18 May My Internship Experience at Solmeglas : Transition from Science to Marketing

Towards the end of my master degree, I start wondering if a career as a researcher is the one for me.  I enjoyed working in a lab, learning but, will I enjoy another career besides research? Straight away I knew I need an Internship Experience to answer this. And I was grateful to do it at Solmeglas

How My Internship Experience Begun

One day, I saw a program advertisement for an overseas internship experience offered by the InternGroup. I decided to join and chose Spain as my first preference.  I choose to challenge myself and work in a country where English is not the first language.

Marketing was the sector I chose as I knew I want to learn something outside my degree. But not wanting my knowledge to come to waste, I asked to be placed in science company.

After a series of interview, I was placed in a science company called Solmeglas as a marketing intern. Based in Madrid, Solmeglas is a life science company specialized in the distribution and development of services for scientific research. It is a small company with less than 10 people in the office. But still, it is a very busy company.

5 months after that, my internship experience in Spain begun.

The Task & Challenges of the Internship

As a marketing intern, I was mostly in charge of creating articles for blog, newsletter, and contents of social media. I also did market research for potential new products and partners of the company.

Truthfully, I never study all of these before. I only have one experience in marketing as an organizing committee for a film festival in Melbourne. Except for WordPress, other things such as SEO, Prestashop platform, and MailChimp are something foreign for me.

Furthermore, as a research student who used to write a scientific report, writing an interesting content for a general public is a challenge.

Thankfully, my scientific knowledge plays big roles here.  Without scientific information, it is very difficult to extract information from scientific papers and rephrase them for the general public.

Moreover, I was lucky as Moises, the CEO of Solmeglas, was very friendly and patient. He taught me how to operate these platforms and explained the important points of digital marketing. Moises was also a very sincere person.

He did not only listen to all of my marketing ideas and feedbacks but also truly implemented it in the company. For me, this is a rare quality that only a few people in high position have. As a result, I truly feel appreciated and more motivated to improve Solmeglas website and social media platform.

Furthermore, Moises also hired a Spanish teacher for me. Not only this makes my life in Spain easier, but also with a better Spanish, I was able to create content that is more relatable to the researcher in Spain.

I was also thankful that people in Solmeglas will occasionally speak in Spanish to me. Not because they for convenient, but because they want to help me improve my Spanish.

The Outcome of the Internship

In mere 6 weeks, I learned a lot of skills that I won´t learn in Science. I got a glimpse of how science distributor company operates and the tips & tricks of digital marketing. Along the way, I even learned graphic design a little bit.

But most importantly, my scientific knowledge was not a waste. In fact, it is really important because you are not dealing only with people from Science.

In the end, internship in a sector that completely different from your field can be challenging. But you can only improve yourself when you are out of your comfort zone.

As for my future career,  I enjoy both working in the office and in a lab. However, I also realized that for now, a career in research is more appealing to me. Nevertheless, I never regret doing this internsip.

That aside, I was very grateful that my co-workers at Solmeglas are very supportive. When you are working for free, the best motivation you can get is an appreciation from your company.

*This article is written by Syane Agacy, the marketing intern at Solmeglas from April to May 2018.