My name is Hope Butler and from June till August 2016 I conducted an eight week marketing and social media internship with Red Box Consultancy Services Ltd. and the University of York

The opportunity to take part in an eight-week internship with Red Box came to me through my university’s career office at the University of York. Teaming up with small local businesses, the careers team offered students a chance to gain some valuable experience, and the local businesses a chance to help these students learn whilst also gaining whatever skills they had to offer. Wanting to work in the marketing and publishing world, but having dedicated the majority of my life to my studies, I was one of those students in desperate need of work experience. Luckily for me, I made it through to the interview stages with Red Box, and after an hour or so I had managed to gain a summer internship.

Starting off at Red Box was nerve wracking. Not only was I someone who had never had a proper job, but I was also still a bit confused as to what Red Box actually did. Catering and facilities management consultancy was something that I had never come across in all my twenty years, but I guess as a history student, why would I have? But once I had started researching into Red Box and their work, I became more and more interested in their industry, and became aware of an industry for things that I hadn’t ever really given much thought to. The more and more I found out about Red Box and their work, the more interested I became in how things operated, and I eventually began to understand a little bit of what really goes into catering and facilities management consultancy.

Luckily for me, although I wanted to know more about the business, and what Kayte, Neil and Tom did, it wasn’t essential to my job. I was to be their marketing and social media intern, looking at all aspects of their online presence, and finding ways to improve their rankings on search engines and to help promote Red Box to a wider audience.

Starting on the 20^th June, I found that I adapted quicker to an office working environment than I first thought. As a history student, the majority of my time is spent reading alone, and I found that even though I am shy, I was able to enjoy working in the office with the others, chatting about work and other such things. I also found the work I was doing very interesting in itself, and started to implement new keywords to their website, order and update their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and create a new Google My Business page to help get the Red Box name out there. Once I’d added the keywords to the website, started posting articles on their company “News & Advice” section, and started to Tweet I found that I enjoyed evaluating the statistics each week, and seeing what was working well and what needed improving. I also looked at improving the overall asetics of the website, adding a new banner image on the website's About Us page, and photoshopping the laptop red to make sure that it fit in with the companie's overall theme.

However, what I enjoyed most was getting to know Neil, Kayte and Tom, and they all created a welcoming and pleasant environment to work in. They even accepted and got used to my bizarre tea preferences! Hornbeam Park was a lovely environment to work in, and I found everyone welcoming and friendly, regardless of if I had met them before or not.

Being an incredible shy person I wanted to continually push myself into such roles while working at Red Box, and both Kayte, Neil and Tom created opportunities for me to do this, from client meetings to presentation opportunities. Despite my role being solely concerned with their marketing and social media, Red Box never failed in answering my questions about their work, and along with a client meeting I feel that they went that extra mile to help me better understand what I was actually marketing!

Although I found some aspects of the marketing hard, along with the commuting aspect of my day, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Red Box, and feel I have learnt a lot from them. Not only did a gain a greater knowledge of marketing and social media, but also of catering and facilities management consultancy as a whole. I learnt how to better work in a team, explain and communicate my thoughts more eloquently and what it was actually like to work a 9 to 5 job. Conducting this internship with both Red Box and the University of York gave me valuable experience within a field that I am interested in, but more importantly taught me that I am much more capable of working in a team and with people than I thought, and gave me a first taste of what my life may be like come my graduation in 2017.

To see Red Box’s updated Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages, and some of the work that I implemented, please click on the links below:

• LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/red-box-consultancy-services-limited
• Twitter- https://twitter.com/RedBoxcs
• Google My Business- https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113312320949619665542/113312320949619665542/posts