Prior to my internship I thought I didn’t have any skills, only theoretical knowledge. To say that I was wrong feels like an understatement but it is the truth.
Let me start off by sketching the backdrop of my internship. If you don’t know what Mammoet does as a company, they are the industry leaders in transport and heavy-lifting for small to mega projects, such as placing an arch over the Chernobyl Reactor and lifting a nuclear submarine from the sea floor. They’re a global company with over 6000 employees worldwide, and their parent company is SHV Holdings. I was lucky to meet the Global Head of Sustainability and Internal Communications via a project I did related to my minor. It just so happened to be that I was looking for an internship and that she could use the help of an intern. Before long I had signed my first work contract in The Netherlands.
It was strange doing an internship during the pandemic. My supervisor was very accommodating and cleared her schedule to show me around and meet my new colleagues, but the offices still felt like a ghost town. This didn’t really change much throughout my internship. Another aspect of this ghost town feeling was that, although I was working in two departments, my supervisor was the only other person in these departments. I have stayed on part-time as advisor for the departments, and am glad to see that there are two new people being hired to expand the capabilities of the departments, so if you are interested in interning here – it will be different!
I thought I would need to do much more complex work, but at the end of the day I was able to share a wide range of my skills. Editing audio and making a Miro board were received with a lot of enthusiasm which I felt was disproportionate to the work I did. But here is where the lesson lay for me, just because it seems simple to me, doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable to someone else. Throughout my internship I learned what skills I had, and how to apply them to a work setting. Beside this I also learned an immense amount from my supervisor as she also took on the role of mentor and shared her experiences with me. This gave me a wider perspective on the working world beyond university for which I am grateful.
A unique aspect of my internship was that I got to support my supervisor in her work with the executive board of Mammoet, and later again with just the CEO. What I enjoyed the most about doing my internship at Mammoet was the company culture. One of their core values is Love the Work, and this is something I really felt from my colleagues but also myself. You still feel that Mammoet started as a family business. Most of my colleagues are down to earth and very much themselves at work. This is where most of the value that is created by Mammoet comes from. I really enjoyed my internship, and if you’re looking for an internship at a global business where you get a large insight into how things work – I would say go for Mammoet!