I have grown and learned a lot through my internship and general life in Italy. I came into my internship with a few soft and hard skills I was wanting to strengthen. I am happy to say that I am steadily working towards these successfully.

The first one being communication overall. I have always struggled with staying on top of communicating whether it be an email or text message. Having my first professional internship that happens to also be international I was able to grow this skill quickly as it is one of the most important skills there is. Communication is key! As an intern and team member, I am a apart of a larger sum and therefore my actions need to be accounted for. I have learned how important it is for me to be on top of my status as well as how important it is to know what my fellow team members are up to. 

Another soft skill I feel much more confident in is teamwork. Going hand in hand with that is creativity. As a social media marketing and sales intern, a large part of my job is brainstorming content ideas and actually creating them. This requires bouncing off ideas from one another and assisting in someone else’s vision. I have become much more comfortable sharing my ideas and actually taking charge in creative endeavors. My internship is a safe place where ideas can be free flowing. 

The hard skills I have learned whilst being here are equally valuable as the soft skills. For the most part the skill I have strengthened the most is data analyzing and reading analytics overall. To be successful on social media, a brand has to be familiar with their analytics! My fellow intern and I spend a lot of time looking into our own company’s as well as researching how to be more successful. 

Another hard skill I am still working on is SEO marketing. A topic I knew little on, I now feel much more comfortable talking about and researching. SEO is very important for businesses to be accessed correctly so it has been very interesting and inciteful learning about this process and applying it to the company I work for. 

Overall, I am so grateful to have the opportunities to improve my hard and soft skills. I feel more professional and confident in my abilities. I know that this global internship is preparing me well for my career!