My Summer Internship – by Jacqueline Powling

During the summer before my last year of University, I was hoping to get some experience in a working environment and try something that may relate to my Economics degree. I was fortunate enough to find that locally with Cressive DX and spent 10 weeks working in an apprentice SEO consultant role.

Cressive DX is a fast-growing technology and services company, located in the Surrey Technology Centre on Surrey Research Park in Guildford. Their focus is digital branding improvement and digital reporting for big brand names – I’ll be honest I didn’t really know what that was before this summer but I had a great time finding out and contributing.

Despite being a small team currently, they have some huge clients, which made it a really interesting and fun experience (I’m impressed how they got such large clients and manage them so well). They also love to try and explore new things – including hiring a summer intern, which I’m happy to report worked out well!

I was offered a huge variety of tasks to choose from and try, including data checking their proprietary software, managing their social media, “branding myself” (even building my own social profiles and website) and data analysis – and I even learnt some coding. My highlight was to design some software in order to enhance their reporting system (following my data checking, I tried to formulate a way to automatically detect any noticeable changes in the data), and felt like a valued member of the team when they asked for my input.

They were so supportive and encouraging throughout, allowing me to focus on the aspects I found more exciting or get involved with other tasks and projects that interested me. They answered any questions I had about business, digital reporting or SEO, or anything else and they speak so passionately about it – they love what they do and just want you to as well. Nevertheless, they were very understanding that I had no real understanding of digital marketing to begin with and just wanted me to get the most out of it.

As I still don’t know exactly what I want to do after University, they said that even if I get to the end of the summer and decide it isn’t what I want to do as a career, then that’s still useful too. If you put the effort in yourself it is difficult not to learn a lot during an Internship. This meant I could just enjoy my time there and try to get the most out of it without worrying or stressing about anything, and whilst the time at Cressive hasn’t answered all my job questions it has helped me appreciate and understand both marketing and technical roles in the work place.

I was previously more inclined towards working for a larger company; however, having completed an internship in a smaller company, I would highly recommend it to any prospective interns! There are varied tasks as all the projects are going on around you and you are more integrated into the team. As for my future plans, I am quite keen on working in a fast-moving technology environment. All in all, it couldn’t have worked out better and I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

Jacqueline Powling, University of Birmingham, between Yr 2 & 3