Message from my future boss

My name is Casey Cox. I am a senior planning to graduate in the spring of 2025. I am a communication major and a sociology minor at Chapman University. This semester, I interned at a startup travel company called Tramona. While this was an unpaid position, I gained valuable experience and tools that will help me grow in my future career.

When I was applying for internships, I made sure to keep my LinkedIn page up to date. I added my past internship experiences, academic awards, special interests, and that I was open to work. My boss contacted me on Linkedin asking me if I would interview with them. I went into the interview with an open mind, unsure what to expect since it was a startup company that I couldn’t find much information about.

Tramona’s LinkedIn page

When I jumped on the call, they began to pitch their idea to me! I really connected with the way they spoke about their company, as well as the energy they brought to bring the concept to life. They asked me if I thought I would be a good addition to the team after learning more about the company. I explained how I connected with them on their mission statement for the company and how I thought I would be especially right for the job because I was part of the target market they were aiming for. They hired me on the spot! Obviously, this was an unpaid position, so I know it will be more complex to land my first paid position after school. Still, it is always beneficial to practice your interviewing skills!

Travel Tramona Flyer

My primary responsibilities were marketing and building brand awareness. This essentially means I started working on  growing Tramona’s engagement on social media platforms and creating posts primarily on Pinterest and TikTok.  I learned how hashtags, captions, calls to action, and target demographics are all critical in marketing. These are especially important when getting a startup off the ground. I even posted some flyers around campus to inform more people about the company! Many of the flyers had QR codes so that you could scan them right onto the website. All four interns and our bosses would meet through Zoom once or twice a week. Our bosses, Blake and Preju, often asked us to share our successes, thoughts, and challenges from the tasks we had been asked to complete.

I was asked to design a collage intended to encapsulate the overall feel of the company.

I used concepts I learned from marketing, group com, business/professional com and public speaking com throughout this experience. In marketing, we often have to put ourselves in the minds of the consumer. Thinking from their point of view can help you better understand how to hit that specific target market. In group com, we often worked in groups of three or four, challenging ourselves to work in a group without one person overpowering another. In business and professional com, we learned how to convey our message more professionally. In public speaking, we learned how to bring in our audience through ethos, logos, and pathos. All this to say, every one of these classes gave me valuable tools that made me feel better prepared for this internship experience.

Throughout this experience, I had to push myself out of my comfort zone. I don’t love to speak in groups, but over my time studying in the School of Communication and taking on this internship, I’ve pushed myself to be more comfortable and confident speaking in front of others. Overall, I can still work on being more confident and articulate when I speak, but I have definitely improved upon that skill since starting this internship.

Creating a social media page that the target market will relate to…

This internship experience was very go at your own pace. My bosses understood we had full-time classes and part-time jobs to tend to, so they wanted to only get what they wanted out of it. But throughout this experience I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity and learn as much as possible! If I finished up all my work for the social media aspect of the internship before the next meeting, I would ask my bosses about other company departments. I realized I didn’t love the repetition and inconsistency that come with growing brand awareness on social media platforms. Whether a video or image blows up can be very random. Some strategies help the content to improve but it’s never guaranteed. However, I really enjoyed designing the content on Pinterest. They said I had a real eye for design and connected me with the design department so I could get an in-depth idea of what goes on there.

So, in the last few months of the internship, I would watch Heidi, the woman in charge of building the website’s design. She worked on a design platform called Figma. She explained how important it is to know your way around Figma if you want to work in design. It was challenging at first, it is kind of like a spreadsheet but instead of numbers you insert images and text. I would get to see the many stages she went through to create the final design for the website. She had a set theme, color scheme, text style, and image ratio planned out in her mind before she even began putting it together. She was fun to learn from and I was excited that Blake and Preju gave me the opportunity to connect with her.

Pinterest Content Design

Pinterest Content Design

I liked how, in this internship, the staff gave us guidance and the freedom to try out our own ideas.  Over time, I grew more confident and even started suggesting ideas for how I could help and benefit their product. They seemed to like my initiative. It felt like a very collaborative process coming up with new work and ideas to benefit the startup, which was super exciting! I loved feeling like my ideas were being heard and were actually helpful to the creative process. I learned a lot through this internship.

If I were to give some advice to incoming undergraduate students at Chapman, I would say never give up! I can’t tell you how many internships I applied for and interviewed with that either rejected me or ended up not being the right fit for me. I know it can be incredibly frustrating!
But part of the reason we are required to do internships is to mess up, see what we don’t like, and learn from all of it! So keep trying new things even when it’s hard and you feel uncomfortable. It is much better to explore areas of interest while you are still in school than to step into the workforce and be unhappy in the job you thought you’d love.

Plus, if you do find your passion in one of your internships, you now have all these mentors and experience in the field you are passionate about!