Philip Gamble: freeg131

Two weeks ago I started a summer internship at a company in London called 20:20 Media and Analytics.  It’s a mouthful but there are about 1600 other companies calling themselves “2020″.

Effectively it is the Search Engine Marketing branch of a large digital agency.  At the moment the Search Engine Optimisation and Pay-Per-Click teams are based in the corner of an office belonging to another department of the agency but next month they are moving to a snazzy sounding new office.

In my first weeks I have mainly been conducting “mini audits” of sites assessing the current standard of their SEO which in some cases is absolutely abysmal.  Although I must admit this isn’t the most interesting task in the world I do think I am learning quickly.   There are a large number of potential pitfalls and problems that sites may fall into and I think I have become quicker and better at identifying them.

I blogged earlier stating that I had suddenly reached a realisation that I must go out and actually do something that would be beneficial to me obtaining a future career this summer if I actually wanted to get anywhere. So I am obviously pleased that when I started applying for unpaid Internships at smaller companies the feedback I received was very positive.

I was ready to apply to a couple of job adverts I had seen on Gumtree and Monster but held off until after I had my careers appointment. The careers lady effectively said the only thing I had missing from my CV was an Internship so I quite happily sent off a couple of applications after that.

By the time I received an invitation to attend an interview with the second company I had already agreed to start at 20:20. It seems I am more employable than I thought. The Head of SEO has since said I am good enough for a full time role with them as an SEO Executive.

I have quite a few Computer Science friends who have either already started or are shortly due to start Internships at larger companies.  The kind of assessment centre/induction days places which I don’t think really suit me.  When I told my friends that I had secured an unpaid Internship a portion thought I was mad – some people doing year placements are on quite lucrative salaries – and others I know are receiving £3,000 or so for a summer of work.

I’m glad to be doing something productive at summer.  Though this makes me think I should have done something last summer too!