Hi everyone! This is Silvia an International student from Spain and a Marketing Intern at Passageways. To better understand what I do, let me tell you a little bit about the company. Passageways is a B2B company with around 200 employees in the US, United Kingdom, and Australia. Because of Covid-19 I am working from home and that allows me more flexibility on how to manage classes and duties as an intern throughout the week, but that means that I need to work autonomously. I don’t have to follow a daily schedule, and I can choose how many hours a day and which days I work. Thus far, I have been assigned and worked on three different projects that were assigned to me by various members of the marketing department.

Some of the projects I worked on focused on the rebranding of Passageways. I helped with the social media strategy by doing research on primary, secondary, and tertiary competitors that we have. I need to look at which platforms they are using, how frequently they are posting, what is working for them, and what is not. This entails gaining insight on the type of content they are posting, the person that is behind the post, the voice(s) of the company they are trying to convey and calculating the percentage of engagement they receive. Excel has been an amazing tool that I utilize for the organization of all projects and data. After conducting that thorough research, I gather my information in a structured and detailed manner. I then inform my supervisor of my findings. There are also meetings with the marketing team, other departments, and other firms that we use such as PR agencies. When my classes allow me, I attend the live meetings, and if I am busy, I watch the recorded session to be up to date on what is going on in the process.

In addition, I’m helping with the content of a Search Engine Marketing campaign. To be able to contribute to this campaign, I had to learn how to use Octoparse which is a program that allows you to turn websites into structured spreadsheets. From there, I collect and organize data. After analyzing the data, I need to summarize it so that it can be featured in the campaign.

I have seen immense growth regarding my skill set. I was able to improve my research skills by researching competitors. Through attending weekly meetings and maintaining communication with my team members, I have seen the value of communicating clearly and effectively. I have refined my writing skills by constructing emails and cultivating summarizations of my work. In addition, when working on my projects I exhibit critical thinking skills and creativity in order to come up and produce accurate content. This internship has also provided the opportunity for me to showcase entrepreneurship. I have taken the initiative to create a plan on acquiring new clients which I will present at the end of my internship.

I have found the experience of working at Passageways to be rewarding. I have enjoyed implementing some of the knowledge and skills I have learned at DePaul from all my years in the marketing program.