Spring Internship: Connecting to Career-Readiness Competencies

The following blog post discusses my internship experience and how I was able to develop certain NACE Career-Readiness Competencies.

Communication

Communication was very important for me to use throughout my internship this semester. I had to keep all the nominators of the award winners updated on when we would be coming to surprise everyone and coordinate the marketing team and destination services team schedules to make sure enough people could attend each surprise. We had different methods of communicating such as email, in person, and Slack which I had to learn how to use to better communicate with the team. I will continue to develop my communication skills in order to better connect with my coworkers in my future workplace as well.

Professionalism

This semester, I was able to greatly improve my professionalism skills while in the workplace. I learned how to be more efficient and focused in my work in order to meet and exceed the goals that were placed on me during my internship. During meetings, my coworkers and supervisors were able to put expectations on me and trust that I would have them completed in a timely manner and done correctly. Specifically, I was able to be trusted to pick up the awards when they were ready and get them safely delivered back to the office. I was also trusted to represent VisitNorfolk when getting posters hung in local coffee shops in Norfolk about the Champions of Hospitality survey. This is a skill that I can continue to grow and will benefit me wherever my future workplace is.

Teamwork

My internship this semester heavily relied on teamwork. I worked a lot with the marketing team as well as the destinations services team and needed to learn how to work with everyone's schedules. It took some sacrifice, like knowing who had to attend every surprise and who was able to miss a few, but it all worked out in the end. Also, deciding on the winners took the entire team all putting their opinions together and everyone getting a say in who they think deserved to win out of over 100 nominees. Overall, I found that my internship this semester was able to improve my existing team work skills. Teamwork is a skill that will always be beneficial and I plan to continue improving this skill in my future workplace with my future coworkers.