How time flies - Laika from an intern’s perspective

Hi Space Dogs enthusiasts down there - on that beautiful blue marble. Have you been wondering what an intern at Laika does? What some of the tasks are? Or how one experiences the spaceship in general? This is exactly what I will tell you. But first, let me introduce myself. 

My name is Moby and I joined the Laika spaceship about two months ago, and I will leave at the beginning of June. While I currently live in “Dickes B” (aka Berlin), I’m from a little town in the Netherlands called Zwolle. I study International Business at the Hogeschool Utrecht. This is the second year of my four-year bachelor's program and I have taken a keen interest in marketing, entrepreneurship and start-ups. My goal in Berlin is to work on my personal and professional development. I’m doing this through classes in marketing, productivity and, of course, my internship at Laika. In my spare time, I like to go to the gym and hang out with friends. In addition, I’m currently learning how to play the piano and the guitar. But learning about my leisure activities is not why you are reading this post. Right? Let’s dive into my experience at the spaceship called Laika.

From the first day up until now, my experience with the people here has been enjoyable and educational. Of course, some days more than others, but I have not left the office with the feeling of disappointment or without having learned something. My first few weeks at Laika were mostly onboarding. I had never worked in PR or communications before, so the onboarding process gave me the basic knowledge I needed to continue being a productive member of the pack. There are a few steps in the onboarding process that really helped me understand more about the business of PR. One of those steps was the PR basics course given by the top dog, Ela herself. Because I have a background in business and not in communications, I didn’t know a lot of the terms used around the office, and the course gave me more clarity. In general, I feel like my onboarding has been closely guided with lots of opportunities to ask the most basic - and to me frankly stupid sounding - questions. It has been made very clear to me that stupid questions do not exist and that interns are here to learn.

In the last two months, I have been doing a mixed bunch of tasks to help with the communications services we offer to our clients and with internal operations. What I have mostly done in these two months (and what I am still doing) in regard to the client-side of Laika is making media lists, journalist research for all kinds of purposes, writing product and company pitches - and sending them out to journalists, and media monitoring for some of our bigger clients. These tasks have been accompanied by feedback around every corner, for which I am very grateful for, and from which I have learned a lot. There is a degree of responsibility involved with these tasks, but that is personally something that motivates me to deliver better quality work. 

With tasks related to internal operation - I primarily mean internal content creation for social media and writing blog posts for the website, what I really enjoy about these tasks is the creative freedom I get in writing and creating the content. This also goes hand in hand with feedback from the Space Dogs, who possess decades of communications expertise. In addition to the internal content creation, I have been helping with improving our SEO. This is just something that I started with recently, but it’s something I am interested in. I think it’s great that I can work on projects that I feel connected to. This is also something that relates to client work, because we have a variety of clients that we support, who operate in numerous sectors, and it’s always better to work with clients whom you feel personally interested in. I think this creates more motivation and a proactive approach toward tasks.

Besides gaining expertise through frequently changing tasks, the Space Dogs who make up the pack have been treating me as a colleague instead of as an assistant - asking for my opinion on internal and client matters. I noticed very quickly after I joined Laika, how close-knitted the Laika crew was, through the informality, humor, and sharing of personal experiences in the team meetings and at the office. The team cares about each other on a personal level and supports each other with work-related and personal problems. 

Of course, not every intern at Laika has the same experiences or works on the same projects as I do, but I can confidently say that my experience at Laika has been good for my personal and professional development and has given me ideas about what I want to do in the future. I have gained a new kind of respect for the Space Dogs that work at Laika and I have never met a crew this passionate and determined towards their mission. I’m looking forward to seeing the development of the agency and am truly sad that I will leave the team in a few weeks.