at Unilever in Rotterdam

INTERNSHIP

Unilever is the company of my second internship. I started at the first of February, and will finish the internship at the end of June. Unilever is a multinational, fast-moving consumer goods company with more than 400 brands in more than 190 countries. I am an intern at the department ‘Meeting and Events’. This department is responsible for organizing the internal events for Unilever. We organize about 350/400 events in a year, from small to bigger events.

I have found this internship while visiting Unilever with the class of the Advance Course ‘Events’. After the company visit I contacted someone from the department ‘Meeting and Events’. After the procedure of writing a cover letter, a resume and doing an interview, I was chosen for the internship! I was really surprised and totally happy to have this opportunity. I was looking forward to do this new challenge!

During my internship, I have organized a lot of events for the employees, including some drinks for the interns of Unilever as well. Some of these events were big, but mostly they were small. At several events I have organized, I had responsibilities from the beginning to the end. I often had to work in teams, which made me a real team player. Next to this I have developed my business communication skills in both writing and talking and writing several business texts. In this internship I have learned a lot of things: to organize a perfect event, to make a good script, to make scenarios for the days of the events, to do and work out my thesis, to make a perfect risk analysis and so on. I got a lot of freedom and responsibility in my internship. It was a great experience to help at the events, because then you see what you have organized for the company.

Next to this, I wrote my thesis about the safety guidelines of the events of Unilever Benelux. It was quite hard to do an internship of 40 hours a week next to my thesis, but it was definitely worth it! I am really motivated to learn new things. When I heard I had the chance to do this internship I knew I had to work hard, but sometimes it is worth to work really hard. For more information about my Thesis, click on the link in the header ‘Thesis’.

I got a lot of positive reactions of several employees; I was very flexible, had everything under control and had thought of everything. After this internship my network grew much bigger, I have much more experience in the event branch and I know for sure I want to work in a big corporate company like Unilever. I am still not sure if I want to work in the event branch, for the reason that I do not always enjoy the hectic and chaos of this branch. I’m still exploring to find the perfect job in the right branch that will suit me perfect.

I enjoyed my internship at Unilever; I met great people and learned so much. Unilever Benelux is really happy with the result of my thesis, which gives me a very good feeling. For more information about my great experiences at my internship and my thesis, feel free to contact me.