It was the end of February this year, I had been looking for an internship for what seemed like almost forever by that point. It felt like my life was consumed by this quest, I would think about interviews while eating food, I would dream about it, it was all that I could talk about all the time. Fortunately I had a friend to share this experience with. I was at her apartment one afternoon, and we were determined to succeed. That day we submitted seven applications in a single sitting. During this frenzy, I came across a job posting that immediately caught my eye; “Brand Marketing: Strategy & Campaigns Intern at Catawiki”.
As soon as I saw this, I tried to act cool, like it was any other application in hopes that me and my friend don’t end up competing for this role. I told her that I am just copying and pasting one of my cover letters for this application, as I had been doing all day. Even though I said this, I made the secret decision to go above and beyond for this application. In hopes that they would recognise how good of a fit I am, I updated my cover letter with a few more points that I had not done for the last 5 applications, and even sent them a private email with a presentation that I had made for my STrategic Management class.
Surprisingly (or not), I heard back from Catawiki’s HR team in the next few days. Despite the intensity of the interview process, I was then given the opportunity to express my interest and ask questions from my end too. At this point I was an interview pro, sentences, and questions came naturally to me. Exactly one week after my first conversation with the HR representative, I received a call with the good news. In the week between the first interview and the final call, I had two additional interviews where I had to prepare a 30 minute presentation.
On a Tuesday morning, my phone rang at 10 am with the good news. Oddly, the friend I had been looking for an internship with kept calling me from the back while I was on call with the Catawiki representative. My friend would not stop spam calling me which I found really strange.
While this was happening, I thought to myself, “I have to tell her about the internship”. In my head, she was still without an internship offer and I was concerned about her reaction to the news since we had been struggling with this together for so many months now. However, when I videocalled her, she looked just as happy as I did. At that moment I knew that she had secured an internship too and she had! It felt as though it was all planned but it was all a big coincidence that we were not complaining about.
Now that I have worked at Catawiki for a few months, I have learned something new every day. I am so pleased with how everything worked out for both my friend and I, it truly felt like a perfect match!