[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Business student Eilidh recently spent a week interning with the QikServe Marketing team. Read on for her daily diary to find out how she got on and what she took away from the experience.
Ooh, and make sure you scroll to the bottom and check out her vlog: A day in the life of a QikServe Intern for an exclusive look-see into the QikServe offices and beautiful footage of Edinburgh in the springtime!
Monday
I arrived at QikServe at 10am where I was greeted by Felicity (Marketing Executive), Nicola (Marketing Manager) and Sif (CMO). They were really friendly which made me feel comfortable straight away. To start with, I was given a tour of the office and shown around each department. Felicity and Nicola then took me to the board room where they gave me a quick breakdown of the QikServe business and the role of the Marketing department in particular. We then discussed a list of project ideas to complete during my internship week. Both made sure I felt comfortable with the project ideas and said I could be as creative as I wanted with them. I really appreciated that they had prepared tasks before I got there and had come up with tasks that they knew I would enjoy doing – this made me feel very welcomed. I was appointed four different projects that I could complete at my own pace throughout the week, including a Culture Blog, to highlight the QikServe culture in a fun and creative way. This was such a good task for me as it involved interviewing members of the team which was a great way to meet everyone.
The second task was to create a Social Media Events Calendar. This involved finding out all the quirky international days of the year and thinking of ways to get the QikServe team involved. My next task was researching new approaches QikServe could use to promote the events and tradeshows they attend each year. Finally, I was asked to keep a daily dairy to turn into a blog at the end of the week (hey presto – here it is!)
Tuesday
I felt a lot more confident arriving into the office this morning and got straight into finishing my blog from yesterday as well as having a catch up with Felicity and Sif. As it’s International Mother Language day on Thursday, my idea is to create a short video for social media featuring staff saying something funny or interesting in their native language as QikServe has such an international team. I went on to research International Mother Language day, the different languages spoken throughout the QikServe team and planned how I wanted the video to be filmed. Felicity showed me the Powtoons software that she was working with, which allows businesses to create fun and simple explainer videos. She gave me the log in details so I could play around with it and get a feel for how to use it which I really enjoyed as it showed me the creative side of marketing.
I finished off the day by starting a blog about healthy eating in the office. I researched different foods which improve concentration and various meal ideas which are easy to make the night before. I loved researching this task as nutrition is a real interest of mine and I always enjoy learning more about the topic.
Wednesday
This morning I attended the weekly catch up meeting with the marketing, sales and product departments. It was really interesting to listen in and find out what each department is working on and their future plans. I was able to tell the other teams what I’d been doing and what my plans were for the rest of the week – doing this really made me feel like I was part of the marketing team.
I then spent the morning going around the office with Felicity gathering volunteers to star in my International Mother Language Day video. We managed to get six members of staff who volunteered to say a tongue twister in their first language, which was funny to film and a good way to get to know more of the team. I then spoke to Anna, a Data Analyst, who told me about her healthy eating routines which I could incorporate into my ‘staying healthy in the workplace’ blog.
I brought in a packed lunch today and sat at the staff table with some of the team to find out what food staff bring to work for my blog. It was nice to sit and chat to new people and ask about their experiences so far with QikServe. It put it into perspective how far QikServe has come in the past couple years considering the majority of the people I spoke to have only been working with the company for a few months. After lunch, I recorded my last international video then spent the rest of the day putting it together in iMovie.
Thursday
This morning I brought in some homemade granola bars and put them in the kitchen as part of my ‘staying healthy at work’ project. I was interested to see if the team would choose to eat a healthy granola bar in the morning. They were gone within an hour! I then added a slide to yesterday’s video and forwarded the finished version to Felicity for posting and social media promotion. Afterwards I put all of the quirky international days that I’d gathered into Felicity’s calendar, with my ideas of how to celebrate the days. I finished the final draft of my blog and sent it to the marketing team to edit. Before I left this evening, I logged into the QikServe Twitter page, ready to take-over tomorrow. #QikServeTakeover
Friday
My last day! I can’t believe how fast the week has gone, I’ve loved every minute and feel very grateful to the team for allowing me to be part of it. On my way to the office this morning I took videos and pictures to add to my ‘day in the life video’ and to post as part of my Twitter take-over. I spent some time playing around making blog designs on Canva, which is a really user-friendly website for making graphics (another piece of software I’ll be using in the future, or maybe sooner considering how much I enjoyed writing a healthy eating blog!) Throughout the day, I spent time taking photos and videos for my social media posts. Photos such as the office views, the interior décor and staff playing ping pong… anything to represent what life in the QikServe office is like! I further built on my research skills while looking into other companies which supply kiosk systems and how they market their products. During lunch, David insisted Felicity and I got involved in a game of ping pong. Despite how awful our hand-eye coordination is, it was good fun for a Friday afternoon. I finished the day attending the Friday stand-up, a weekly event at QikServe where everyone gets together in the board room and informs everyone about what each department has been doing that week and exciting things that are coming up. Many thanks to the Qikserve Marketing team, I loved my week’s internship.
A day in the life of Marketing Intern, Eilidh
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