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

I was responsible for resourcing new candidates through head hunting, cold calling, Linkedin message and email – working towards my target of 20 active candidates per week. I also identified and contacted relevant candidates from the company’s existing database. I carried out the initial screening of candidates for senior consultant, either through a phone call or email communication. I was tasked with formatting candidate CVs and job specs, with a quick ten minute turn-around time, whilst still maintaining accuracy and attention to detail. I also picked out relevant and interesting media related news articles to post to the company social media page each morning. Finally, I developed and maintained resourcing spreadsheet in Excel and researched and built organisation charts for key clients.

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

I gained full end to end knowledge of the market in which I was recruiting (Ad Operations and the Programmatic landscape), something of which I had no knowledge before starting my internship. After receiving my initial training, I presented my understanding of the market back to the team. Towards the end of my internship, I then did my presentation for a second time, this time explaining my deeper understanding and working to improve on my first attempt.

What benefits did your internship bring to your employer?

In my role as a resourcer, I was responsible for contacting as many relevant candidates as possible. Over the course of my internship, I initiated conversation with around 400 different people, finding whether out whether or not they were open to new opportunities. Of this, around 130 people were interested in new opportunities – I liased between these candidates and my senior consultant, in order to gain their details and work out which roles they would be suitable for. Of my sourced candidates, 16 different people had 30 different interviews, as a result of me contacting them.

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

I encountered a difficulty in that, as an intern, I didn’t have access to a ‘Linkedin Recruiter’ account which enables you to message an unlimited number of potential candidates, and is an essential resource to the rest of the team in order to reach as many people as possible. I was therefore unable to use the search function on Linkedin, and so was limited in the number of candidates I was able to find. I overcame this my alerting my senior colleague to the issue and asking for a list of names I could work through manually instead.

“Caitlin has been a valuable asset to our team. She has picked up significant knowledge of the digital advertising industry and is now interviewing for two full time positions within digital advertising due to the experience gained with us” – Line Manager.