When looking for an internship, I was sure I wanted to do my internship at a big global company, as I was convinced that big international companies could teach you the most. I ended up doing my internship at Nestlé, the biggest food company in the world, famous for brands such as KitKat, Nespresso, Maggi, and Nescafé. Before starting my internship, I was sure that this was one of the best companies I could intern at. But was this the case? A few months in, I noticed many benefits, but I also noticed some disadvantages of doing my internship at such a big company like Nestlé. But what are the pros and cons of doing your internship at Nestlé? In this blog, I will discuss the biggest advantages and disadvantages, in my opinion, of doing an internship at Nestlé.
The Advantages
Let’s look at the advantages first. I believe that the biggest advantage of doing an internship at Nestlé would probably be the fact that they have a well-organized internship programme. Every six months, Nestlé welcomes around 25 to 30 new interns, and it is very noticeable that they have experience with interns. The company organizes various workshops, specially designed for interns, where you can obtain a lot of useful information useful for the future. One of these workshops was the Insights Discovery Workshop, where I learned a lot about myself and where my strengths and weaknesses lie. Another insightful training was the Job Bootcamp. During this training we looked at our CVs and motivation letters and were given tips on how to improve them. Furthermore, we learned about how to best apply for a job, and that you should think of the application process as the process of finding a job that suits you the best and not as an examination.
I believe that another advantage of doing your internship at a big international company like Nestlé is that there are lots of different people with lots of different functions working at the company. Almost everyone is open to having a coffee and discussing what their job is like. By having these ‘coffee meetings’ I learned a lot about different functions within the company, which helped me get a better idea of what I would like to do in the future.
The Disadvantages
On to the disadvantages. I believe the biggest disadvantage has to do with the fact that Nestlé is an international company with international guidelines. This means that at national level, you are not always free to do what you want. Therefore, it is sometimes not possible to design your own communication messages because you have to align with the guidelines set at global level.
Another disadvantage is that Nestlé often hires external parties for marketing and PR campaigns. As a result, the creative element is often passed on to these external parties. Designing campaigns is something I would have liked to have helped with, and therefore I sometimes doubted if I wouldn’t be better off doing my internship at a marketing or PR agency.
Conclusion
There you go, some advantages and disadvantages of my internship period at Nestlé. In the end, I think I have learned a lot during my internship period at Nestlé. However, I believe it would have been more fun to do my internship at a marketing or PR agency. In any case, my internship at Nestlé has helped a lot with discovering what I would like to do in the future and what not.