eXepert Administrator – University of Exeter Employment Services

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What were your main duties and responsibilities during the course of your internship?

My main roles and responsibilities during the course of the internship were very much administratively based. My fundamental responsibility was to provide administrative support for a scheme which offers students and recent graduates the opportunity to contact alumni for careers advice, although I was also encouraged to widen the scheme and ensure that it was constantly improving. In my second year of the internship, I widened my responsibilities further to help more with the Career Mentoring Scheme and did some admin and event organisation within this.

What would you say was your biggest achievement over the course of your internship?

The biggest achievement over the course of my internship was helping to plan and coordinate the first ‘meet your mentor’ event. I had never undertaken a project like this before and it was a really exciting new challenge. Coordinating the different aspects of the event and ensuring everything ran smoothly ensured I learnt lots very quickly, and I would definitely like to pursue something similar to this in my future career.

What benefits did your internship bring to your employer?

I ran a scheme called eXepert, which matched students and alumni up in short term mentoring relationships. I worked solely on this scheme supporting students from the application stage to the feedback stage. The benefit this had to my employer was an increased awareness of careers advice for students, as well as maintaining important relationships with alumni.

Did you encounter any problems during the course of your internship and if so, how did you overcome them?

No problems! I always felt really well supported throughout the internship. The biggest challenge I encountered was my line manager leaving just a few weeks into my role and therefore not having someone there to ask questions to as I was settling into the role. The wider team were really supportive, however, and I was able to settle into the role through the use of intuition and resources supplied by my predecessor.