There comes a time in every student’s life when they need to put themselves out there and venture into the real world… Which often means the dread or delight of finding an internship.
This is the story of Estelle and Jo - the new (awkward and anxious) copywriting and marketing interns at Holland Park Media (HPM) and how our journey led us here. Both students of Creative Business and wrapping up our Film Minor, our next task was to find an internship that would fulfill our wants and needs - but this wasn’t as easy as it sounds. The harsh truth is that finding a suitable internship is nearly impossible in the highly competitive times we live in. An internship that fulfills professional, academic, social, and financial needs is always just out of reach. However it was fate (or life as other people might call it) that brought us to HPM.
Coincidence is the keyword for this story. We both took on the role of screenplay writer during our minors (even doing a project together in the beginning of the school year) because of our passion for writing. Independently, we had both been scrolling through LinkedIn and found HPM. Neither of us knew the other had found HPM. We both sent an email. We both had an interview. We were both welcomed as marketing interns. And then, a few weeks later, we were put into a WhatsApp group chat, which is when we found out that the new batch of interns consisted of us two - plus another classmate of ours. Surprise! What a bunch of happy coincidences.
As an intern your main goal is to find a place in the industry whilst expanding your skills. To improve yourself as a professional but also as a person. For us this meant developing our writing mixed in with the strategic thinking that comes with marketing. And although probably a lot of companies could have offered that, HPM stood out due to the environment and care that they offer to their employees. To us, HPM radiates positivity, inclusivity, safety and fun.
“Diverse, accepting and crazy [...] Crazy in the best way possible,” as said by two previous interns, Charlene and Ieva.
And unlike other internship positions, HPM promotes a mindset of improvement and encourages interns to explore different potential skill sets such as self-management, production, and even pool or foosball. Allowing us to truly discover ourselves as a professional in the industry.
This leads us to our orientation day, February 1st 2022, our first day as interns at Holland Park Media. Naturally, as we are both scaredy cats, we had talked the day before about how anxious we both were. But in the morning that anxiety soon flew out the window as Charles greeted us at the door with his dog Bay (and assumedly a smile, however there was a face mask in the way).
The morning started with a small tour of The Hague Tech, the co-working space that the HPM office is located in - and getting our access cards to freely move around. We got to know Charlene and Ieva who are now employees and freelancers respectively at Holland Park Media. “Staying at HPM was the perfect opportunity to start my career,” explained Ieva, who had even provided us with some great Lithuanian snacks. Later in the day, we were greeted by the rest of the HPM family. Lunch consisted of a very tasty sounding explanation by Charles of the food at the Indian place around the corner, which ended up being closed. So instead we had lunch at the office, prepared by Floor, who provides The Hague Tech with daily fresh breakfast and lunch. After Charles explained the ins and outs of what it means to work at HPM, we were assigned with the vital task of reviving the HPM blog. Hence, this blog post was born.
Join us as we embark on this journey together. And stay tuned as we bring this blog section on the HPM website back to life.