How did it all start?
I’m Sonia, I just finished the 10th grade at high school. Now maybe you wonder what a 17-year-old student is doing at an IT company. Well, I was always a curious person. I always told myself, “Try new things until you find that one that you like and enjoy doing”. And that statement always pushed me to get a taste of lots of activities. To be more precise, I worked in a restaurant as a waiter, I worked in a salon as a lash artist, and I ‘tried’ being a personal trainer-but none of them were the ones for me.
My inspiration
Many people might find my inspiration weird and cheesy, but truth to be told it all started when the ‘Emily in Paris’ series was launched on Netflix. I loved it; I loved what the characters were doing for their jobs (for example Emily is a social media strategy specialist, and Julien and Luc both are Marketing Specialists) and I thought to myself, why wouldn’t I try that and see what happens? Since then, I started being more interested in the Marketing Industry. I started to ask my friends and family if someone knows a marketing specialist, and that’s how I found Julia, Marketing Manager at ANT.
The journey
At first, Julia helped me with articles and documentation to get more familiar with this big industry for when I’d go to university. After some days, she contacted me again with a big announcement. The company was delighted to give me a spot in their team, as a Marketing Intern. I can not express in words how happy I was. I accepted right away because I was really curious and I wanted to see if this industry could fit me at all as I imagined.
Therefore, my real journey through this industry started. In the beginning, I have to say that I was nervous because I didn’t know anyone in the company, and honestly having to read and write everything in English looked a bit hard for me, but it turned out it was more challenging and fun. The internship’s duration was a month-not so long, but long enough to learn a lot. I was given tasks, such as writing social media posts, writing descriptions for jobs, wireframing, and learning to use tools; all of these but with a deadline -thing that made me more responsible. I can say that these tasks required patience, creativity, and sometimes, a little help from the colleagues. Everyone was so nice to me, and they were willing to help me whenever I needed it.
What I most liked about this internship, is that I had the opportunity to learn not only about Marketing, but also about Finance and Human Resources. I have spoken to lots of my colleagues besides work, and it was impressive that none of them looked at me with superiority, but with eye-level respect. I had some conversations with Bianca, HR expert at ANT where she told me about Recruiting, and Employee engagement; I also talked to our CFO, Cătălin Pitiș about Finances and some Administrative things which helped me understand better how a company works.
I strongly believe that the community in which I worked for a whole month, made my experience much better than I expected it to be.
The result
In closing, this experience helped me a lot in finding my path and I am almost sure that this is what I want to do in life, even if I still have a lot to learn and test. I am forever thankful to everyone in the company for giving me this chance to acquire knowledge in this industry. This opportunity made me realize that I want to do my studies in marketing and follow this challenging road.