How I Got My First Internship

Hira Tanweer

This past summer, I was a client services intern at Digilant, which is a media buying company. Digilant connects brands with relevant audiences by using first party, third party and proprietary data. I got an interview with Digilant by knowing someone who knew someone from the company.

During the internship, I assisted the account management team with day to day tasks. I had the opportunity to make proposals and wrap up reports for clients. These were created through PowerPoint. Proposals included information about what Digilant could offer the client in terms of reaching the right consumers. I added all the possible packages that Digilant could offer them. I also gathered information for wrap up reports, which included final numbers for the campaigns. I also had to keep track of when different campaigns were ending and what needed to get sent to the client. I was working with six account managers so there were a lot of campaigns that I had to keep track of.

One challenge for me while interning at Digilant was learning how to do tasks as I was doing them. In some cases, I had to use common sense and prior experiences to get the job done. Another difficulty I had was learning advertising slang that my co-workers were using. During my first two weeks at the internship, I was confused when listening to my coworkers talk about their work and assignments. I only understood half of what they were saying. However, I quickly learned key terms by asking my coworkers directly or looking them up myself. I really enjoyed learning about the advertising industry and how clients reach specific audiences.

One key thing I learned from this experience is that networking is key into getting your first job. Most of the workers at Digilant got the job through a connection. Who you know is very important in the advertising industry, so it’s important to use LinkedIn to build connections. One specific tip a coworker told me that stuck with me is to take a class or learn how to use Excel. She mentioned that a lot of jobs require you to use Excel and that it would be helpful to learn all the shortcuts.