Written by Imogen Whitehead

For the past few months, I have worked as a Marketing Communications Intern for Hey Me. It’s been an experience filled with learning and development, and I’ve been very grateful to work with this team!

I’m about to head into my third year of a maths and physics degree at the University of York, which I’m aware sounds like quite an unconnected degree from marketing. However, I’ve always had a passion for expressing myself creatively, so when I saw this position advertised by the university careers department, I thought I should step out of my comfort zone and put myself forward for a role that wasn’t science focussed. Things worked out marvellously, in fact, as I have absolutely loved working in a more creative communications role.

The application process was fairly simple – I submitted a few documents to the university, and then had a call with some members of the team. I remember having a lot of fun talking to them, and thinking that this seemed to be a very passionate and exciting group of people. Their genuine love of what they did meant that when I received a job offer about a week later, I was absolutely over the moon!

During my first week of working with Hey Me, I completed a communications audit to fully understand what the business did and how I could best utilise my skills to support the team. I also used a website called ‘HubSpot’ to supplement my work and teach me more about digital communications, social media marketing and graphic design. During this first week, I also had the chance to visit our virtual office in Harrogate during that first week and had a great time meeting even more of the team – this time in person!

My main responsibilities during this position were creating graphics and copy for across the Hey Me social channels, keeping up to date with industry news which we could use on our or our clients’ social platforms, and jumping on any other tasks the rest of the team had to offer me. I think my favourite project throughout this experience was creating graphics and newsletters for some of our clients – there was a real sense of pride to know that the words I had written were being shared to a large audience of people, and to see my creations be appreciated by people outside of the Hey Me social reach.

There was a real focus on my personal development during this process, and ensuring that I didn’t just provide support to the team, but that I also felt my skills and capabilities across many areas improved. I felt extremely looked after during my time with Hey Me, and really felt that the team had my best interests to heart. I was often asked if there were specific projects I wanted to get involved with, and I was given a number of workshops by individual team members to learn more about their specific areas of expertise.

Personally, I’ve found that this opportunity has allowed me to reconnect with my more creative side, and made me reconsider what I want my future career to hold. I have used the website Canva for the majority of social post designs, and have clearly seen an increase in my skills of graphic design and using Canva. I also tend to prefer writing longer form pieces such as blog posts or articles, so although I have had some fantastic opportunities to write and proof-read blogs for the Hey Me website, I have also honed my skills in short form writing for post copy and captions. The main improvement I have seen in myself over this internship period is definitely in my time management skills. Working remotely and with control over flexible hours was a real difficulty at the start, but after almost 8 weeks with Hey Me, I have found the ways to work which are most effective and productive for me.

It’s clear that I’ve grown and developed a variety of skills during my internship which I am definitely able to apply going into my third year at university and beyond. For example, the time management skills I have developed will enable me to be more productive while organising my independent-study time, and the enhancements of my writing skills will help me while writing my mathematics dissertation over the coming year.

Although I do not know quite what my career will be long term after graduating, my work with Hey Me has clarified how much I enjoy expressing myself creatively, and also how I am keen to utilise analytics and data to gain insights and create useful reports. I am very grateful to Hey Me for this fantastic opportunity, and I know that I have gained valuable connections and developed versatile skills which will be extremely helpful in my future.