“The corporate world is cold, hard, and cruel – you better come prepared” are words that many prospective interns have surely heard, in one form or another. And indeed, whether encountered online or offline, many stories paint a picture of an internship experience characterised by thankless tasks, boredom, exploitation, and ungratefulness. Often the butt of the joke, interns appear to have a rather low stance in the corporate environment.
Unsurprisingly then, when I had the opportunity to join Rituals Cosmetics as a (very, very) inexperienced social media marketing intern six months ago, I was nervous about what to expect. Especially given that I would now work in one of the head offices of one of the fastest growing companies in Amsterdam, no less.
Luckily, however, it seems that not every corporation aims to perpetuate this notion. There are modern approaches to handling young aspiring workers, I believe to be well reflected in Rituals’ take on internships.
When I started out as the new social media and influencer marketing intern at Rituals, my role and accompanying tasks were not clear cut yet. Instead, my team and I figured out where my interests and skills were best utilised within the first couple of weeks. This led to me assisting more on the analytical, but sometimes also operational side of social media, i.e., extracting and analysing data, translating the insights into digestible information, content brainstorms, etc. There was a smooth transition from being a full-time student to becoming a full-time worker and I felt welcomed and comfortable from day 1 on.
As time went on and I became more confident in my tasks, I was somewhat rewarded by being assigned my first own projects to work on and present to the team. I created new analysis guidelines and templates, restructured internal platforms, and led data-driven projects. More and more, I established my role as the ‘social media analyst’ and even colleagues outside of my own team started to ask for my help.
Throughout the entire time, I was guided, supported and assisted by my own team members but also from other colleagues within the department. Any question, any remark, any idea, or any doubt was picked up and worked through together. More so, I was advised and at the same time pushed to challenge myself in my work so that I was always able to extract the most learnings out of my experience. This was also always the case regarding my future opportunities and perspectives.
Thus, what I experienced during my internship at Rituals was nothing like the picture of a corporate internship described above. The corporate culture I worked in highly values their interns and their work, regarding them not as cheap short-term visitors, but as potential future employees. And indeed, by working hard on the projects I was entrusted in and by accepting the help and the opportunities offered to me, I was enabled to take a first step in my professional career: a permanent position beyond my internship. The company’s way of handling interns was unexpected, yet greatly rewarding – an approach many organisations could learn from.