Intern Diaries: Lauren M.
Growing up in New York, I always took trips to Manhattan with my family, friends, or even by myself whenever I had a few spare hours to hop on the train to Penn Station. While I was looking forward to working downtown in a real New York City office, COVID-19 led to my first internship being completely virtual and consisted of multiple daily Zoom calls and tons of messages over Slack to keep in contact with one another. Despite the pandemic, JMG was able to continue this program online and run it virtually flawlessly, allowing me to grow and learn a tremendous amount during my few months at the company.
Being a student in business school, I constantly am reminded how important it is to gain real life experience and how crucial it is to get a few internships under your belt before graduating. While I applied to intern at JMG as a freshman in college, I was not very optimistic about my chances of actually getting to work at such an amazing and established company in New York City. After completing the interview process, I was offered the position of JMG’s very first “Social Media Intern!” When finding out this news I was both grateful and terrified, unknown of what Jenna and the team would expect with my lack of previous internship and professional experience.
All of my fears and uncertainties building up to my first day instantly disappeared when I was introduced to Jenna, Lauren, and Frances on our first Zoom call. I could tell that the team had planned out the onboarding process of this internship very well which led to the smooth transition into my position in May. During my time working for the firm, I planned out the posts on various social media accounts that JMG runs and was able to tap into my creative side by making different Instagram stories daily. With these stories, I was able to watch some of the 14,000+ followers interact with something I created which was one of my favorite parts of this experience. I also started a JMG PR Spotify account for our followers to enjoy with playlists curated by both employees and interns at JMG! While my official job related to social media, I was given the opportunity to research and work on various PR projects for JMG’s clients throughout the semester which was extremely rewarding.
Throughout my time at JMG, the team was as helpful as I could imagine, making sure that my fellow interns and I not only understood how to do something, but were able to understand why we were doing this specific task and what help it would lead to for their clients in the future. While I was introduced to a variety of new terms in PR I was also learning new things about social media that I never knew before. Running a company’s Instagram account and utilizing the insights and analytics gave me true professional experience in social media and allowed me to truly recognize the difference between personal and professional social media. I was able to learn how important it is to cater to your followers interests instead of your own to maximize engagement and increase followers over time.
I have experienced both professional and personal growth during this internship, getting more comfortable with asking questions and being able to quickly adjust from what I was doing to complete a task that was time-sensitive. I am very appreciative of Jenna and everyone at JMG to work with me and help me grow throughout the internship. While most of my time consisted of a great deal of work and professionalism, one of my favorite parts of my week was our “Sip The Tea” calls to talk about the latest celebrity gossip and pop culture news. Looking back on my summer, I can say that I truly enjoyed my time at JMG and could not have asked for a better first internship. This summer was filled with teamwork, guidance, and an overall amazing professional experience that I will carry with me throughout the rest of my career. I am looking forward to visiting the office in NYC one day when it is safe to do so!
-Lauren M.
