My name is Yujia and I'm currently a senior at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University. I've had the chance to be part of the Guerrilla Marketing Society since the second semester of my freshman year. The skills and experiences I've gained through GMS has been immensely helpful in both my academic pursuits and my professional ones. It helped me overcome my fear of presenting and public speaking and established my desire to pursue a career in marketing.
This past spring semester, I studied abroad in Padua, Italy, to a smaller city half an hour away from the famous Venice. As cliche as it sounds, it was a life-changing experience. Apart from the new cultural encounters, I was introduced to an international workplace. I had an internship at a marketing consulting firm in the city that was also my first internship in this field.
I had never had an experience like this and I wasn't sure what to expect. Was I going to learn what I knew and learned in a market I knew very little about? Would I be able to do meaningful work? How can I take what I learn in this country and apply it back to my career back in Boston?
Small but global
I entered the workplace expecting to work with Italian companies making Italian products for the Italian market. The office only consisted of 5 people, including me. It wasn't a large operation. However, I actually entered a company with clients that were from other countries such as China, and clients that had a very international presence. It matched the current evolution of marketing. Everything's global marketing needs to be able to market wherever the client is and wants to be.
Not only was the company very global, it was also very personable. Despite having clients based all over the world, they constantly had clients like into the office. We would all go get coffee in true Italian fashion and get to know each other before any business was conducted.
Never a dull moment
You constantly have to be learning. My first day started with learning about the Italian market and trying to figure out what exactly a tote bag is. The day later turned to building a website for a tour guide in Venice. Throughout my few months, I worked on everything from optometry devices to Italian mattresses.
For someone like me who can get bored sometimes with assignments, this type of job where you are constantly updated with the market and your competitors is pretty much any industry can be very exciting.
GMS and my internship
During my interview, the owner of the firm mentioned my experience at GMS. She was excited and intrigued about my knowledge of marketing and it wasn't something she had like across before. She wanted me to present to her employees and to teach them more about the marketing techniques I know and how they can apply it to the clients they work with.
Not only did my experience with GMS help me impress during my interview, but I also got to introduce it to an actual marketing agency!
This was a very exciting opportunity to have and I’d love to talk more about it with you guys if you’re interested! Just hit me up at a future meeting or add me on LinkedIn!
Comments