It’s been almost four months since I started my internship in the PR department at ITMS. I’ve learned a lot during this time – about public relations, media communications, about marketing, and about agency life.
After years of studying languages and their use at university, it was time for me to get a taste of the real world. Since I have always been interested in advertising and had recently started to focus on PR, ITMS seemed like the perfect choice.
From the outset, I was given real assignments and also the required support when I needed it. My responsibilities include writing advertising copy, social media posts, drafting press releases, contributing ideas for new campaigns and projects, and a lot of research. Because ITMS has many clients from a wide variety of different fields, it’s important to constantly keep up on the latest from different industries, to familiarize myself with new products and projects. The variety of themes and topics keeps the work interesting and allows me to learn something new every day.
My internship is taking place at a particularly challenging time: On my starting date, the shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing. The agency had not come to a standstill but had shifted to remote work with most of the employees working from home. With the gradual return to the agency, I was also allowed to take up my desk in the modern offices with their panoramic view of Bad Nauheim. I was introduced to my colleagues from afar, but this hardly spoiled the warm welcome I received. Working together from a distance is not a contradiction here but everyday life. The pandemic was of course also the focus of many customers’ attention. Crisis communication, everything digital and remote client relations were essential, which in turn taught me a lot about social media and the online world. Little by little, contact with agency clients changed from online meetings to real visits – with social distancing and masks, of course. Others just stayed connected remotely and so everyone came to terms with the new normality.
For me, this normality is new for various reasons: on the one hand, because of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic but also because of the new tasks that keep coming up for me. As an intern at ITMS, I am not assigned to making copies, sending faxes or making coffee but allowed to contribute to real projects, do creative work and validate my current skills on a daily basis. And it’s nice to know that I can always count on attentive support should I need it. I am happy to no longer just write term papers that end up in a pile of files but to do work with a real purpose. I am seen here as an ‘almost’ full-fledged employee and am entrusted to do many different things. I am given the time to work things out on my own and the opportunity to apply them, to revise them and to learn from them. Personal responsibility is very important here. I am looking forward to the remaining two months at ITMS and am sure that I will take a lot with me for my future.
