Intern Profile: Steve Petrie

I had the opportunity to intern at Future Foundations, a career consultation company in London. This proved to be an awesome experience as I have always had the aspiration to own or run my own company.  This internship gave me the experience of seeing how a small business works and operates. The company was recently created and they didn’t yet know exactly what services they would be providing to their clientele. Instead of providing one distinct service, they were offering a bunch of products such as CV help, career advice, mock interview training, and networking events. It was also neat to be in this type of placement because I got to see students who were in the same position that I am in now:   young adults that were about to graduate and were taking the necessary action to make sure they would have a job upon graduation.

As part of my duties at Future Foundatons, I was responsible for expanding the companies’ market sector to include Accounting and Finance companies. I spent most of my days researching companies in the London area and calling them to see if they would like to attend our student to business conferences or if they would be interested in taking on graduates for temporary placement. I also got to represent our company at an international career fair, which was really cool because I got to talk to students and companies all over the U.K and try and sell our products to them.

My placement was a success in many ways. I got some experience as to what a real “office job” was like that my previous jobs of a day camp counselor and umpire didn’t offer. I also got to experience what a job was like in a big city. It was a different experience taking mass transportation to work every day on the Tube (underground subway) and walking around the great city of London on my lunch break. But, perhaps the most beneficial part of my internship at Future Foundations was that I realized that working in an HR firm is not for me. I liked a lot of the business aspects about the company, but I didn’t enjoy the HR aspects of calling businesses and trying to place graduates there. All in all, I encourage every student to try and get an internship as it truly is a wonderful experience and can help test out different careers.