Hi everyone! My name is Danuta Bobeł, and I am a second year Communication Science student from Poland. In March, I started my required internship as a part of my curriculum. As the university does not provide direct internship connections with companies, I was required to find it on my own. I stumbled upon an internship opportunity on LinkedIn at an innovative startup AnyHouse.
What made me interested in company was it bright prospects; AnyHouse is a rental search platform which compares offers and housing advertisements from different websites offering accommodation. It utilises new trends in technology such as automatization or AI generated responses which allow the future tenant to directly send a message to their landlord, tailored to their personal profile as well as the unique characteristics of the accommodation, after finding an appropriate housing.
As one of my personal goals for my internship was to somehow contribute to society, I applied to join AnyHouse team in order to have my small contribution in solving the housing crisis in the Netherlands. Hence, hearing about the growing amount of users who found housing through AnyHouse would always give me a sense of pride and fulfilment.
As an external communications intern I was responsible for establishing and maintaining external communications with third parties such as influencers, B2B partners, and other organisations. Additionally, I was responsible for conducting research on potential that partnerships could benefit the company the most, as well as investigating what communications channel would be the most suitable to contact those partners.
After finding the partner I had to invite them to a meeting with me. Occasionally, my supervisor would join those meetings. During the communication with the potential partners both via emails as well as in the meetings themselves I had to use my knowledge of persuasive communication. It was extremely interesting to see how effective those theories could be when applied into practice! My favourite approach was using cognitive heuristics.
Every day I was given a list of tasks to do, and at the end of each day I had a short update meeting with my supervisors. Additionally to that I was attending weekly team meetings which were mandatory for all of the employees.
Overall, I had a great experience with AnyHouse, as I was able to learn a lot about partnerships and sales. I was very lucky as I had a lot of help from supervisors and learned a lot from them, but in the same time I was given freedom to choose appropriate partners and potential stakeholders. I was even sent on a networking conference as AnyHouse representative where I made around many new connections. Some of them later led to very satisfying partnerships and sales. All in all my experience at AnyHouse was invaluable, and gave me a solid basis for future professional and personal development and I am extremely happy and grateful for this opportunity!