How virtual internships helped me land a job
In order to escape my boring vacation, I told my parents I was coming back home to Jaipur to do an internship. As much as I wanted this to be a bluff, I knew I had to get an actual internship so that I’d have something to show for. I had applied for in-office internships through an online internship platform in the past but wasn’t able to pursue them due to inconvenient circumstances. I once again turned to my trusted online platform to look for work-from-home internships. At that time, I knew nothing about digital marketing or content writing, but I found myself applying for it anyway.
One position that caught my attention was the content writing internship at BlogCharge. My application got shortlisted, and I was asked to write an article on any movie or series that I liked as the next step of their selection procedure. I wrote a humorous article on Silicon Valley since I had watched it recently and was going gaga over it. Despite my doubts about being underqualified for the internship, I got selected. I started with the internship, and initially, I struggled with understanding the process of writing on WordPress since it was completely new to me, but with my mentor’s steady guidance, I quickly got the hang of it. I dedicated myself to the internship since it was my first work experience. As an intern at Blogcharge, I wrote articles about various web series and movies such as the Harry Potter series, Iron Man, etc. and optimised them to rank well on Google. In the beginning, I only wrote the articles; however, once my mentor was confident that I had understood the tasks, I was given complete ownership of downloading the posters of the selected series/movies and uploading them on the CMS along with the articles. This was a massive learning experience for me as I started the internship with zero knowledge about blogging and on-page SEO but ended it with a strong grasp of these subjects.
Once I completed this three-month internship, I applied to several other internships at companies that intrigued me, mostly startups. StartupTalky, a media company focused on entrepreneurship, interested me, and I applied for a content writing internship there. Soon enough, they scheduled a telephonic interview with me wherein they asked me about my academic and family background, my interests, and hobbies. They asked me if I was interested in start-ups to which I said yes, after which they posed questions about what intrigued me about startups and why. Additionally, they inquired about my knowledge of WordPress and SEO. A few days later, they informed me that I was selected for the internship and that I would get additional monetary incentives if they liked my articles. At StartupTalky, I was allotted topics for articles related to startups and entrepreneurship through email, and I was required to submit 3 articles every day. I also wrote descriptions of various startups, the stories of their origination and success, and what made them interesting. A month later, I wanted to step up my responsibilities, so I asked my mentor if my set of tasks could be increased. I then started creating podcasts about the success stories of startups in addition to writing articles. Later into the internship, my tasks involved strategising for SEO and optimising the articles I wrote accordingly.
This internship was one of the best experiences of my life. My mentor was incredibly patient and supportive and kept me motivated throughout the stint. After my internship ended, I was offered a full-time role as a digital marketing manager at their Bangalore branch; however, I couldn’t join immediately due to my college exams.
Author of the article: Lakshya Singh
This article was first published on Internshala.
