When I walked into the first day of my senior year at Cleveland State University alarm bells started blaring in my mind. I had quit my serving job because of my class schedule and was without a job for the first time since I was 15. Suddenly, I had no income and the disquieting realization that I had no clue what I was going to do once I finished school. I knew it was time for me to start looking for an internship.
I thought I knew what I wanted when I started looking at internship postings; I was the romantic destined to work in publishing or museums (I started as a Fine Arts major with an emphasis in Art History and Theory). But those internships were few and far between, and when I could find them, they didn’t pay well, or at all.
So, I changed focus. I was, by this point, an English major minoring in business, so I decided to look for something more practical.
I started looking into marketing internships. There was an abundance of positions available and I put out what felt like hundreds of applications. I had several interviews and got a few offers; in the end, I took the internship that was going to do the most to help keep my lights on and my hot water running.
I had never heard of Briteskies, and while I knew tech is a fast-growing industry, I never considered that it would be where I ended up.
I took the internship, expecting to gain a line on my resume and not much more. I was so wrong.
From my first day of onboarding and training, I was set loose to work on prospecting and content creation. Drafting and sending marketing emails, writing blogs, and social media posts. At no point during my internship did I feel relegated to menial work. I wasn’t making coffee or picking up the boss’s dry cleaning; I was chasing down leads, creating content, and bringing value to the company.
I had entered an industry I knew nothing about doing a job I had no real expertise in. I had taken one marketing class while I was in school, and while I did well in it (as I did in all my classes), it was very basic.
That changed quickly. The developers, marketing team, and even those in executive positions; everyone at Briteskies was excited to answer any questions that I had and did everything they could to help me along my path to becoming an expert.
My internship ended and I was offered a full-time position as a Business Development Representative, and honestly, my job has not changed much. I am working full-time as opposed to part-time, but my daily activities are largely the same. I gained real experience that I have carried over to my full-time position.
In all, I would say that Briteskies offers their interns real work experience within a culture that fosters curiosity and growth. It is truly a company that cares about personal and professional growth and has done so much to expand my skill set and understanding of an industry and profession that I knew very little about at the start of my internship. It is an internship that I would 100% recommend to anyone who is interested in learning more about sales and marketing.
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