Commercial and Marketing Intern Review

Assisting the Customer Strategy and Insight team, which sat in British Gas Energy, with their current projects.
On a day to day basis, this included attending and contributing to meetings with other team members, often with external agencies too.
I would usually conduct independent work, creating surveys for comms testing, or sorting through previous survey responses.
I also had regular access to TGI databases, which I would use for attitudinal brand research.
I was in contact with my manager most days, even though the internship was mainly remote.

I would say I was given a reasonable amount of responsibility on my placement. I went from shadowing my manger to leading calls at the end of my placement. I felt well supported by my team and never felt like I was out of my depth with responsibility. However due to various changes within the business, there was a project which fizzled out and therefore perhaps didn't get as much responsibility as I might have done. I felt I could have coped with slightly more responsibility, but recognise I should have been more proactive in seeking this.

The internship really helped me improve my data literacy. I had little to no experience of dealing with Excel before hand. With training in our induction week, and help from others in my team, I now feel more confident using pivot tables, and most functions.
Over the 2 months I presented in various different situations - from informal, to my final placement presentation to 50+ people. Having not presented in over 3 years, this really polished some very rusty presenting skills

I received a lot of support both during the recruitment process and during the placement. My line manager contacted me before I started, and I also had graduate talent managers, and a grad buddy as points of contact too.
I had weekly 1-1 meetings with my line manager where we discussed what I wanted to get out of the placement, what I was doing that week and any concerns I had. I consistently felt supported by my manager

Amongst interns, I thought the atmosphere was great - lively and social.
Amongst my team, it was also really positive and accommodating and I always felt my idea were taken seriously.
However, since COVID most people mainly work from home. This had its pros, but this meant that when I was in the office, the atmosphere was pretty flat. For an intern/new grad, I'm not sure the WOH environment is the best to learn from others more experienced in the business

I enjoyed learning about different parts of the business I wasn't aware even existed. Comms testing was really interesting to pic apart the language and I enjoyed sitting in on the subsequent focus groups.
Doing attitudinal research was slightly more challenging but I enjoyed working with numerical data for the first time in a long time.
The only thing I was slightly disappointed with was the WOH emphasis. Sometimes it was quites lonely, especially when its your first time working a corporate job.

Yes