This month, we’re celebrating Inspiring Intern Sami, who stood out to our Employability Points Team for his enthusiasm and dedication to undertaking skill developing co-curricular activities. Sami gained his internship at Reflect Digital through our Employability Points scheme. Hear from Sami:
“I’m Sami Bakaitis and I’m a final year student studying Classics with Italian. I love to travel to unique places and make the most of my time there, such as farming on a volcano in Sicily. Fun fact, I traversed through the Vietnamese jungle at the age of 16! My interests change frequently but I always enjoy going for a run so I can clear my head and keep fit.”
Tell us about your time at Reflect Digital.
“After a skills workshop with Becky Simms, I learnt that the Employability Points scheme was offering students with enough employability points the opportunity to apply for an internship at her company Reflect Digital. As a result, I joined as many sessions that applied to me and undertook extra-curricular activities that would get me extra points, such as starting a blog or updating my LinkedIn profile. Many points later, I was finally able to apply for the internship, ace the interview, and begin my journey with Reflect Digital!
The internship was intense but in the best way possible. The team at Reflect are considerate and always made sure that I was happy with the work I had been assigned. Even though I worked primarily on SEO, I was exposed to many other sectors such as PPC and social media advertising.
From the very first day I was immersed in a transparent workplace that felt relaxed yet always moving. My work consisted of learning the ins and outs of SEO through thorough research and quizzing my colleagues. After a week, I was set copywriting tasks and keyword research for clients. Copywriting involved following a detailed brief and writing a piece of content for the client while following SEO guidelines to help the article rank well. Although there was a numerous amount of copywriting tasks, I did enjoy writing them as the topics were wildly different such as writing content on how often you should replace your mattress to the benefits of cloud computing!
I was sad to go at the end of the internship as I still have one more year to finish at university, but it did give me a lot of confidence in my future career path and skills which I transferred into my uni presentations and assignment research methods.”
What advice would you give to other students?
“Advice I would give to other students is that having a routine is paramount if you want to achieve your goals as it creates free time to be more productive. Dedicating meaningful time to learning a new skill is the best way to explore new career paths. I highly recommend taking an online course to get a surface understanding of the subject and seeing if it is something that you might enjoy. Moreover, mindfulness is a great way to recentre yourself if you keep feeling stressed from all the work. I joined the Mindfulness society here at Kent during lockdown in 2021 and it was the best decision ever!”
What are your plans for the next year?
“I will be taking an exciting role at Reflect Digital in early April as a PPC Analyst. This varying job will push me to explore new areas of digital marketing and learn a range of useful skills. One of my goals for the future is to start my own digital marketing company, and I believe that this role will help me work towards this goal.”