Shirin Azmi Comm386Evaluation of internship

I would evaluate my internship as the best internship I have ever had. I love the atmosphere, the clients, the responsibilities and all of the overall experience that I gained there. I successfully reached my original goals and objectives. I gained my event planning skills and I improved my client and media relations. I assisted with the execution of multiple events and I assisted with drafting and creating press clips and project pitches. I measured my success in terms of completing my objectives and analyzing the success of my work. I even extended my internship by a week so I could spend more time helping out with assisting and executing events. This is my first internship where I gained experience with event planning and it allowed me to see how difficult it can be and how long it could take. Most events would take months to plan and organize before it is executed. I also learned how to manage a budget for a campaign and how important the timeline and budget are for planning a campaign or event. In my studies, I have never created a budget or timeline for an event so this was great experience because I had to create a budget and timeline for my comm483 campaign proposal. Not only did my studies contribute to my internship, but my internship experience gave me the skills necessary to excel in my classes. I believe that I performed at my highest potential. I enjoyed the internship experience to the point where I was willing to make more sacrifices just to extend my time there and gain as much experiences as I can. My supervisor and the principals of the office began assigning me larger and more important tasks, I was assured that I was serving as serving as a valuable addition to the team. I have learned more about PR and event planning and how fast-paced PR is. BrandLinkDC has many clients that allowed for me to experience an array of PR tasks, which taught me how to tackle different PR tactics for different clients. This experience has greatly affected my career goals because it has shown me that I thrive in the PR field and it could be a successful career path for me. As I graduate and apply for jobs I am definitely applying to more PR/communications jobs than I would have originally. I strengthened my communication skills and I was able to produce efficient work at a faster pace. I improved my phone-speaking skills with clients and I became less nervous and more confident when answering the phone. Also, by sitting in during conference calls or business meetings I was able to gain insight on how the employees would handle the meetings, interact with different clients and deal with issues. I learned that you must always be confident and have all of your facts before entering a meeting because you never want to seem unprepared or unaware during a meeting with a client. Strong client relations is a key to successful PR.The work site was cool, chic and it reminded me of the offices in The Devil Wears Prada. Most of the employees were young, in their 20s and 30s, and everyone was extremely fashionable. Being located in Georgetown was also extremely nice because it was a nice commute and it was fun to take clients out around the area. It also made it extremely easy to travel to and from events because the office was located around all of our clients. The interns had our room separate from the office where we could collaborate on projects and work together to solving issues or handling large tasks. The employees would come to our room to issue different tasks or documenting our progress on the assigned tasks. Certain interns were given more difficult tasks, like me, while the others would do tedious tasks. It was blatant that interns were required to prove themselves in order to receive larger and more important tasks. In the office, the employees spoke to the interns as equals, which I enjoyed because it showed that they respected us as equals and we were simply free-labor. My coworkers did not intimidate me and I was able to establish strong relationships with each of them. Even though I became close friends with several of them I always maintained a high level of professionalism. In conclusion, I had an amazing learning opportunity at BrandLinkDC and I wish they had employment opportunities so I could apply and hopefully be hired. I am definitely going to maintain my relationships with them and I hope to work with them again in the future.

Without a doubt, I would whole-heartedly recommend the internship program at BrandLinkDC to any of my classmates. It is fun, exciting and a great learning environment. It is a great internship opportunity for students who wish to gain more experience in PR, marketing and event planning. The entire staff team is friendly and is happy to teach and help the interns learn more about the PR field. The internship is extremely time-consuming because it requires a huge time commitment to assist with events so I would not recommend this internship to someone who does not have 20+ to contribute a week to the position. BrandLinkDC specializes in PR in the luxury marketplace and provides its internships with PR experience in the hospitality, beauty and fashion industry. Clients include Drybar, Bluemercury, Equinox Fitness, The Frye Boot Company, The W Hotel, and many others. There is a fall, spring, and summer internship opportunities for students and the program consists of 8-10 interns. The internship coordinator is Allix Wright and interested students should email a resume and cover letter to allix@brandlinkdc.com. The office can also be reached at 202 733 5223 and www.brandlinkdc.com