Early last week I happened to be in Lauren’s office when she received a phone call—it was someone calling the references of a TalentEgg intern and writer for a very cool position on the web team of one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies.
By Thursday, she had been offered the role and Lauren forwarded me an email exchange between them about the opportunity. This was at the bottom of the chain, written by the intern:
I had an interview last week with [CompanyX] for the role of marketing specialist working for the [web] team. My interview went really well and he really liked hearing about the projects you’ve given me at TalentEgg. My experience at TalentEgg related perfectly to the position at [CompanyX].
It made me smile and I realized that, although TalentEgg is only a little over two years old, many of our interns, writers and assistant editors have already gone on to some amazing roles, including a marketing internship with a major bank, an editorial internship at The Walrus (one of the most prestigious and competitive internships in Canada!), and web editor of Wine Access magazine.
We’ve always been a very small core team supported by a group of smart, hard-working interns—some full-time, others part-time; some paid, others unpaid.
As someone who started at the company as an intern during its first summer more than two years ago, I know how valuable an internship at TalentEgg can be.
As long as you do the work that needs to be done, you can also get any experience you want.
You can experiment on new projects. You can be exposed to the work of each department. You get to work with students as well as with some of Canada’s biggest brands.
And although we sometimes struggle as young, inexperienced managers, we try to provide the best experience possible by keeping communication lines open. Seeing success stories like this one, where an intern was able to transfer her skills and experience to the next step in her career, makes it even more rewarding to work here (and it makes it a bit easier to navigate the challenges of being a young manager).
Plus, when we say students and recent grads should take on internships to help them launch their careers, we can actually back up that statement with solid examples from our own team!!
If you want to know more about launching your career through internships, check out these articles we’ve published on our Career Incubator:
- How to get your dream job: Make the most of your internship by Marisa Baratta (now interning at SweetSpot.ca!)
- Internships are the way to get your foot in the entertainment industry’s door by Kate Morawetz, who did just that and now works in a coveted role at MTV Canada
- If you put in the effort, someone will notice by Cassandra Jowett (me!), an article that features an “archive photo” from TalentEgg’s first summer
Hello! My name is Jelena and I’m a new member of the TalentEgg team – the market research intern.
“When I was tiny, I had BIG dreams. I wanted to be everything ranging from a super celebrity to Missy Elliot’s backup dancer to a graffiti artist to an Olympic athlete. Anything that meant I could get paid for having fun went on my list of future endeavours.”
“I wanted to be everything when I was little, from a singer to an actress to an interior decorator at one point. But I guess my answer would have to be that I always wanted to be a writer because I was always making up little stories about my friends and showing them to my parents. I was always writing!”
“I wanted to be a ghost hunter. In second grade, I spent recesses with my best friend recording “clues” about the “ghosts” in a little black book. Why? I blame it on reading too much Nancy Drew and R.L. Stine while I was young and impressionable.”
“I wanted to be a veterinarian more than anything. I love every kind of animal and at the tender age of five I was unaware of the rather devastating aspects of fulfilling this dream. Once I found out, I quickly decided I would rather be an astronaut – a much less stressful career choice.”
“Either a veterinarian—because I loved animals!—or an astronaut, because I wanted to fly a spaceship and explore the galaxy (with my dog in tow, of course!). Though I became neither, I still continue to dream vicariously through trips to the zoo and tons of Star Trek reruns.”
“My first notable ambition, circa age four, was to be an Ice Cream Lady. My best friend and I planned to own the local Dairy Queen. A lifetime of blizzards and dilly bars was all the payment we required (apparently).”
“I wanted to be a circus acrobat because I was always jumping around and playing on my trampoline. I loved going to gymnastics class and imagined by life as a future circus performer, travelling the world on a trapeze.”
“I always wanted to be a teacher. As a child, I was lucky to have very nurturing and influential instructors and I wanted very much to be able to eventually provide the same guidance, love and passion for learning that I so fortunately received.”
“I wanted to be a paleontologist, because I loved dinosaurs and always wanted to learn more about how they lived, the different species, etc. I wanted to like Robert Bakker; I thought his beard was awesome. I also knew I was a girl and that growing a beard like his wasn’t possible, though.”
“I wanted to be an artist. I loved spending my time drawing. When I was six, as soon as I could write, I wrote and illustrated my first book, in French, about a girl who lost control of her imagination. That was my earliest inclination at wanting to be a writer, which eventually took over.”