The best internship in the world: 12 weeks as a panda

Sep 22, 2014 5:43:16 PM

It’s been 12 weeks of engaging and new experiences, but my internship at cranberry panda has come to an end. To go from recruitment novice to being given my own roles to work on just highlights the opportunity for growth that has been provided through the APSCo internship programme.

I suppose you could I say I stumbled into a recruitment internship; first year internships are quite scarce and I had made my mind up early on that investment banking wasn’t for me so I broadened my horizons to see what piqued my interest. Luckily for me, I landed in recruitment.

When I first started at the end of June, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. Sure, the office was quirky and everyone seemed cool, but I still had some reservations that I’d spend the summer making cold call after cold call, and being delegated all the tedious tasks.

I’m glad to say though, that these reservations couldn’t be more wrong and I’ve not just learnt the ins and outs of recruitments, but I’ve also gained a whole host of transferable skills to take with me moving forward.

Everyone has been so helpful (special thanks to Jon Dixon our gaming & gambling panda) in getting me up to speed and to a point where I could start to make a positive impact on the business and I’m really grateful for all the advice I’ve received during my time here. A lot of this I feel is down to the company culture; at cranberry panda we work together as a team in a constructive to way to help make sure we provide our clients and candidates with the highest service possible. 

It’s not just all work and no play though, and our summer salary survey party gave us all the opportunity to relax and enjoy a drink (or three) as we presented our findings to clients and candidates. This was a really interesting experience for me as it was my first real taste of networking at an event, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know why cranberry panda has such a glowing reputation among the recruitment industry from the viewpoint of our customers.

Overall this experience has been an amazing introduction into the world of recruitment and I can only hope that next year’s APSCo interns are lucky enough to come to cranberry panda and experience exactly how recruitment should be. In fact, I have enjoyed my experience so much that I will be staying on one day a week during my studies for the next few months, as I’m not quite ready to leave just yet!

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