Our Summer Internship at Simply Hired: A True Story
Simply Hired Staff
This summer we were Brand Ambassadors Interns. It was our job to spread the word about Simply Hired’s resources for college students and new graduates. We really enjoyed sharing resources that as college students we both found valuable. It was great to spend our summer together and with the Simply Hired family. As our internship comes to an end, we were given the opportunity to write about our experience at Simply Hired, what we learned and how to avoid common intern mistakes.
7 Lessons We Learned
1. How to Work on a Team
You aren’t part of just one team. We found that by learning about the other parts of the company, we were better able to understand our own work as interns. For example, after getting the chance to meet with the engineering team, we were better equipped to answer all the questions career centers had about the inner workings of our job search pages.
2. How to Work with a Friend
Working with a friend can be awesome. We were lucky that we worked so well together. From the start, we knew one another’s strengths and weaknesses and we were able to accomplish much more together. While we have heard that working with a friend can be quite tricky, the most important thing we found was how to find a balance between being friends and coworkers.
3. Taking over Social Media
We were given a really great opportunity to take over the Instagram channel for a day. They let us take the reins and trusted us to create each post on our own. Check us out on the Simply Hired instagram! #Interntakeover2015 #simplytakeover
4. Opportunities to grow
It turns out weaknesses are not a bad thing. They are opportunities to be better. This summer we used our weaknesses to help us improve our work process and become efficient and successful. Over the summer we learned the best days and times to reach out to people. We found that July is a very popular vacation month, but not to worry, everyone will be back on August 3rd. In addition, it is best to avoid contacting people on Monday morning. People are much happier on Friday.
5. Being confident with your projects and ideas
Simply Hired helped by creating an environment that encouraged us to get involved and to share our work. Working with a friend meant that there was always someone to turn to for encouragement and support. During our time here we had the opportunity to host a company-wide competition. We were able to work on it together, which made presenting it to the entire company a little less scary.
6. Managing stress
Our manager gave us some really great tips for managing stress and supported us through it all. Knowing we had someone to turn to when we needed help was a huge factor in our success. We were both given weekly tasks to accomplish to help us reach our overall summer goals. This helped us to keep organized and manage our stress while also staying on track to being successful.
7. The importance of having a strong mentor
Our mentor was amazing. She took us under her wing and made sure we learned as much as possible in our time here. We met every single week to discuss our progress, obstacles and best practices. She made this summer about more than just the tasks we were doing by helping us grow as individuals and understand our strengths and weaknesses.
7 Common Simply Intern Mistakes
1. Be Aware
So our sales team has NERF guns. When there is a full sales team NERF war going on, you have to be aware of your surroundings if you want to make it out alive. And if you plan on storing darts make sure you hide them well or your stash will be compromised.
2. Ordering Lunch
First of all, we are really lucky that Simply Hired provides us lunch every day. The catch: Order by 10 AM or be hungry. The overwhelming sadness and regret that occurs at 10:01 is unexplainable.
3. Answering the Phone
Know how to answer the phone. The first time someone called us back we were so excited but quickly realized that we didn’t know how to pick up the phone yet.
4. Parking
For some reason we both decided that there was one parking spot that was superior to the rest. It was never said out loud, but since that day it was our No. 1 goal every morning to get that spot. Because of this, we were always on time for work.
5. Know Where You Are
Always have a map of the conference rooms so that when it’s time for a meeting you don’t look like a lost kid looking for their mom in the grocery store. No one wants to be THAT intern.
6. Keep Work at Work
As part of our job, we had to make a lot of phone calls. We left our work number so many times that at one point, we accidentally gave out our work number when ordering takeout one weekend.
7. Check Before Sending
We learned Gmail had an undo button…but not until our last week.
So what did we even do this summer? We learned a lot about Simply Hired, a unique company, that is set on helping people find jobs they love. We were able to talk to people from all aspects of the company and understand how they each contribute to making Simply Hired successful. We participated in meetings, campaigns and brainstorm sessions. We also constructed emails, campaigns, social media posts and even hosted a company competition.
As college students ourselves, we know how hard the job search can be. We were really lucky to intern at Simply Hired and hope that everyone else can find an internship they love as well.
