Success Stories

Success Stories

Heather Pomphrett – Digital Communications Intern, Adopt an Intern

When I graduated from university in summer 2012 I was filled with excitement, shadowed by a hint of dread. With my degree behind me I was ready to start that big graduate job everyone talked about. Well, that was the theory at least. The reality wasn’t quite so easy.

It was appearing to be the case that ‘graduate-jobs’ were almost entirely based exclusively in London or a two-year scheme where they could move you anywhere and everywhere across the country every couple of months. Recently married, that just wasn’t an option for me. I wanted a graduate job in central Scotland and in all my searching it just didn’t seem to exist.

So I made a plan B. I increased the hours in my part-time job as a dispenser in a local pharmacy and reached out to my personal network to offer my copywriting and digital marketing skills on a freelance basis. This, alongside taking on an increasing responsibility within the media and communications team within my local church was beginning to give me a little bit of experience, but it wasn’t enough. I was still receiving rejection emails and phone calls, all with a similar rhetoric; “you were great but we have decided to give the position to someone with just a little more experience than you have.”

More experience? How could I get more experience without a job? I was already freelancing and doing voluntary work, alongside 36-hour a week ‘non-graduate’ job. So, I left my pharmacy job and got a job as an office admin thinking ‘at least on paper it looks slightly more in the ‘right’ direction’. Graduate-job success? Still zero.

After 5 months of admin, and now closing in on two years since graduation I was getting frustrated and then, I discovered Adopt an Intern.

On first look I was unsure about something so short and fixed-term. What would happen after I completed a 3 month internship? Would I be back to job searching again? I had to do something, so I took a leap of faith and applied for a 3-month internship with Adopt an Intern.

Getting the “we’d like to offer you the job” phone call was a breath of fresh air and I now had 3 months to not only to increase my existing skills but show off what I could do in a digital marketing capacity in hope of securing an extension, a permanent job or at least a glowing reference.

The internship itself was fantastic. I was given lots of free reign to come up with new ideas for marketing the business and create and implement new strategies while being given enough support and supervision to balance it out. All I could think to myself was, ‘why didn’t I do an internship sooner?’ All of my previous experience no doubt helped me secure my internship but it was the exact thing I’d been looking for, the stop-gap between graduation and a permanent graduate career.

After about 8 weeks in the role I was offered a permanent position with Adopt an Intern and I couldn’t say yes quick enough. So here I am, one year on, not only another Adopt an Intern Alumni with a great success story, but an AAI Staff Member too doing my bit to promote internships as my new first choice to access a graduate career!

Heather Pomphrett
Digital Communications Officer and Adopt an Intern Alumni
Adopt an Intern 

Share

Subscribe to get News & Updates

Sign up for AAI’s monthly snapshots on hiring, retention, and inclusion, along with exclusive whitepapers on the latest hot topics.

Subscribe to AAI News and Updates

By submitting this form, you agree to AAI's Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time.