Solution to Summer Marketing Intern Search
March 28, 2017 12:10 PM Subscribe
I am producing/curating a Artists and Fleas - like artisan faire in the Los Angeles area. Our flagship market is in South Pasadena and I'm dreaming of expanding it out to communities outside the DTLA/Westside center. It's time for a marketing assist and I would love to find a marketing/p.r. intern for the summer. My first thought is to approach FIDM (Fashion Institute) Calling on MeFites for suggestions for other local possibilities/solutions.
I just hired a part-time marketing assistant. I had lots of luck when I offered to pay a fair wage.
posted by My Dad at 12:38 PM on March 28, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by My Dad at 12:38 PM on March 28, 2017 [5 favorites]
I just hired a part-time marketing assistant from a business school. He has been fantastic - creative, artistic, super-well-versed in social media, and also organized, reliable, and mindful of our rules/budget/goals.
posted by Ausamor at 1:29 PM on March 28, 2017
posted by Ausamor at 1:29 PM on March 28, 2017
As I recall, unpaid internships were not possible in California.
posted by k8t at 4:02 PM on March 28, 2017
posted by k8t at 4:02 PM on March 28, 2017
You say you want a marketing assistant and ALSO that you want an intern. I can understand why you might think these two things are the same but speaking from experience managing a digital marketing team, there are some key differences.
Assistants can be given an area of work to manage and can be expected to operate fairly independently. Frankly, you can also give a junior-level assistant a lot of grunt work because they understand they are paying their dues.
Interns usually need a LOT of hand-holding. Even really smart students with work experience. You have to be able to tell them exactly what to do every day, there's a lot of training. Sometimes you can get a rock-star, but you can't count on it. I've found this is especially true with digital marketing, where there is a steep learning curve at the beginning (learning about lots of different tools, understanding the brand of the company, analytics, Facebook ads, etc.).
So I would think really carefully about what you need and are able to offer. Can you pay someone more than minimum wage? Then hire an assistant, and know you will have to do some serious on-boarding, but then you will have someone you can hand off whole pieces of work to, like "manage our Facebook page."
Do you really just need to be able to give someone specific tasks to do, like "post this specific thing on Facebook tomorrow"? Do you yourself know enough about marketing to know what those things are? Then an intern could work, though as others have said, you still have to pay that person, unless this is a non-profit (and even then, look into it and make sure you're ok).
Either way, this process of figuring out exactly what you need will be useful for getting better candidates. And once you have a job description, just contact career offices of the universities and colleges in your area with marketing and/or design and/or communications programs.
posted by lunasol at 5:02 PM on March 28, 2017
Assistants can be given an area of work to manage and can be expected to operate fairly independently. Frankly, you can also give a junior-level assistant a lot of grunt work because they understand they are paying their dues.
Interns usually need a LOT of hand-holding. Even really smart students with work experience. You have to be able to tell them exactly what to do every day, there's a lot of training. Sometimes you can get a rock-star, but you can't count on it. I've found this is especially true with digital marketing, where there is a steep learning curve at the beginning (learning about lots of different tools, understanding the brand of the company, analytics, Facebook ads, etc.).
So I would think really carefully about what you need and are able to offer. Can you pay someone more than minimum wage? Then hire an assistant, and know you will have to do some serious on-boarding, but then you will have someone you can hand off whole pieces of work to, like "manage our Facebook page."
Do you really just need to be able to give someone specific tasks to do, like "post this specific thing on Facebook tomorrow"? Do you yourself know enough about marketing to know what those things are? Then an intern could work, though as others have said, you still have to pay that person, unless this is a non-profit (and even then, look into it and make sure you're ok).
Either way, this process of figuring out exactly what you need will be useful for getting better candidates. And once you have a job description, just contact career offices of the universities and colleges in your area with marketing and/or design and/or communications programs.
posted by lunasol at 5:02 PM on March 28, 2017
Oh, and you can't give interns grunt work! It has to have educational value.
posted by lunasol at 5:05 PM on March 28, 2017
posted by lunasol at 5:05 PM on March 28, 2017
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posted by calgirl at 12:25 PM on March 28, 2017