I met Emily when I decided that I wanted to work in publishing, rather than be stuck in grad school for teaching. She was, at the time, the social media guru at Sterling Publishing, and spoke to the group of undergrads and I about NY Creative Interns. I thought it sounded cool, but at the time, I didn’t think much about it when I signed up for the weekly newsletter.

Actively Seeking

As the months ticked by, I did get a job in publishing, working part time while I raced my bike and did some freelance writing. I’ve never liked the idea of having just one job, so I kept scrolling through the newsletters week after week, looking for jobs that would test my social media and writing skills while lengthening my ever-growing resume.

In April, an internship with Mullin & Associates was posted, looking for someone with social media experience. As it turned out, despite the buttoned-up corporate look of Mullin’s staff, I was exactly what they were looking for. (Though, as the story goes, when my “creative-looking” outfit, hair, tattoos and I walked into the office, the receptionist skittered back to the President’s office to “warn” him about my appearance. He laughed, and said, “don’t you think I already knew that?”) I walked into the interview with a write-up of how I would start creating them a social media presence, and how I would start coaching their clients and staff on using social media to their advantage. I was hired.

Landing a Position

So, despite looking more creative than corporate, I set to work for them as a paid intern. We negotiated this after some time, it was billed as unpaid at first.

I designed their social media efforts, as well as created webinars and coached clients. The video clip here is part of the webinar that I filmed for them, since I finished my internship in September but stayed on as a freelance consultant. When I left, I had developed presentations, webinars, and a social media presence that are still being used now, so I feel like I certainly left my mark on their company.

nyc interns clip from Molly Hurford on Vimeo.

Learning from the Experience

NY Creative Interns has been awesome, and the two things I can’t emphasize enough are that:

1. Even a boring-sounding, corporate internship can have plenty of room for a creative type. You just have to – ahem- be creative about it. And appearances can be deceiving: that receptionist and I became great friends, and the CEO of the company and I had a whole lot more in common than we thought. And yes, we did once waste an hour of an afternoon talking about tattoos.
2. Internships are what you make of them. If I had just done what my boss wanted me to do, I wouldn’t have done half of what I did for the company, and wouldn’t have the awesome resume builder to show for it.

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