By: Loren Smith
As I continue my journey interning with Lee and London, I have gained great PR experience. So far I have been trained on Cision, SEO, schema markup, and had the opportunity to pitch real products to journalists! It is so common for companies to have interns doing busy work or tasks that are not conducive to learning, but this has not been the case in my experience with Lee and London. Even though this internship is remote, we use Slack to communicate with each other, and everyone is very helpful. During our workday Brendi, CEO of LLPR, speaks to us as real employees and has us complete tasks that she needs to get done during the day, offering us awesome hands-on experience. Some of these tasks include, completing research for clients, sending out pitches, or writing press releases, to name a few.
It is so important that internships provide quality learning experience because classroom information is often not enough. I believe the only way to gain true experience is by doing. If internships are not providing hands-on experience, it can be very intimidating for a young person to enter their career field due to not knowing important information. Lee & London has figured out how to provide great hands-on experience, without having to step foot in an office! They have been a great example of what I believe so many other companies should be practicing with their interns now and in the future.
When it comes to how I feel about interning from home, so far I’ve loved it! In fact, I have enjoyed it so much that it has drastically changed my mind about how I want to proceed with my career in the future. Having the ability to work remotely not only gives you the freedom of working from any location, it allows you the freedom to be comfortable! I understand going to the office and looking presentable but c’mon, who wouldn’t want to go to work in sweatpants and a t-shirt and actually be comfortable for eight hours? And let me tell you, nothing feels better than finishing your workday, closing your laptop, and already being at home on the couch, no commute times! I don’t believe that every job should be remote because then we would probably all turn into couch potatoes with no social skills, however I do think the ease of remote working has changed our current reality forever.
For example, companies could have two days of in-the-office work and three days remote working. Adjustments like this could make working more enjoyable for millions of people and also allow more people to travel and spend time with family and friends. It may not be for everyone, but this experience has definitely changed my mindset and in the future I will be looking to work for companies who can be flexible in this manner.
