My name is Milou Dohmen and I am currently in my last week as a Marketing and Communications intern at ING Real Estate Finance (ING REF). I started in September which means five months have passed by already. It went by really quickly, which is a positive thing as I really enjoyed my internship experience.
ING REF is part of ING which is a Dutch multinational bank and financial services company. ING REF is headquartered in Amsterdam near Bijlmerpoort. I was part of the Centre of Expertise team. Within this team, they work together on projects related to sustainability, innovation, marketing, communications, and finance as a service. All related to the real estate sector of course. My main role was to assist the marketing and communications advisor. I worked with the team at the office most days of the week.
Before I started, I wasn’t actually sure what kind of company I wanted to do my internship at. I did some research on vacancies for companies but did not yet apply to any. Then a friend of mine came with the opportunity to talk with the marketing and communications advisor at ING REF as they were looking for someone who could do research on their internal communication. At first, I was a bit hesitant as I thought the banking sector was not for me. I did have a growing interest in real estate which made me curious about the company. After meeting with my now-host internship supervisor I was excited to start here.
My team was very welcoming and involved me in a lot of different tasks and projects. Think about writing monthly newsletters, making presentations for events and client meetings, and hosting internal and external events. I really got to step out of my comfort zone and do things I first would never do. All my colleagues at REF were also really engaged and it felt like a company where everyone works very closely with each other. Also, besides work, we did things as a team, such as going out for drinks or dinner.
During my internship, I worked on my research while also assisting in other activities. The research was on their internal communication. They recently had a re-organization of the company and wanted to get a better insight into employees’ perceptions of internal communication and the different communication channels used. I did survey research among all REF employees. I got a lot of responses to my survey which made it clear to me that many colleagues were willing to do me a favor and actually cared about my internship research.
All in all, I really recommend doing an internship at ING REF they are a really good internship host organization that shows they care about getting you involved in many different tasks.