The truth about an internship at a digital agency

Making coffee. Making copies. Updating the admin.

Those are the things you do not learn during an internship at Stigo. What you do learn, I will happily set out here. Spoiler: you get the chance to throw yourself in completely and work as a full member of the team.

Who am I?

Before I go into detail, let me introduce myself. I am Arianne Caron, a marketing student bitten by the copywriting bug. I like cooking, photography, and I never say no to a good book.

Now that we know each other a little better, I can be completely honest with you. Finding an internship at a digital agency is not easy. The fear of ending up as the assistant on the duller tasks is always there, and everyone tries to avoid it. You did not spend years behind the books to spend your internship not learning how to turn that theory into practice.

So what are you looking for? You know you do not want to make coffee or copy and paste text, but what do you want to do?

I mainly wanted to work hard, learn an enormous amount and get the chance to improve myself on several fronts. To work inside a real agency and learn how you produce results, but also to find out what I actually enjoy. That was the goal.

Lucky for me, Stigo does not keep people warming a bench. They look at what you enjoy and what you are good at, and you get to work with that from day one.

School versus internship: which one wins?

Believe me when I say school is only the beginning of your learning. I hate to say it, but all those nights working through to submit a paper one minute before the deadline taught you less than the weeks of your internship will, and that without the sleep deprivation.

At least, if you find a company where you are not treated like the typical intern.

So what is different here? On your first day you expect a quiet start, and at most companies that is what you get. Here you are pulled out of your comfort zone straight away and you join the daily morning meeting.

A morning meeting. Do I introduce myself and immediately say something clever? Or do I just listen quietly? Will I hear what my tasks are right away? Should I have gone over the client portfolio again last night?

All questions running through my head on the way from my desk to the meeting room.

I will not lie, that morning meeting took some getting used to. On the first day I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, but a week later all of that disappeared. You start to know the clients and you are glad you can go through the work every morning. There is no better way to pick up insight from your team and to make your own creative ideas heard.

Learning independently is key

Working and learning independently matters enormously in your future career. Use your common sense, learn from experienced marketers, and get on with it yourself.

To be completely honest, that was challenging at times, but you will be amazed at how fast you grow. Do not ask questions immediately; go looking for solutions yourself first. Your future employers value that too.

Employers are looking for marketers who take initiative, propose solutions and move forward. Not for marketers who run to their supervisor in tears at every problem, to put it dramatically. The sooner you develop the habit of learning independently, the better.

Share what you know and learn what you do not

There is no constant supervision, but there is the freedom to work out your own ideas. You get the trust to contact clients directly, to use different tools, to build campaigns.

You are thrown into working life with a demanding set of tasks. My tip here is to share your own insights. That can be nerve-wracking at first, but it does not matter if you are wrong a few times. Better to say something than to say nothing.

A proactive attitude will add real value during your internship and in your later career. Digital agencies are looking for people who dare to make decisions, know what they want and think ahead. Use your internship as a chance to grow into that.

In a nutshell

Looking for an internship at a digital agency where you take hold of the work with both hands, learn to work proactively and develop into the next great digital marketer?

Then take your chance and send in your CV. You have nothing to lose.