisor, they recommended that I applied for some of the great Marketing internship opportunities available.

My application was successful and landed me a role as Marketing Executive at webdna, which is a design, development and marketing agency located in Nottingham. Although I was anxious to start my first office job, I was looking forward to gaining real-life experience and meeting professionals in the industry.

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship at webdna, as I was given the independence to complete tasks using my initiative and was pushed out of my comfort zone. Throughout the 8-week internship, I wrote content for clients, including writing and creating email marketing campaigns with over 17,000 recipients. I also analysed and responded to website statistics from clients’ websites and social media platforms and conducted competitor analysis and market research which was extremely interesting and skill-enhancing.

At the end of my internship, I was offered a role as a part-time Junior SEO Manager, which I currently balance alongside my English degree. The experience I have gained and continue to develop in my current position has not only cemented my interest in Marketing but has also prepared me for entering the workplace post-graduation.

I would strongly recommend any English student to undertake an internship offered through the Nottingham Internship scheme. Not only are there a wide variety of internships available for a broad range of industries, but nearly all are located in and around Nottingham. The experience you gain is invaluable and helps enhance your CV, making you extremely employable once you graduate. The rewards and benefits really are endless!

– Hannah Lowe

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