I’ll miss our regular Monday morning check-ins, they are the best way to start our sprints for the week! Source: Doyobi
You must be wondering. WHAT does a marketing intern at Doyobi do? Well, if you stick around long enough, I might just tell you…
Oftentimes when applying for internships, it can be extremely difficult to predict what the actual job will look like. Will I be the coffee or errand boy? Am I going to work overtime and beyond what I initially expected? Or will every day be 2-hour lunch breaks and playing at the office ping pong table.
STOP it. If you are coming into Doyobi with all of these questions, I suggest you reevaluate your mindset. Your internship here will (for the most part) be whatever you want it to look like. It’s up to you to make your time worthwhile.
You’re not just limited to the job description
For myself, I came in wanting to learn and grow as much as possible, which I dare say I did quite a lot of. Within the first couple of days, I learned how to use Excel, like PROPERLY (don’t lie to yourself). I also did my first marketing copy, created my first content pipeline, ideated a couple of social media ad campaigns, curated a set of house-style guidelines on top of managing a half-dozen freelance writers.
Going beyond my title – Marketing Intern – I also got to explore many other new domains. I sourced for and sat in on teacher interviews (consumer research), I helped manage the hiring processes for new positions (human resources), and I even got to do a little community building (Suraj knows what I’m talking about).
I guess the long story short is that, at Doyobi, you’re not limited to what the job description says. Expect to be adaptable and lean into the discomfort that comes with learning new things. But at the end of the day, if I take anything away from this internship, it’ll be a whole host of new acronyms: CTR, CPA, CPC, AAR and OKR!
You’re going to have to be independent
But all of this doesn’t just mean that your internship will be roses and butterflies. I was lucky to have my Boss (Greg, aka. Head of Commercial) relatively free during the first few weeks of my internship. But as he got busier after my onboarding, there was much less handholding for me to rely on.
At Doyobi, you’ll need to be independent and push yourself. Whilst my primary job revolved around creating and managing content for the company blog, this was not enough to keep me busy the whole day. This meant that if I really wanted to grow here, I had to find ways to make myself useful.
This might seem initially daunting, but hey, it’s ok to start small. I started with being the PowerPoint boy for our weekly Monday team meetings. I took notes and also asked a lot of stupid questions. Heck, if it weren’t WFH the whole internship, I wouldn’t have minded going on a few coffee runs to get my 10K steps in.
At Doyobi, nobody is going to tell you what you should do. Get used to, as our CEO John would say, finding your own North Star. For myself, I made myself useful by taking on additional projects like this: the Intern write-up. It’s up to you to make meaning of your time here and contribute to the company in whatever way you feel most passionate about.
Get used to working in teams
This piece is getting a bit too long now; maybe I’m rambling (sorry Nicole, I’ll keep this under 600 words). Speaking of Nicole (our #1 marketing executive), you should get used to working in teams. Though I missed out a bit on that team spirit staring at my computer screen the whole day, I do not doubt that Doyobi works so well because of its fantastic team spirit.
At any startup, but particularly in an Ed-tech startup like ours, teamwork is essential. Across all our departments – from Product to Commercial, Tech to Founders – without some form of cross-communication and mutual alignment of priorities, I don’t think we would be as effective as we are.
No doubt, there will always be room for improvement and growth at Doyobi. However, through just these last few months that I was with this team, I have seen how passionate and driven every single one of my colleagues has been.
To wrap it up
To everyone at Doyobi, I can’t thank you enough for your guidance, care and professionalism. It was truly inspiring to get to work with you for these past few months, albeit from the comfort of home. I’d like to give a special shoutout: Nicole, Suraj, Ry-Ann and Boon Peng (and Yun Shan too) for working alongside me and showing me what Doyobi is all about. Most importantly, Greg thank you for giving me the opportunity to make my mark here and sorry about that time I was late for Monday check-in...oops :)
So if you’re a prospective intern or even an employee at Doyobi, I hope this little article has been helpful to you. Never would I have expected myself to be working in education and much less tech, but the decision to reach out and apply here was one that I will never regret.
