My name is Eli Dao, third year and graduating from my Communication Science Bachelor. As my journey ends, I am going to tell you all a story.
It was December, and I was on the run. Fresh back from my exchange in vanity Paris to the practical greys of Amsterdam, I needed an internship for the last semester. However, cramming for exams and studying day and night (oh, to be the French way of academic success) left me with no time to prepare, and I found out that most of my peers started searching from September already. With confidence, I assured myself “my experience line is long enough, I am sure I can get an internship in no time.” That time was three months and twenty-eight days. In between that, I have applied for 31 internships, 6 of which offered me a second-round interview, and no responses. Then I found Stryker. Page 20 of 406 search results of “communications + intern” on indeed.com. Internal Employee Communications. It took me a month and a comfortable conversation where the recruiter talked about things that the company has been doing on a strategic scale, and simply asked me if that peaked my interest.
Stryker was like no other place. $20 billion in sales globally in 2023, company stock listed on Wall Street S&P 500, and here I have my manager talking about his love for AC/DC on my onboarding day. It was not like anything I imagined from an US-based company with its headquarters in Amsterdam and virtually every office in every EU country. Everyone here is simply so friendly and they come from everywhere. Internal mobility is appreciate within the company, so I got to hear career stories that spans up to four continents and dozens of different markets. The live demo on company’s products was probably the most memorable thing for me; who knows how interesting advanced medical equipment were! It is as if I was in an episode of The Good Doctor.
One of the big things I was in charge of was a project on how to improve our Intranet system, which I coupled nicely with my internship report. Website design was a struggle I had to catch up with during my internship, but I found it to be a useful skill to enhance my sets of communication channel mastery. Other than that, writing and managing newsletters for 14.000 employees all across Europe, being a curious journalist, and helping out everyone in the office with materials and brandings is a very fast way of learning the ins and outs of this corporate giant. Through my job, I also got to know of medical devices, medical knowledge, and the medtech industry as well as how well-regulated and high-standard the communication operations were. I even got to practice my French with our colleagues in the Pusignan office! We also play hard, the Stryker way: lavish boat parties, football matches, and all kinds of fun well-balanced millennials can think of. It was surely a generational culture gap to catch up, but I am happy to be an old soul.
All put together, I believe Stryker was a precious opportunity that was worth the wait. The wonderful people Stryker and the MedTech industry as a whole is truly an underrated place for communicators to excel with highly niched audience and high complexity; it drives me to explore further and I would definitely set my eyes on positions like this in the future. Highly recommend all potential talents to seek out a journey with this wonderful company!