Hi everyone, it’s Emily here! I have been working as a Buying and Social Media Marketing Intern for Eternal Travel Boutique this past Summer. Today I wanted to share with you a few things I learned from my internship experience. 

So Much More Than Meets The Eye

I learned a ton about the industry I want to go into once I graduate college. It is typical that you do not ever fully understand something unless you actually do it and it was no different for this buying internship. I had an idea of what I would be getting myself into, but I learned how much more there is to it. I was glad to get first hand experience and to get a behind the scenes look at a company. This allowed me to be better prepared for my next future endeavor, whatever that may be. 

Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork

It is so important to work together with your team to complete your shared goal. I learned the importance of collaboration and bouncing ideas off of others during this internship. It was always important to bring ideas to the meetings and share them with the team in order to come to a mutual conclusion for how to go about things. Since this was a fully remote internship, it allowed me to experience collaboration through digital platforms such as Asana, Canva and G-Suite, and how to adapt to different ways of having team meetings. It is not only important to brainstorm, but also to implement the ideas you come up with and check in a few times along the way. Working together helps everything go more smoothly and allows better success for the company. 

Communications Skills Are Vital

Speaking up if you need help is important and this internship allowed me to practice that. Anytime I did not understand something or if I needed extra help I would reach out to another team member for clarification. This allowed everything to run smoothly and made the overall process much easier. We collaborated through many different modes of communication and it was good to get to experience how each works. It is more important to speak up in a remote role because there is less face-to-face communication involved so when you do collaborate you must share your ideas in order to get a discussion rolling. I got the opportunity to lead brainstorming and strategy meetings during this internship, which helped me develop leadership skills.

Career Direction

I learned so much information about what it takes to be a buyer and a digital marketer. I went through the entire buying process while prepping for the Fall 2020 collection. It was a great opportunity to apply my previous knowledge to these tasks in order to truly experience the process. Through this I learned that I love the buying process and I would be happy working in a similar position in the future. I also learned more about digital marketing. I am pursuing a degree in marketing in college and it was great to apply the skills I’ve learned in academia to this internship. Since I was working remotely we focused on the digital side of marketing, which gave me more in depth knowledge about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and content calendar management. I found that I enjoyed these tasks as well, and would also be content working in a marketing role post graduation. 

Time Management

I have always been good with managing my time, but this remote internship pushed me to become even better. It was extremely flexible so I got to create my own schedule, making it convenient for me. Our team meetings were on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and for the rest of the week, it was up to us on how we wanted to split up our assignments. I would write out a personal calendar and to-do list each week to make sure I was staying on task and to separate the workload so that it was manageable. I kept myself motivated and had a lot of fun doing it! 

Overall, I am very happy with the internship I completed with Eternal Travel Boutique. I learned a ton about buying and marketing, and also about general skills that it takes to run a small business. It was fun to work with the owners, Alisha and Katrinka, and they always accommodated what I wanted to learn and work on. The internship was well organized and packed with learning opportunities. I also enjoyed working with the other intern, Meg, because I got to collaborate with someone who is in a similar position as me. I am grateful for this experience because it has taught me valuable skills that I can apply to future jobs. I am also thankful to have met such wonderful people that I hope to network with more in the future. 

Thank you for reading. I hope it has inspired you to go out and get an internship of your own!

-Emily