About to graduate? Looking for your first full-time job? Look no further.
You might have heard that King’s Careers & Employability offer great support and events to help you achieve your best possible future, but did you know they hire a King’s graduate as a Marketing and Communications intern every year?!
The role calls for a savvy, confident and innovative individual who will help shape the image of King’s Careers for the next six months (or more!). The lucky (and I mean lucky) individual will benefit immensely from the diverse range of experiences they will gain.
You’ll work on multiple projects with numerous teams for different stakeholders. It will range from graphic design work to website editing, event support to video-recording, blog writing to social media, and more.
What’s more, is the team at King’s Careers will tailor your internship to suit your aims and ambitions. George (your future manager/best friend) will help you design an internship experience that will provide you with the skills and experience you will need to make the next step up in your career.
Honestly, I’d love to give you a full list of what you will do in this role, but the experience is so personalised that the objectives you will undertake depend on your own personal aims. In fact, my day-to-day responsibilities evolved so rapidly that each time I spoke to my parents about my work, it was almost as if I was describing a different job! (Just one of many reasons I loved it working there).
As well as the skills I expected I would learn and improve upon, I took the opportunity to do things I hadn’t even thought about:
- I learned HTML and CSS, which I used to build a CV website to sell myself to employers (it worked! – FYI, I recommend doing this).
- I took my previous experience of editing videos for fun and built on it by shooting footage myself and editing it using top quality software, and in doing so we evolved the way in which King’s Careers communicates with King’s students.
- I used my experience as a King’s student to create, plan and execute an event where we introduced King’s Careers to a cohort of new students using brochures and flyers that I had designed.
You don’t need to worry about prior skills – you’ll learn all of those on the job! InDesign, Contensis and Printelligence may be names that are meaningless to you now, but that won’t last long.
In fact, the best candidate will be the one who shows the most interest, enthusiasm and potential – the individual who stands to improve the most from the experience will take precedence over one who already has the necessary skills but stands to gain little.
You don’t even need to know everything that King’s Careers & Employability do – I certainly didn’t. As a matter of fact, if you’re in the same boat as I was then I encourage you to use this as an excuse to get your CV or cover letter checked for the first time like I did.
It’s a no-brainer really. Who doesn’t want their potential future employers to tell them what they think of their application BEFORE they apply? That way, even if you aren’t successful, you’ve gained something by learning about at least some of the ways that King’s Careers can help you succeed in the future.
If you’re STILL reading this and wondering whether or not you should apply, then consider this: this is an opportunity to gain an internship at King’s, with access to all the perks and learning opportunities you’d expect from an institution of higher education (I thoroughly recommend Lynda.com, which you can access for free as a member of staff at King’s). Along with that, you’ll gain a network of contacts within the university and have the opportunity to apply for hundreds of further jobs within King’s.
Oh, and did I mention that you’ll have 24/7 access to one of the best careers services in the country? That’s a pretty useful perk when you’re searching for a job…
The final point that I want to convey is that the person who fills this role will make a genuine impact. You have a voice and people will listen to it. You have autonomy and people will respect it. You will be a member of the team and everyone will know that. Your actions will shape the way in which King’s Careers & Employability operates for half-a-year or more – if you embrace that then you can achieve a lot.
If you have any questions about the role, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team – they’re very accommodating and friendly – or me via LinkedIn! (Feel free to ask me any questions about my experience in the role).
By Nick Saunders Smith, former Marketing & Communications Intern, now working as a Digital Editor at Macmillan Cancer Support. You can apply for this internship on King’s CareerConnect.