Even though its only been a week and a half or so, I feel pretty comfortable with my mentor and colleagues. I'm not afraid to share my ideas or ask for help, and everyone here is very open. My mentor is actually gone at the moment, shes at Phoenix Comicon for the next two days (Thursday and Friday). So I have taken over a couple of her jobs while shes gone. For now I run the Instagram and Pinterest, which means finding or creating relevant posts and captions, and running it by the community manager before I post. Monitoring feedback after posting is actually more complicated than you might think. Other than that I continue working on my Analytics spreadsheet, queuing and finding posts for next week, unlocking/locking the door, buzzing people when they have meetings, monitoring sites like Etsy for infringement, keeping the candy jars stocked, but the coolest part is being kind of on my own and doing my own work without being monitored. I hope that means they trust me to some degree. So far I've been completely fine and actually more relaxed than when my mentor is here, I just feel more independent
Since my mentor focuses on marketing and social media, I decided to do something with that. Facebook and Twitter are being handled by other people, but she let me be in charge of the Instagram account. We have a schedule of when to post, and alternate between different types of pictures depending on different launches, promos, giveaways, etc. For example, we use a hashtag to find people wearing J!NX clothing, and we reach out to them and ask if it would be okay for us to post on our Instagram. This helps us connect with our community better. We also collaborate with the Graphics department to make informative graphics to post that inform the followers of new launches, sales, and most importantly giveaways. Usually the Instagram would get 30 followers a week. but after I got here we've gained almost 200 followers in a week. My goal is to get the account to 4000 followers before I leave. Along with that, I have been tracking the posts in a spreadsheet and record how many likes, comments, what type of photo it is, etc. to figure out which posts get the most community feedback and whether or not it is growing, and I plan to make some nice graphs to showcase that. I do a few other jobs on the side as well, because a lot of times social media can be a waiting game.
Interview with my mentor:
1) What should I know about you before I start working here? Social media/marketing for 6 years, degree in Journalism, Instagram/Pinterest, working on path to world domination. 2) What is your job title? Office Administrator and Executive Assistant/Marketing. 3) What are your main duties and responsibilities? Manage everyone's calenders, manage socials (Instagram and Pinterest), schedule all trips, write product descriptions, lay the smack down. 4) Why did you choose to work here? She really likes the environment, wanted to work somewhere she felt like she was part of a group, people are as nerdy as she is. 5) How did you end up doing the job that you do? Really wanted to work here, pretty much would have done any position (even scrubbed floors). 6) What skills and training are necessary for your position? Personable, marketing knowledge, grammar & punctuation skills, computer skills, trustworthy (according to the CEO). 7) How did you acquire these skills? Through school? On the job? College (have to take grammar, spelling, and punctuation tests for Journalism degree), self taught, on the job training. 8) Do you consider a career in this area satisfying? In what ways? She likes marketing more than being an admin, she really just likes being at the workplace, lots of friends in work that she can hang out with outside of work as well. 9) Is there anything you wish you'd realized about the world of work when you were my age? Need to have prior qualifications for a lot of things (internships, jobs), wish she had done high school/college clubs that were relevant, she did a lot of volunteer work which was good. 10) What should I know about this organization before I start working here? Really cool place to work, the CEO wants everyone to be happy/fit in/share interests/hang out together (hence game nights and community meetings). 11) What does it take to be successful in this organization? Be passionate and motivated, even if you're stressed being passionate gets everyone through it. 12) What other advice do you have about working here? Now is the time to make connections, talk to everyone. 13) How important is getting along with other people in your career? Very important, everyone works close together and everyone is friends. 14) What other personality traits, skills, or knowledge are important here? Knowledge of all things geeky! Reflection: Over the past couple days, I've become a lot more comfortable in the workplace as well as with my mentor. I've been driving myself to Poway everyday from San Marcos, which is about a 40 minute drive down the 15. For me thats a long drive. But I've gotten used to it. As for the workplace, I didn't talk much at first, and I would do my own thing. Now I'm making a lot of connections with colleagues and asking more questions, as well as working with my mentor to come up with ideas and more things for me to do. I'm still working on the Instagram Analytics spreadsheet and monitoring all of the Jinx tags and other geeky tags, and figuring out things to post. The Instagram is at 3100 followers currently and it would be cool to get it to 4000 by the time I leave! Besides that, I've started taking more pictures of the office to post around (office is too dull of a word, this place is awesome), reading up on stuff going on in the gaming world that are relevant, and searching for new ways I can help my mentor. I found out that not only does the office gets donuts on Wednesdays, but they also have community meetings in the game room. All the departmets chare out how theyre doing and accomplishments. After that, they do trivia, and the prize is an Amazon gift card. Everyone in the office gets a number, and they roll the 20 sided D&D dice to pick a number. That person is elligable for the prize. And guess what. Mine got chosen the first time! There are some people in there who have never gotten it before. So I went up and answered 4 questions about Mad Max, clouds, where a superhero was born, and some other geeky thing. I think I got 2/4 right so I didn't get the gift card, but I still got a bunch of candy. Either way, I think people appreciated my bravery to go up in front of everyone. Yesterday I had to fill out tons of paperwork and non disclosure agreements and got settled into my space next to my mentor. Today was my first real day working, and it was pretty productive. I sat down with my mentor and we talked about the jobs that she does, and we talked about what I should do. Since she focuses on social media and marketing, she showed me a spreadsheet of activity on the company's Pinterest account. That included followers, repins, likes, organic clicks, and how many sales they got from an item by posting that picture. She has been working on it since last year, and I thought it was really cool to see the growth of the page and in turn the company. They only had these analytics for Pinterest, so my mentor offered to let me do it for their Instagram account. I started my own spreadsheet and started recording our followers, types of posts, likes, comments, hashtags, and even the length of our caption to see what type of picture gets the most activity. I also started looking through popular tags and reached out to people wearing J!NX clothing, asking if we could post their picture on our own socials. We are soon making it more public to submit their pictures to us to post, to grow our outreach to the community. I want to be able to grow my project to be more than a spreadsheet, and I'm working on how to do that. My mentor is great, we get a lot of work done as well as laugh at things and take walks outside. And she drives a Challenger, which I think it pretty cool. The people we work with are just as nice, and the jokes thrown around the office are hilarious. One guy even brings all the womens small t shirts that can't be sold over. Did I mention theres arcade games, video game merch, posters, weapons, candy, etc everywhere? It's kind of a dream.
I am so excited to start my internship at J!NX here soon. J!NX is an online video game apparel store, they reach out with different video game brands and artists to create t-shirts, jackets, accessories, etc. It's one of the most - if not THE most - popular store for that type of stuff. And they happen to be centered right here in San Diego. After many emails sent and received, I pin pointed exactly what I could do for their company. Since High Tech High does a great job at teaching us how to work with our community and others, as well as presenting and communicating, I thought my skills could go towards marketing and community outreach most effectively. My mentor's name is Mollie Berntsen, and has a degree in Journalism. There I will be monitoring company social medias and finding out how to grow the company to new markets and customers. I'm pretty nervous to start, because I know I'll be working with a lot of really cool people who are also very good at what they do, and I'm afraid that I won't find a good place there or I won't be needed. I feel like a lot of people feel like that at the moment though. This experience will not only teach me about real world jobs, but also about basic marketing skills which who knows, I might be interested in the future.
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