The pressure was on more than ever.
With the clock winding down on my senior year at Boston University, every day and LinkedIn message counted. Applications and networking felt like throwing things at a wall, just hoping something would stick.
At BU, I studied advertising, and my work experience was mostly in digital marketing and social. While I now know this is naïve, I felt stuck in that path already, because it seemed like jobs were only looking for candidates with relevant work experience.
With every job or internship I applied to, I reached out to as many people from the company as I could (making good use of my LinkedIn premium subscription), and two people from Hoffman generously responded, opening up and telling me about their lives in and outside of work.
After having many coffee chats, I learned some feel like pulling teeth, and some flow easily. My chats with people from Hoffman were thankfully the latter.
I know a conversation is going well when I have not looked at my notes app questions once, and before I know it, it’s been an hour.
Even though I wasn’t yet an intern, they cared about my future.
During the recruitment process, I truly felt seen. There was no waiting for responses or unclear messaging.
Here is where I give a huge shoutout to our HR manager, Carolyn, for thoughtfully guiding me and helping me pivot when the position I originally applied for changed. I truly felt like she had my best interests at heart and wanted to see me succeed.
A few interviews later, I had to choose if I wanted to pursue PR, which was a whole new world, or continue with digital, which I was familiar with.
Every class I took was focused on advertising; every assignment felt like something I might do for the rest of my life, which is not only daunting but, frankly, sounded miserable.
When my parents were in college, they studied Russian literature and European studies, majors you cannot exactly get a job in easily. Now, they are in business and marketing. My aunt switched her career from PR to nursing at 45.
While I was afraid of slightly pivoting within communications at 21, being accepted into Hoffman as a PR intern, something I had never done before, made me realize that I was not stuck anywhere. I had just started.
I can always explore new opportunities. I just had to find the right place that was willing to teach me.
So, I decided to take the leap and continue with PR, and I was really scared.
But Hoffman truly understands the meaning of entry level and internship because they have put in so much time and effort teaching us everything we need to know, so we are truly set up for success.
I am so excited to continue learning, growing and working as an intern at Hoffman. Cheers to being open to new opportunities and facing fears!
