Starting your career in digital marketing can be confusing and overwhelming, especially when you have started to learn about it and aren’t sure how to enter into the industry.
I recommend finding an internship where you can gain practical experience from professionals already in the field. While interns may always be not taken seriously, it’s the interns who truly want to learn from experienced individuals and establish valuable connections within the industry.
Personally, my experiences with unpaid internships haven’t been good and I think they are a scam majority of the time.
How I discovered a good paid and remote digital marketing internship:
October 6th : I stepped into the field of digital marketing by starting the Professional Certificate of Digital Marketing and E-commerce. It has 7 courses in total and it starts your journey from scratch. It covers everything from fundamentals of digital marketing to Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, reporting and analytics, building e-commerce stores to your CVS and interview tips.
Beginning of November: I set a clear goal to secure a high-quality remote internship by the end of December. I started applying for internships while I was still taking my certificate. I was using LinkedIn and Indeed for finding internship opportunities.
Here’s the tale of my experience for finding ‘the high quality remote internship’
➡ My first interview was with a digital marketing agency in Lahore. I was super excited to learn when they hired me. It was an unpaid job. On the first day of the internship, they asked me to follow, subscribe, and review them everywhere—Google Maps, Facebook etc. Well, I did and that was the only task they assigned me. They mentioned they were busy and would get back to me later. I couldn’t learn anything from them.
➡Got an offer of a virtual assistant role (a data entry job for an e-commerce store). I didn’t take it because it didn’t align with my long-term goals.
➡Then I received another offer from a company for a social media intern position. They didn’t even conduct an interview and sent me a direct offer letter. I found it very suspicious, so I asked them for a meeting to discuss responsibilities. They changed the topic and sent me tasks. When I visited their linkedin page, I noticed in the people section that they recently hired many social media interns, and when I checked those people’s profiles, they were posting the company’s promotional content from their personal LinkedIn profiles. I realized they wanted to promote their brand by hiring unpaid interns and asking them to post their content on their profiles.
➡Well, there was also another job for the position of ‘Instagram Intern‘, which involved sending cold DMs etc. It paid fine but I didn’t take it because they had bad Glassdoor reviews and a very strict schedule without any flexibility. They wanted to be reported every hour, and the focus was on quantity rather than quality. I didn’t take that offer either.
➡I applied for more internships and landed another interview. I was impressed by the queries asked, which were truly in line with the field of work. It was for the position of social media intern, but after realizing that I had good knowledge of SEO, they hired me as an SEO intern on 7th of December. I worked with them for 3 months and it was a good experience and learning opportunity. My responsibilities were off-page SEO, content writing, creating reels for their clients and more.
Takeaway: Don’t settle for less. Stay consistent with your goals and think long term. I know it can get frustrating at times, but eventually, things fall into place if you are consistent and know what you want.
Stay in a company where there is growth and productivity.
HAPPY LEARNING!