Because of competition within the job market, earning a degree or certificate isn’t enough now to create significant job opportunities for people; this is especially true within the fast-growing industries of Data Science, Digital Marketing, UI/UX Design, Full Stack Development, and others. In today’s business environment, employers want to hire individuals who have already developed their skills in a real-world setting and understand how to function in the digital marketplace as both a consumer and a potential employee.
The internship-oriented education model utilized by Digifine is an excellent example of how an educational provider can create successful pathways for both students and employers by offering various ways for students to gain real-world experience through internship programs that provide students with access to live industry projects, branded marketing campaigns, and real client assignments.
The next step is to explore why internship opportunities will provide students with better options for job placement, create a foundation upon which they can build a better career path, and increase employability.
1. Real-World Skill Development That Employers Trust
Digifine’s internship programmes help remove this barrier by allowing students to put their learning from the classroom into practice in an actual work environment.
As part of the internship programme, students gain hands-on experience with:
Digital marketing strategies, including SEO, SEM, SMM, email marketing and analytics;
Live campaigns, including how to track the performance of brand campaigns;
Cleaning, modelling, visualising and implementing machine learning on data;
Full-stack development, covering everything from the UI to the backend; and
Working on real UI/UX design projects, conducting user research and prototyping;
Video editing assignments and animating creative content.
This experience allows students to transform from the “learner” stage to the “doer” stage of their careers, which is a priority for employers when they are shortlisting candidates for open positions.
2. Exposure to Real Clients and Industry Practices
Digifine internships are distinguished by their hands-on experiences working with actual businesses and clients while creating tangible products. Students can engage in business-related projects that have a direct impact on the results of the business.
As a few examples:
Students pursuing digital marketing have had the opportunity to launch paid advertising campaigns for various businesses, handle search engine optimization (SEO) for active websites, and track metrics related to ongoing projects through digital analytics.
Students studying data science may have been able to conduct analysis on sets of data provided by partner companies to create predictive models and automate business workflows.
Graphic design and UI/UX students frequently work on projects for products currently in the design phase, for brands being developed, and also for existing brands.
Such real-world experience provides students with an understanding of:
- Deliverable due dates
- Communicating effectively with clients
- Producing professional-quality reports
- Executing a campaign or project
- Resolving issues under adverse conditions
This type of learning is often not included in formal coursework but is critical for success in the workplace.
3. Building a Strong, Job-Ready Portfolio
Portfolios are now more important than resumes for most companies hiring today.
Digifine helps students create professional-level portfolios while completing their internships that contain:
- Case Studies
- Real-Life Campaign Results
- Design Projects
- Dashboards or Data Models
- Real Development Work
- Visuals, Video and Branding Work
When applying for jobs, candidates from Digifine are more impressive to interviewers than those who do not have anything but words on paper; they are able to support their claims with tangible results, making them more credible and attractive candidates for recruiters.
4. Boosting Confidence and Communication Skills
Internships develop not only technical skills but also help students develop confidence and their character. The student also learns:
- How to present their work professionally
- How to communicate with industry professionals
- How to work effectively as part of a team
- How to understand what the client expects of them
- Unsure how to brainstorm and give feedback effectively
Through these methods, students gain the confidence and skills necessary to be able to do well when in an interview for a job. When recruiters are looking for candidates, they will prefer candidates who demonstrate:
- Ability to communicate clearly
- Ability to be proactive
- Ability to follow directions given to them
- Ability to present their ideas
Digifine internships provide students with the tools that they need to be successful at obtaining these critical skills, putting them ahead of other job applicants.
5. Internships Help Students Understand Industry KPIs
Internships are not just about watching; interns play a role in how a company measures and improves key performance indicators (KPIs).
Data Collection & Analysis: Interns assist in creating reports, cleaning spreadsheets or creating visual data visualizations using Excel, Google Sheets, or BI tools (i.e. Tableau, Power BI).
Project Work: Interns will also be assigned projects to measure and improve a specific KPI. For example, an intern would be asked to “help increase our email open rate by 10% using A/B test on the subject lines”.
Ownership: Interns are also responsible for KPIs for very small tasks they will be assigned (like managing a social media account) – follower growth, engagement rate, etc.
