Hello, my name is Mario and I am a second year Communication Science student.
I did my internship at Heineken N.V and I highly recommend it. My internship role at Heineken was in the Global Process & Control Improvement department, which is a sub-section of the Finance department, in the head office in Amsterdam. The Global Process & Control Improvement department focuses on strengthening Heineken’s operations and processes as well as mitigating any potential risks to the company. The opportunity to intern at Heineken has allowed me to apply the knowledge learned in the Communication Science course in a corporate environment in one of the largest multi-national companies in the Netherlands and a well renowned name around the world. The department is a sub-section of the Finance department, which to be honest does not interest me, however I grew to enjoy the tasks and I consider it a very valuable experience because of the skills I learned and the involvement within the teams.
My internship role was diverse and interesting due to the fact that I was divided over two teams within the department ; Risk Response team and Change & Communications team. My tasks ranged from developing communication strategies for the internal communications at Heineken to contributing to the implementation of controls and control monitoring around all Heineken operating companies globally. My main role was focused on effective communication within the department and I got the opportunity to contribute a lot during meetings, engage with internal and external stakeholders and also help with creating dashboards and more analytical aspects of the day to day operations.
The internship at Heineken was a very nice experience overall and I got to develop good connections, learned a lot with useful softwares such as Power BI and I got a deeper understanding of communication in a corporation. The most important experience for me though was actually being in a corporate environment in such a big company. At first it can be a bit of a shock but now I am much more comfortable in such environments and I think it will be really helpful for my future career aspirations.
There are a few tips I’d like to share from my own experience to new interns and students looking for an internship. I really struggled finding an internship at the start and was very relieved when I finally found one at the start of March but I do wish I had started earlier. It is important to start looking for internships early and try contacting people through LinkedIn if you find something you are interested in. Also, stay open-minded, you might not get the internship that you want but don’t take it as a negative thing because you may learn that you are good at something you didn’t know about or you may find an internship that doesn’t sound like too much fun but in my opinion being in a corporate environment and learning how to navigate within is the biggest take-away from the internship at the end of the day.