General Internship Perception vs. My Internship Experience at SunExpress

There is a perception that interns are not given important tasks. Because of this perception, we, university students or new graduates who are just starting out in #businesslife, are afraid. This fear evolves into thinking that we can't get the #experience that we want, and sometimes we can't be happy even if we find an #internship.

In this article, I will share my internship experience at SunExpress, which radically changed this perception. From the first day of my working life, I was being called a #colleague or a #teammember, rather than an #intern. You can say that everyone conveys it like this, and may ask, in what ways is your internship experience different from other people's? Instead of counting the differences, I will give you some date ranges so you can imagine my 4-month internship. And some information about what I was doing in those intervals 😊

I attended two career events over three weeks, from 21 March to 8 April. One was the Career Days event held at Antalya Bilim University on March 28. The other was Career Talks organized by Başkent Economics Community. On this occasion, I also experienced my first business trip, to Ankara. In addition, I had the chance to meet face-to-face with all senior executives thanks to a traditional retirement ceremony held on my first working day. To summarize, I had already met most of my colleagues during the first three weeks of my internship.

During the 1.5-month period between April 11 and May 25, I was assigned to the formation and evaluation process of a large program, such as the general summer internship program of #SunExpress. During this process, I kept in close contact with our HR service supplier companies, such as LinkedIn and Peoplise. In this way, I became a witness to how a program is established and recruited. Also, I regularly attended weekly meetings organized by HR Business Partners. Thanks to these meetings, I did not break away from the general operation. With the weekly reports, I learned the distribution of duties for everyone.

I attended two different training sessions over the month of 30 May to 24 June. Thanks to these trainings, I gained detailed knowledge about #leadership and presentation skills. I also went to İzmir which is my second #businesstrip, thanks to these trainings. During the week of June 13th, I met other interns and working students from our Frankfurt Office and had the opportunity to spend two days together with them. Those two days planned for them as an HQ and Antalya Airport orientation and it was felt like a little Erasmus Program for me. I met 5 students from different countries and became friends with them.

During the five week period between June 27 and July 29, I helped create the #LifePage of SunExpress' LinkedIn profile. I got detailed information about this subject by communicating about content ideas internally and externally. Finally, I went to Frankfurt to see our office there and meet with our team members in Germany on 27 July, which was also my first abroad experience.

Here is the summary of my internship period for now:

• Two domestic and one international business trip,

• Many online and some face-to-face trainings,

• Meeting with different colleagues from different teams and bases.

Shortly, I actively experienced SunExpress culture, increased my self-confidence by the tasks & projects that assigned me, and I left behind the fear that created by the perception about "being an intern".