Malena Lee

Major: Apparel, Merchandising, and Design
Company/Organization: Keller Williams Realty
Company/Organization website: https://www.kw.com/
Destination: Ankeny, Iowa
Timeframe: Summer 2020
Advisor/Coordinator Email: briaj@iastate.edu

Responsibilities

As a marketing intern, my job is to try and grow my supervisors contacts. The company is in the process of switching over to a different application for their data so that's predominately what I'm doing. As quarantine ends, I will be helping my supervisor host open houses.

Accomplishments

I would say that my greatest accomplishment so far would be the data transfer as it has taken so long to do. It felt good to have this big overarching goal accomplished and it opens up the way for me to start doing other things in my internship. This accomplishment also taught me a lot of things such as persistence and being thorough.

Learning experience

Some of the greatest lessons I've learned so far from my internship are the importance of teamwork and collaboration. Due to the current circumstances, much of my internship has been spent at home which means that I had to learn how to work with my team in a variety of ways. Teamwork that isn't done in person is slightly harder so I'm getting the opportunity to improve my skills. Also since so many things are being done online now, my knowledge for technology has grown which is super beneficial for future jobs.

What advice would you give?

My advice for future students is to apply to a lot of different types of internships. The internship that I am in currently I never would have considered before as it didn't directly relate to retail. Even if you get an internship that isn't in retail, it doesn't mean that you won't be learning valuable lessons from it. The workforce wants us all to be well rounded individuals and if we are only good at one thing, what we can give to our future companies is limited. So my best advice is to simply be open minded and don't get discouraged if you feel that you aren't finding the "right" internship.

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