Cheil Australia’s marketing & PR manager Jacob Nassif offers a peek into the young forces adding value to agency culture
Above: Cheil Australia Winter Interns (from left): Creative services intern Nidhi, Digital experience intern Neil, account management intern Iris, digital experience intern Noah, and retail design & production intern Michelle.
Cheil Australia has just completed a 16-week Winter Internship Program where five interns had the opportunity to experience practical training with global clients such as Samsung. This is just the second of two internship programmes introduced by the CX agency at the beginning of this year.
Digital director Anam Malik believed the programme has been beneficial in improving her team’s managerial skills by pairing them with the interns, acting as mentors and supervisors. “We introduced the first Cheil Summer Internship Program in January this year, recruiting seven interns across all of our divisions: creative, retail, digital, account management and finance. They all brought an energetic, young and fresh perspective to our agency’s culture and environment.”
Anam continues, “The programme also helps my team develop leadership skills. By acting as mentors they get to manage, guide and direct the interns for 12 weeks, giving both the mentor and mentee time to strategise, execute and report on key projects. This Winter Internship Program was another huge success, particularly for the digital team. They demonstrated discipline, passion and exceptional commitment, and as a result, the two digital interns were offered full-time positions at the end of the 12-week course. I am pleased to announce that both these interns are now specialists on the team and continue to deliver exceptional performance.”
From the initial programme, Cheil’s people and culture team discovered that transitioning from tertiary study into a real-life working environment can be overwhelming, so in the Winter Internship Program they decided to implement the TikTok Challenge.
“We are always looking for ways to improve the cultural experience for our team, and we wanted the same for our next group of interns. We decided to implement the TikTok Challenge in the winter programme to assist the interns with their transition into not just the real world but agency life, which can be overwhelming at times,” comments People & Culture generalist Renee Dawson.
Renee continues, “Even though it was a competition, the interns ended up working closely together to create fun, collaborative, and compelling content that helped develop our culture and improve overall employee engagement. Everyone in the company loved the videos the interns were producing. They were the talk of the town! A couple of them chose to feature our popular social media rep, Cheilsea and even create a new persona, RaCheil”
Creative services intern and winner of the TikTok Challenge Nidhi Daithankar.
Creative services intern and winner of the TikTok challenge Nidhi Daithankar found the social media project really helped ease and elevate her intern experience, “The TikTok Challenge was really cool. We (interns) were able to bounce ideas off one another while filming, creating funny little captures of the Cheil team culture. Having such a lively and happy cultural environment during my internship at Cheil really helped boost my overall experience. I enjoyed going into the office to see the other interns and my team. It is something I’ve come to value at Cheil and will continue to do so in my future endeavours.”
Entry video of TikTok Challenge winner Nidhi Daithankar featuring Racheil, a character they created and played by Digital experience intern Neil.
Digital experience intern Noah Pham Van adds, “The TikTok challenge was probably the best aspect of the internship programme as a whole. I was able to share ideas, notes, feedback, and brainstorm concepts with the other interns, and overall it was great to just spend some time with them over something light-hearted and fun.”
Winter digital experience intern Noah Pham Van is now working full time for Cheil as Junior UX Specialist.
Cheil Australia is looking forward to their next internship programme. “We are already working on our next 12-week intern experience and will likely feature another social media project, similar to that of the TikTok Challenge. So make sure you follow Cheil Australia on LinkedIn to find out how you can apply!” concludes Renee.
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