My Week at Gap 360 - Our Intern Tom!

We had a fabulous intern in this week learning all he can about the sales and marketing at Gap 360. Tom Gill, 16, wants to do business and French at university and has a keen interest in the marketing world.  At the end of the week he wrote us this lovely blog… take a read:

My Week at Gap 360

Once I walked in at 10.00am on Monday morning, I knew there was no going back. After 2 weeks of clubbing in Zante and Portugal with my mates, you could probably imagine I was feeling rather glum. However, it was not like your average working environment, there was more of a casual vibe to the office with people dressed in clothes they actually like, everyone smiling at me and making me feel welcomed as I walked in. Suddenly, I was already feeling better about life, working in an environment where everyone is friendly and gets on is a really reassuring thing.

For the first 2 days I shadowed Vicky (marketing coordinator), and the first task I was given was to create a competitors analysis table on Excel. This is fundamentally important in any business because if you don’t pay attention to what your competitors are doing, it’ll be harder to anticipate what’s around the corner for your industry.

On Wednesday, I was passed on to Georgia (sales coordinator) for the day. Throughout the day I learnt valuable skills, but in particular, how to communicate with people from a sales point of view, whether it’s on the phone, by email or face to face.

I was then handed back to Vicky on Thursday where I learnt about PPC (pay per click) marketing on Google AdWords. I learnt that by using PPC, a business is able to increase brand visibility, drive traffic to your site and increase sales and conversions therefore giving you a return on investments. Later on, I was given the opportunity to come up with ways to market to students at school.

To sum up, I picked up many valuable skills about marketing and sales techniques but also about working in general. I can’t thank everyone in the office enough for all their help and support, but in particular to Georgia and Vicky for taking time off work in order to guide me and offer fundamentally valuable advice which I will be able to call upon once I start working.

I would definitely like to travel in the near future and I have my eyes set on going to South-East Asia (Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia) and Australia as I have never been there, and they like look incredibly interesting countries. However, the question is really, when do I want to travel? Either straight after school which would mean going to uni a year later, or alternatively I could go once I’ve finished uni, just before I start working but either way it’s something I’m definitely considering.