First Day at the Office

On Friday, I took a practice run to my host company. I felt extremely accomplished to have my 45-minute commute to work under my belt! It was nerve-racking to try and navigate a new transportation system but I got through it. Upon arrival on the first day, my boss, with who I will be working closely for the duration of my time here, greeted me promptly and warmly. I felt at ease knowing that I was being taken care of. I was directed towards my office area, which overlooks the river. The office space is not the biggest but has a lot of natural sunlight and is certainly modern and cozy with a real startup feel.

Since I have worked at a startup before, I was able to identify certain similarities. I noticed that there is a lot of freedom to learn and accomplish tasks at your own pace and my boss encouraged a lot of communication in order to maximize my experience and be as effective to the overall team as possible.

My first day consisted of signing a code of conduct and reading up on the company’s policies and procedures. These things included how the advertising and publisher sales work, what goes into the IT department, as well as the budgeting and controlling department, and so on and so forth. It was not a pressing day, so it was rather relaxed however I was anxious for the work to come. My boss introduced me to the issues that I will be facing and trying to solve in the coming weeks. He informed me that he had already set out a tentative week-by-week plan for me for the duration of my internship which was extremely professional yet very anxiety-inducing since I felt that I have a lot to live up to. I was given the task to research as much as possible for the purpose of effectively tracking productivity in the different branches of the company in order to maximize output and find metrics to reduce costs where it matters.

Over the next couple of days, my immediate boss was in Madrid for a business trip so I was working independently. I was left with the task to learn as much as possible about terms such as KPI’s, PMO’s and how to configure them effectively in excel to make templates that can help the company. It was very challenging work as it was material that I’ve never been exposed to but it was really interesting and actually fun to be faced with a problem and be given my own time and space to be able to learn about a solution for the problem and then try to implement it with the company’s data. Hands-on learning is something I can definitely benefit from and I am happy about the last couple of days of work. I definitely think there is a lot to learn from this internship experience and will gain a lot of real-life practical experience for my future career.