6. Students Learn to Use Advanced Tools Under Real Workload Pressure
Learning Rapidly, on an as-needed basis: Employees do not complete a six-week training on Salesforce. Instead, employees use Salesforce to complete a specific task quickly. That’s how learning becomes a learning journey and how people quickly learn new things.
Creating Tool Agility: The intense pressure of the workplace leads to employees learning new tools faster than they would have under normal conditions. For instance, users will learn how to create Pivot Tables in Excel, use advanced formulae such as XLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH, filter/segment data using an analytics tool like Google Analytics and use collaboration tools
Finding Solutions through Resourcefulness: When workers encounter obstacles, they do not have the luxury of waiting for the next office hour. Therefore, through resourcefulness, they are able to:
Use internal wikis and documentation.
Utilise online forums such as Stack Overflow and Google Analytics Help, as well as the Salesforce Trailblazer Community.
Generate clear and precise questions for their colleagues; for example, an employee may ask a fellow worker, “How do I segment my data by region? Is there a report that will do that for me?”
7. Students Get Mentorship From Experienced Industry Experts
Informal Guidance: “Unwritten Guidelines” – A mentor offers an understanding that no written guide can provide. For instance:
How Decisions are Made within an Industry: “Here is how a decision is actually reached.” “Here is what you need to know about working with this particular team.”
How to Progress in Your Career: “If you are interested in moving to position X, then acquire or develop these particular skills.” “When you receive feedback from your supervisor, understand it in this manner.”
Professional Expectations: The subtleties of communication, how to cope with adversity, and how to create and establish a professional network.
8. Students Learn Team Collaboration Through Real Workflows
Professional Presence in Team-Based Environments
Meeting Etiquette: When and how to add value, how you should get yourself ready for a team meeting, and what you should do after a team meeting. Developing a plan for pre-meeting discussions and post-meeting action items.
Giving & Receiving Feedback: Team members take part in peer review, content review, and creative brainstorming sessions. Members develop the ability to provide constructive feedback, i.e. “Have you thought about doing it this way… “as well as how to respond to constructive criticism without getting defensive.
9. Students Experience Real-Time Problem Solving
Interns’ learning experiences occur through an environment and process that allows them to engage in quickly repeating cycles of resolving real-world problems, all while in a collaborative manner (working with a group of people).
Diagnose & Define the Problem: Interns can make use of analytics tools (customer relationship management systems (CRM), customer feedback system and logs) to better identify the specific problem type (actual issue vs. symptom) as well as ascertain the cause of the problem (e.g. was the engagement decrease due to the content, change in algorithms or issues with the links?).
Create A Feedback Loop to Track Correct/Incorrect Actions Taken: The interns will generate a measure for each KPI that was assessed during the testing phase, and they will gather and record this information shortly after the tests are completed (e.g. days to weeks) to provide input to inform future actions.
10. Internships Increase Students’ Adaptability
This is a heightened form of adaptability:
Accepting the Gray Area: They have transitioned from being focused on obtaining the correct answer to figuring out how to proceed in the best manner possible, even when the information they have is imperfect.
Using Failure as Information: When a marketing effort fails, when software stops working, or when an information session does not meet expectations, in a supportive intern environment, this type of information is not considered devastating but rather a tool for accelerating learning. These failures are critical to developing resilience and offsetting the fear of failure, which is essential for innovative thought.
Learning to Self-Correct: They have developed the ability to identify when they are not meeting their objectives, and to change how they go about achieving their goals, without having to rely on someone else to tell them how to do this.
Conclusion
The Digifine internship is designed to provide students with practical, hands-on experience in addition to developing employers with the skills they want and creating the level of confidence within students to secure employment after completion of the internship. In addition to project work, students will be part of campaign teams, as well, and will be able to utilize current tools and software available to companies operating in the digital marketing industry. Through the completion of this internship, students will acquire the competencies desired by employers, will develop their own professional portfolios and will enhance their critical thinking skills. The Digifine internship can close the gap between what students learn in school and what employers are looking for when hiring employees. By providing this type of internship, Digifine is able to assist students in enhancing their employability and assisting students in having successful careers in Digital Marketing and other related fields.
