Although most colleges will not return to in-person instruction this fall, our interns will still be resuming their classes! This week we sat down with our Marketing Intern, Skye Lovell, to discuss her internship experience before she returns to remote learning in the fall.
Skye started her internship remotely the first week of May. She transitioned to a partial in-office and remote internship in June. Here’s what she had to say about interning at Tarmika:
What was the goal of your internship?
I was brought on to help our marketing specialist, Alex. A big portion of Alex’s job is to create the UX/UI designs for our partners, so the more integrations and partnerships that Tarmika commits to, means the more designs Alex has to create.
So I was brought on to help with the other aspects of marketing: content creation, content strategy planning, and maintaining the social media accounts.
Why did you choose to work for a start-up?
At my school most students I knew were trying to get internships at big name companies, and that just didn’t appeal to me at the time. I didn’t want to be 1 out of 500 interns all fighting to be noticed by the company.
The idea of a start-up seemed intriguing; a place where you knew everyone, there were no real “departments,” and the employees helped each other in any way that they could, even if it wasn’t related to their job.
Start-up culture seemed really exciting and like a great learning experience, so I was eager to be a part of one.
What did you work on during your internship?
I learned so much during my internship. Even though I worked as a Marketing intern, I also learned about sales, the technical side of our product, and now have a ton of random insurance knowledge!
I mostly worked on creating and implementing a content strategy for our various social media platforms. This involved doing a lot of research on what and how to use content to increase your company’s traction, testing that content to see the return it gets from your audience, learning how to use Adobe products to create graphics and videos, and even deep diving into writing blog posts and various company copy.
What did you like about working in that field?
My favorite part about marketing is seeing the results. You spend so much time planning and creating, so to see those creations lead to positive results makes you feel really good.
You’re also constantly learning; sometimes you don’t always get positive results, so it’s back to the drawing board to see what you could do better.
Whether people share or comment on our posts, or we capture a new lead for one of the sales reps, it’s just great to connect with people through your company and be able to have fun and be creative while doing it.
What did you like about working for Tarmika?
I absolutely loved working for Tarmika. I have to admit I never really thought insurance could be that fun, but Tarmika made it fun for me. Tarmika also has one of the most unique and special office cultures I’ve ever seen.
Everyone in the office is a perfect mix of relaxed and driven; you’re never stressed out at work, but you’re all contributing hands on to the growth of this young company. This company values and welcomes every person’s opinion, even if you’re an intern, and that was really cool to me.
What was the biggest takeaway from your internship?
I learned how important confidence and collaboration is. Your idea doesn’t have to be perfect, but if you’re confident in it and share it with the team, everyone can work together to create something great out of it.
I spent a lot of time thinking I needed to have a perfect, foolproof plan to present, but really all I needed was a sliver of an idea and the ability to listen and receive constructive feedback to create something greater than I could’ve imagined.
