Charlie Gregory - Discovery Internship Case Study

Charlie Gregory, who graduated with a degree in Media, Culture, Communication, talks about the Discovery Internship he completed at Agnes Marketing as a Marketing Intern during his final year of study in 2023.

Why did you want to do a Discovery Internship?

I believed that doing an internship would give me vital experience going forward into a potential career and would also give me a bit of extra money to spend as a student because of the fact it was paid.

Where did you find out about the internship?

I was sent an email with a list of the Discovery Internships on it and this particular marketing one caught my eye when I clicked on the link. It sounded interesting and seemed like a decent platform for me to be able to improve my skillset and get that experience.

Describe the role you are undertaking and your main duties:

My role at the company was to create copy for Agnes Marketing’s clients. They have a number of companies working with them to get copy to use when recruiting new clients or to give to existing ones and to help them to better market themselves. I had to create certain blogs, articles and e-books for these companies to then use and distribute.

What did the application / selection process involve, and how did you prepare for each stage?

It started out with an application through Unitemps, which then led into me speaking to Marnie about moving to the next step of the process which was an interview with my boss at Agnes Marketing. After an online interview, I was then accepted! It’s always nervy to prepare for interviews but I knew my application was strong because of Marnie and it gave me more confidence that I was what Agnes Marketing might have been looking for – that chilled me out for the interview.

What help and support did you access from the Student Futures Team?

They were helpful all along the way from the beginning welcome lecture to all the way along. Thanks to regular email contact with Marnie and then the whole section on Canvas, I was easily able to wrap my head around what was required of me on the internship. I had an issue with submitting some timesheets and what I needed to do but speaking to Marnie quickly sorted it for me.

What relevant work experience / skills / volunteering / Student Union activities did you use during the selection process?

I had some prior experience of writing articles and doing journalism from before university so that helped me out and I had to condense and refine my CV for the whole process and tailored it to match the role I was applying for, which helped me out.

What advice would you give to other students to improve their employability?

I’d say try to gather as much voluntary and even free experience as you can while you can. Since being at university and asking for experience – some paid and some unpaid – it’s opened a lot more doors. After getting some of this experience, I was able to put it on my CV and use it in my interview which then landed me the internship. I’ve been able to get some writing experience at a newspaper and on some websites and I think it’s invaluable to get as much as you can. I’d say utilise the careers team for any help and advice while you have it too and there’s the skills page you can access and use too.

What aspects of your degree were particularly useful in the selection process?

I feel everything that I learned and am learning has helped me out so far. To be able to say that I’m studying certain modules (in my case professional writing) and then refer to some of the skills I’ve picked up through it did stand me in good stead. To be able to draw upon lecture notes and learn certain ideas, phrases and theories that I could then use to land a similar internship definitely helped.

What advice would you give to students starting a degree now?

Again, I’d say get the experience even if it’s free or voluntary. Get your name out there now, send emails, get in touch with the careers team at LJMU if you need any advice about a potential career that you might be interested in or for help with where to look for potential experience and just get yourself out there. Having as much experience under your belt when looking for jobs in the future can only be beneficial and I’ve already been aided by my experience and experiences so far. My experience helped me land the internship and now I have the internship to refer to in future too. It’s worth doing.

At LJMU, we have an employability skills and mind-set framework embedded within all our degrees. Which three of the nine employability skills and which three of the seven mind-set traits did you find most important in your day-to-day role, and how did you use them in practice during the internship?

Employability skills – Professional written and spoken communication skills; creativity; ICT and technology: I used these in practice as my writing had to be of a high standard and professional as it was being given to potential new clients and current clients of businesses that are successful and want to have a good image and make people have a good perception of them. Creativity came into practice in terms of creating my copy because I was given a lot of free rein to create a certain bit of content in the way that I wanted to whether it was with different formatting or in a certain style or with the e-books and so I had to find creative ways of portraying and getting across the information. ICT and technology also came into practice because I had to spend a lot of time using the correct facilities to research the topics I was writing about – some of which I had no prior knowledge of – and then had to use particular programmes to create good copy with the correct formatting and the correct style.

Mind-set traits – Tenacious, resilient, growth mindset; trustworthy and responsible; positive and passionate:  I used these in practice as I had to be creative in terms of my writing but it might not always be correct and you cannot give up if something is not correct the first time. Once or twice there had to be some amendments to some work because they weren’t quite aimed at the target audience they wanted for example but rather than start to believe I wasn’t good enough in my writing, I took on the task of rewriting it with a good outlook and was resilient and then produced an even better piece of work that the client liked. I used the trustworthy and responsible in practice as there were periods of time where my boss was not immediately contactable and she would set me a task to complete with some pointers and then leave me to it, meaning that I had to be trusted to complete the work to the set deadline and to the best of my ability without badgering her or without being able to contact her straight away. The responsibility for getting the work in and completed the way they wanted fell to me and so I had to do that. Positive and passionate also came into play because I feel that you should always take a positive mindset into any task because if you are dealt with a setback in your work, then a positive mindset should enable you to try it again until you succeed. Being positive and passionate not only has a positive effect on the work but on the people you work with and by being positive and passionate about the work and constantly striving for more work as I did in the internship, it will help us to achieve more and it did.

Support from the Student Futures team 

If you want to talk about potential careers options with your degree, need help finding opportunities or want support with your CV, application forms or preparing for an interview, you can get advice and guidance by booking a 30-minute 1-2-1 careers meeting with a Careers and Employability Adviser from the LJMU Student Futures Team.  You can also come along to a Careers drop-in or CV Café which take place weekly at the Careers Zones for quick careers queries.

If you are thinking about starting a business, freelancing, pursuing a side-hustle or have an idea that you want to explore further, email the Start-up Hub and a member of the team will be back in touch, or visit the Start-up Hub website.

For help finding part-time, temporary or casual you can fit around your studies, email the Unitemps team or visit their website.