College and Career Connections:
This internship really helped me prepare for college through the internship project that I completed. I designed the project specifically to help me prepare for the more analytical side of my career and major. Through completing this I interviewed my mentor several times and came out of this project having done a lot of good research and having learned a lot about the industry and marketing. In terms of next steps I would say going to college is the biggest one right now. A lot of what companies are looking for right now in employees in background experience in marketing and coming at a job with a degree in marketing I think will really help me career wise, as well as being more confident in my work and experience. I am really glad I got the chance to learn about the industry first hand through this internship because without it I think that I would be approaching my major with little knowledge and I would be overwhelmed. Now that I have experience, I'm hoping that the transition to college will be easier. Through these internship opportunities I have gained a lot of experience in direct business to consumer marketing which is a field I hope to work in in the future. Though I will be working more indirectly, I hope that I can bring this experience into my career and help to advertise more personally rather than indirectly, appealing to the consumer.
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Classmate Interviews:
These are a couple of my classmate's responses to the questions we had for this assignment. These are quotes as we did this over text. - The who, what , where, why of your internship: Karley: "Working at Wasatch Property Management with their marketing team to give suggestions for improvement when they launch their new website." Maddy T: "I interned at Center for Children at Cal State San Marcos. My mentor is Ms. Letisia Ford and she is the Center Director. I helped supervise children ages 12 months to 4 years old and helped the teachers with lessons. I choose to intern there because I wanted to see what it was like working with younger kids." Travis: "Who: David Ortiz, What: Star Wars Shadow of the Empire, Where: Temecula, Why: I like making costumes" Matthew E: "Oceanside, Oceanside Public Library. Public service, creating a community space that’s unique. Updating catalogue, programs and classes, getting kids into different activities like art, science, history, etc. They want to bring the community together and make the place more than a library. Intends on helping people: Providing lunches to kids, access to computers, giving free books once they are out of the catalogue. The librarians are keeping track of everything going on and making sure that the library is good." - What is your internship project? Karley: "Creating a presentation that explains what makes a good web presence as well as collecting pieces from several mini projects to help the team such finding rogue Facebook accounts that need to be reported." Maddy T: "My internship project was making labels that corresponded to items in classroom in Japanese. The classroom had labels in English and Spanish around the classroom and I thought it would be good to add on to that. I wrote them in hiragana (Japanese characters) and Romaji (English characters to show pronunciations)." Travis: "My internship was to make three drafts of the main character’s chest plate." Matthew E: Matthew is doing multiple projects because there are a lot of different things to work on. He sorts books, reorganizes shelves, and organizes things for events like bringing out unpopular books and replacing them with new ones as well as engaging the community on politics and bringing awareness to unregistered voters. - What are you enjoying about your internship? Karley: "I really like the freedom to work on whatever with no certain designated period of time. Like how at school, we have a certain two hours for math but here I could work on it whenever works best for me." Maddy T: "I’m enjoying working with the kids. They are really cute and sweet and they say a lot of funny things." Travis: "I enjoyed that I was able to make costumes out of new materials." Matthew E: "They put in a lot of effort in so that the community can thrive. They base their programs off of books and they try to extend that to other businesses to bring the community together. Often partnering with book’s businesses to promote." - What are you finding frustrating about your internship? Karley: "Can be really quiet but otherwise I really like it." Maddy T: "There are frustrating things such as dealing with kids crying, and kids sneezing and drooling on you." Travis: "What I found frustrating was the steep learning curve with craft foam." Matthew E: Nothing to note. - What is something new you have learned at your intersnship? Karley: "I find business and the aspects that I have exposed to a lot more interesting than I thought I would." Maddy T: "I learned about how to deal with conflict involving children. You have to think creatively and learn how to distract them with other things to keep them from fighting." Travis: "Something new I learned was how ... to use craft foam." Matthew E: "... didn’t realize how much libraries do, he didn’t know that the library has a separate library called the 'Friend’s Libraries' for books that aren’t in the catalogue anymore and sell the books for cheap. All the money goes back to the library." - If you were recommending your internship to an HTHNC Junior, what would you share about this internship? Karley: "It’s very relaxed and everyone in the office is super nice and chill. It’s not a crazy internship where you are running around constantly. It’s a good mix of hanging out with cool people, learning, and getting things done." Maddy T: "If I were recommending this, I’d say its a really fulfilling experience and you can help make a kids day better by playing with them and teaching them how to do everyday tasks." Travis: He says it's a good idea of what jobs in the real world are like. Matthew E: "You are treated with a lot of respect in this internship. Interns are treated exactly like staff and they get badges like staff. Even volunteers don’t get badges. This internship always gives out free books ... They will allow interns to work on any project you can think of. They are super flexible with your ideas. They have free food by the back table, if anyone has free food, they put it by the back table for anyone to eat. This internship will never bore you and time goes by fast. The satisfaction of the work and the kids, parents being happy. Being a part of a new experience you have never been before. The satisfaction factor is a big selling point of this internship." My Internship Project:
Final Product The title of my final project was, "Business Tactics and Marketing Strategies in The Comic Industry." I chose to do my project on this because I wanted to do something more research-based, a topic that I think I need to work on for my intended major in college. This project ended up being really helpful in terms of the information that I learned along the way. Most of it is covered in my final product, but I ended up researching and learning a lot about helpful marketing and business tactics that I will be able to use in my future career. Considering I want to go into marketing specifically in the comic industry, I figured that this was the perfect internship to learn these things. The reason why I wanted to do this research in a small business to consumer setting was because I wanted to see customer service and marketing directly to customers firsthand instead of assuming to know the client base. Because I will end up going into marketing at a more corporate level, I wanted to experience marketing on a personal level in order to understand the clientele and to bring that experience with me into my future career. Unfortunately at a more corporate level marketing is less personal and more based on data due to surveys on what the people want. I hope to change that based off what I have learned through Knowhere and through my mentor. Part 1:
Part 2:
What are your strengths? I think that my strengths in this environment are staying organized and getting tasks done fast. A lot of the work I do for the business is based around organization and because I’ve done a lot of the same things before, it’s easier for me to get things done in a shorter amount of time. What do you enjoy most about your work? What I enjoy most is definitely being surrounded with something I like to do in my spare time; reading comics. I love being around people who appreciate it as much as I do and it’s wonderful to be able to be a part of a business like this one. What do you dislike about your work experience? (This doesn’t necessarily mean you dislike your work; however, maybe you are learning that you prefer to be active or like office work. We want you to identify types of work that you enjoy with the hope that this helps you identify jobs that may be a strong fit for you.) I really enjoy an active work environment and right now I feel a little inactive. I love where I work but I’ve learned that I need to speak up a little more if I want to do something a little more involved, rather than the routine of sorting comics and cards. What areas of your work do you want to continue to improve? Something that I think I need to improve on is taking more action and speaking up more when it comes to working on my project. I’ve already gotten a lot of good information and written it down for my project, so I have already made some progress. However, I would love to work on it in the internship more than I am currently.
