When looking for work, there’s nothing more frustrating than the eternal struggle of needing experience to find work but needing to find work to gain experience. It’s an endless cycle of torture to feel that every job posting you come across is asking so much of you as a graduate – how am I supposed to have 2 years of experience when I don’t even graduate for another year?

The secret is a real-world Internship. 

The experience you’ll gain by working an internship is applicable to so many aspects of your life, as well as your employability. As a student in my final year, I’ve had the absolute pleasure of working with Fuse Agency in a work experience capacity – and  if there’s one thing I could encourage every student to do, it would be to complete an internship before you graduate, and here’s why:

1. You’ll gain valuable experience not offered in university subjects

In my experience, digital marketing is a tricky thing to learn at university. Google Ads and SEO Management are such fast-changing ideas that to create a whole course would take so much time that its content would be irrelevant by the time it’s offered to students. If you want to learn how to plan a Facebook campaign or analyse LinkedIn Advertising data, you’ll need to find a digital team that can teach you. At Fuse, digital marketing manager Ryan has the knowledge and passion for his work that meant I was never short of information to help me get my head around real social media marketing data. 

2. You’ll work with real clients and businesses

By working with real operating businesses, you’ll have the opportunity to see authentic data that results from your work. Rather than theoretical case studies, you have the ability to see a real working business utilising your skills, which is not only very educational but pretty rewarding as well. The real-life experience in an internship even extends the bounds of everyday tasks – if you’re lucky, you’ll get to go out in the field and experience exciting events and industry activities. For myself, this experience came in the form of Cinnabon Australia. I attended the first store opening in Toombul, managed the social media on the day and watched Fuse director Sam in her element. This was an experience that I value above any case study taken on at university.

3. You’ll find your personal specialty

If you’re a student of marketing or communications and have applied for a job or attended an interview, you’ve probably been asked: “What area are you most interested in?” If you’re like me, you probably have absolutely no idea how to answer that question with only university experience. Working at Fuse, as a full-service marketing and PR agency, I was exposed to digital marketing, SEO management, copywriting, account management, and social media management – and I now have the perspective to confidently answer when asked what I’m good at, interested in, and want to learn. 

4. You can absorb the knowledge and experience of your co-workers

If there’s one piece of advice I have for you to make the most of your internship, it would be to take advantage of the people around you. They are highly experienced and will answer almost any question you throw at them.  In an office setting, you’ll see the way in which your area of work collaborates with other departments. Fuse’s senior designer Fraser often took my copywriting and created incredible visuals to suit any client profile, and it was always exciting to see how our work came together for the final product online. 

At university, you don’t typically have two different schools of study working together on assignments; there’s no cross-contamination of study unless you chose to take certain electives. For me, it was important to see all the pieces of the puzzle come together to see where my contribution ended up. 

Marketing professionals are always excited to share their passion and help their interns learn. The team at Fuse always had my back, and I worked my brain like a sponge to soak up as much of their knowledge as I could. When you work under a PR genius like Samantha Brooks, you just can’t let her 20 years of experience go untapped.

5. You can take it to uni

There’s no better feeling than completing an internship over the summer and returning to uni. It’s a feeling of finally unlocking a part of your brain that you couldn’t access before: suddenly, your perspective is completely shifted. Everything you’re learning in class is understood more broadly, and more easily applied to a real-life setting. You’ll find that complex theories and ideas you’re being taught are suddenly much easier to understand, and they’ll be stronger in your memory (this is helpful when it comes to acing a final exam!) because you finally have real-world context. 

Fuse Agency is a fun and innovative place to work – the team is super hardworking and their collective knowledge is phenomenal. My time with Fuse was fulfilling, educational and supremely gratifying. So, if you’re a passionate, dedicated intern who has an interest in digital media and marketing, or graphic design and web development, then this is the perfect opportunity to take your career to the next level.

Check out the Fuse Careers page for more information on their Gun Intern positions!