Today I’m going to talk to you about my internship with the advertising company ‘Flash’. The handout you have includes erm some vocabulary related to international sales. If you have any questions about advertising or sales you can ask them at the end. In my presentation I’ll explain what work I did and what I learnt from my internship.
First of all, I’d like to introduce the company. It was founded in 1985 by two brothers in Paris and they now have four offices worldwide. They have a turnover of 800 000 000 euros per year and employ over 200 people in France, London, and Chicago. These two slides show you some examples of the adverts they have designed for their clients.
So, to explain what work was I was doing. I helped out in the international sales department in Paris. I had to contact potential clients by phone and email and erm present our company to them to find out if they might be interested in our services. Then a more experienced member of the sales team followed up the initial contact I had made erm to erm try and eventually secure an advertising deal.
There were some positive and negative sides to my internship but on the whole I really enjoyed my work. I used my English every day as many of the phone calls I made were in English and erm I also had to send and receive e-mails in English. I sometimes observed the design team as they brainstormed ideas for advertising a new product but as this isn’t my main area of interest I mostly stayed with the sales team. However, as I was the intern I also had some tasks to do that no one else wanted like sorting out a cabinet of old files and erm checking up-to-date e-mail addresses and websites for companies we had worked for in the past.
The working conditions were very good and I was in an open-plan office with seven other people from sales who were all very friendly and welcoming. We had an hour and a half break for lunch and most people ate at the restaurant next door to the head office. It was a great opportunity to meet with other people from different departments and to find out how the company worked.
So to conclude my presentation, I’d say the main disadvantage of my internship was that I didn’t get to follow up any of the sales. Hmm, some of my colleagues let me sit in with them on meetings with some already established clients, and although I did go to some presentations given by my boss to potential clients, I wanted to be more involved. I still have a lot to learn and I intend to work at the same company next summer to gain even more experience. I hope that next time the job I do will quickly progress into something a little more challenging.