My Internship Project:
Describe your internship project in detail. Include the following:
Part One: Mentor Interview (quoted)
How did you acquire the skills you need for your job? Through school? On the job? "While I'll never discount the education of school, because all knowledge will eventually help you and I can't begin to list the countless time some otherwise seemingly random fact I picked up in College or Highschool allowed me to make a wise business choice or sell a product, most of this job was learned on the job. A lot of what I do is really socializing and picking up key information to apply to decisions in this industry from that socialization within the industry. To do this job well you pretty much have to do this job and learn from your mistakes." What does it take to be successful in this organization? "I truly believe socialization is key. You talk with publishers and creators to learn about new project, how good they may be, and your make business decisions such as orders and events based on how you assess that information. Then you socialize with customers to find out what they like and want so you can have it on your shelves for them to purchase. That is really the key of it all, because statistics, your interests, or what others shops are doing don't work like a cookie cutter Starbucks store front. Each shop in this rather small industry has a surprisingly unique community and you need to cater to those customers and potential customers with what you know and they want." How important is getting along with other people in your career? "Incredibly. Once again, socialization is key. And if comic/gaming creators or publishers like you? They'll give you more information, better deals, greater access to distribution, and all things you'll need to move forward or make more contacts. On the consumer end it is very key. People don't want to shop at a place where the employees aren't nice or interactive. If they wanted that? They'd stay at home and shop on Amazon. So sometimes, no matter how bad your day is going, you have to put on your upbeat retail or socializing personality and act like the world is wonderful and all you want to do is help everyone around you." Is there anything else you’d like to add or share about your current job or career path? "There is an old adage of 'It's not what you know, but who you know'. It's not wrong, and it is surprisingly more important than you'd think. But the key to it is who you know and what you CAN know by learning from them. Socializing is the key of this industry, and many others, so your network and make connections so that you can always be informed with your finger on the pulse of what is happening. In such a small industry/community that is somehow responsible for billions of dollars annually, you cannot upset the wrong people, and those that survive will always be the ones making the right deals with the right people." Part Two: Internship Journal What questions do you have about your internship? There are a couple of things that I would still love to learn about the industry. I have already learned a lot but would like to sit down with my mentor to get a better idea of the industry. My project focuses more on the business and logistical aspect, how these companies become successful, and I would like to explore that topic a little more. Has anything happened that's worth telling us about? Something that I learned about recently was their system of selling back the comics that they couldn’t sell. My mentor and a couple other comic store owners got together and confronted the distributing companies for the comics. They told the distributors that if they bought back the comics that they couldn’t sell that they would order more initially, taking a greater risk on their part but also getting back a portion of the money that they paid to get the comics. It benefited both sides and now they buy a larger amount and only sell back the ones that are leftover for a fair amount. What new skills are you developing (or will you need to develop) for this internship? I’m hoping to learn a lot about running a business and the logistical/tactical side of things. Since I’m going into marketing in college I would love to learn more about how things are run and what tactics they use to get there. More specifically, what has worked for them marketing and business-wise and what hasn’t; what they have seen in other successful companies and maybe used a similar tactic themselves. How would you compare your experience thus far to what you experienced last year? One of the main differences between this year and last years internship is my project. I wanted to look at a different side of the industry and look at it on a larger scale. Rather than last year when I looked at the smaller side of the industry, how specifically my mentors business worked. This year I plan on studying his business along with tactics he uses that have worked and ones that haven’t, studying the success of business tactics within these companies. First Impressions:
What strikes you most about your workplace? What I noticed the most when walking into my internship was the community that it had. My mentor's friends come in and help bag and board the comics on the stocking day (Tuesday). This is often the busiest day of the week because we get new shipments in and a lot of new merchandise so it's a lot easier with the extra help. The store doesn't open until 4:00 on this day because there's so much to do. Even though we do open later, we have a lot of customers come in because they know that there will be new merchandise in the store and new comics. What strikes you most about your colleagues? I would say their dedication to the job. They all love being there and it shows through how hard they work to get everything in order. Organization is one of the most important factors in running a comic shop and it takes a lot of people to keep it afloat. They dedicate their free time to this job because they genuinely enjoy being there and being surrounded by the comics. What strikes you the most about the job you're doing? What strikes me most is the amount it contributes. I started off pretty easy the first day organizing the graphic novels, but after I finished I felt very accomplished in my work. My goal was to make as much room on the shelves as I could and fit more books in because the stacks were a bit cluttered. Though it took a little while to make sure it was all in order, I felt confident in the work that I had done, plus it was a lot of fun seeing comics that I wrote down as something for me to buy later on. What are you looking forward to during your internship? I am looking forward to doing a lot more on the register and learning from my mentor about business tactics. My project is based around the success in popular comic industries and how they achieve this success in such a thriving industry. Though I focusing more on their process and what marketing tactics they used to get there. I am looking forward to starting this research and working more at the register to see consumer habits firsthand. What wonderings do you have about your role and/or your workplace? One of the things I am curious about are the tactics that they choose to use. I know that my mentor knows a lot about the industry and I assume he uses a lot of the same tactics as bigger companies. I'm really curious to see how he advertises and what he thinks the shop's biggest attraction is. |
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February 2020
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