Hi! My name is Dara Baren, and I am a senior at Chapman University (class of 2023) majoring in Communication Studies with minors in Spanish and English. This past semester, I completed a marketing and e-commerce internship at P.J. Salvage, a luxury pajama and loungewear apparel company.

While looking for fall internships within marketing and communications, I found this position on Handshake and had an interview with Maia Anderson, the VP of International Marketing at P.J. Salvage. Maia was my supervisor and served as a great mentor to me throughout my time at the company, and was open to answering my questions and teaching me new marketing concepts. I was interested in applying for this internship because I had minimal previous experience in marketing and knew that this was a popular field that is encouraged for School of Communication students to venture into. It turned out to be an amazing experience that taught me about e-commerce, advertising, SEO, copywriting, and more.

My main responsibilities as an intern were to assist in meeting calendar deadlines for product SEO copy, which meant writing creative and informative titles and descriptions for various upcoming products. I interned just before the holiday season, so this was a very exciting time for the company, with new products launching weekly. In addition, I created paid digital media ads such as Instagram carousels and stories, helped with props on a holiday studio photo shoot, organized inventory from the warehouse, and observed my supervisor’s marketing team meetings. These were all applicable skills for future marketing or communication internships and careers. Something that was helpful for me was using previous skills and knowledge that I had in video editing and design to work on these projects because it allowed room for feedback instead of having to learn or teach myself from scratch. Then, I added any needed revisions and submitted the social media assets to be posted. This was very exciting because I knew that something I had created first-hand would be posted on P.J. Salvage’s social media and used to market their new holiday projects. I was even able to see products go from the photoshoot to the graphic design stage to the final marketing advertisement.

My internship at P.J. Salvage was a great opportunity for me to dip my toes into the world of marketing and e-commerce. I learned a lot from my supervisor and the team, and recommend having any internship because it exposes you to a new workplace and how it functions. This experience opened my eyes to a career in marketing and taught me so much about this field.