Navigation

Home

Week Three: 2 - 9 Oct

It’s week three of the Brunswick internship programme. The team takes you through what happened, day by day, beginning with the previous Friday afternoon, and taking in a trip to Reuters, a CV session, more newspaper analysis, some presentation tips, and the chance to use them when presenting to Heather.

This is the third blog entry from the 2009 Brunswick Six, click here to return to the blog index

By Brunswick Interns

Friday 2nd October (Param)

Today was an extremely eventful day, with the pressure mounted high.

Each of the Interns, myself included, were to present in the morning on the FTSE 100 retail company that we had researched during the week. We were due to present in front of Faith Conley from Taylor Bennett for the first time, so were extremely nervous and anxious about how she would react to us. At the end of the day, her report on our presentations would go straight to Heather back at Taylor Bennett, which meant we all wanted to make an amazing first impression. Fortunately Faith was really pleasant to be around, and she gave us plenty of constructive feedback which was extremely helpful.

Later in the afternoon we travelled to the Brunswick offices. There Simon Leigh gave us a presentation on the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of research and analysis. He also gave us some vital information on improving presentation skills (this will obviously come in handy over the course of the internship, as we have to give a presentation every week!).

Then, in came Tom Williams. Oh. My. God. He was hilarious! He gave us a session on the broadsheet newspapers, but was so humorous while doing so, that we all could not stop laughing. We had a friendly chat at the end of the session and were all surprised at how quickly we had warmed to the Brunswick team. Overall the day was busy but fun!

Monday 5th October (Jenard)

Alas the weekend is over, and the new week begins… This morning began with Junior reporting back to Sarah on what had happened at the previous Friday’s session at the Brunswick offices. We were all reminded about the great session we had on the ‘media landscape’ from Tom Williams, and the enjoyable session with Simon Leigh on corporate presentation methods.

Sarah then ran through the schedule for the week ahead, and gave us each a presentation brief for the Friday morning session. I was assigned the oil and gas service company Petrofac, which I had never even heard of before! We were given the rest of the day to work on our presentations, and find out more about our allocated companies. We definitely needed the time.

This new assignment was clearly going to involve more in-depth research, not least because we would be talking about companies and a sector of which none of us had any prior experience. But, armed with the feedback we got after last week’s presentations, from both Sarah at Unicorn and Faith from Taylor Bennett, we all set about our task.

It’s definitely good to start the week with a clear goal in front of you. So for now, I gotta go do some work… you know as they say, “places to visit … people to see”. Speak to you all next week.

Tuesday 6th October (Claude)

Today was not the usual action packed outing into the world of public relations, but was still quite intense, to say the least. I am working on a presentation with Jenard and Junior, following on from our session at Brunswick last week. We have decided to cheekily refer to ourselves as the ‘G3’! Our aim is to try and understand and anticipate to what extent the media landscape is going to change in the next 3–5 years. So in the morning we had an informal session to clarify what some of goals are.

Talking of the media, that was the theme of the afternoon also. Today we looked at the tabloids, and in particular The Sun and the Daily Mirror, part of our ongoing look at the newspaper industry with Chris at Unicorn. As someone who tends to read a broadsheet newspaper, I was interested to see how the content differed in the tabloids, as well as the quality of information. Overall I learnt a lot about the tabloid industry, and recognise the importance that tabloids play as a platform for alternative news stories and opinions that the broadsheets may not necessarily cover.

In the evening we had the opportunity to meet the four of the Brunswick Six 2008 (the four who were currently in the UK!), and to ask them about their experiences last year, as well as what they have been doing since they left the internship. It seemed that the vast majority of them had been doing quite well in their endeavours. I was encouraged by the fact that last year’s Interns felt that they had really bettered themselves by doing the internship, and this was a real inspiration.

I’d just like to wish them the best of luck, and thank them, and the guys from Brunswick and the University Of East London, who joined us at Unicorn House this evening.

Wednesday 7th October (Junior)

Liverpool Street station, my chapel of preparation for the day ahead, a time to reflect, a time to savour, and a time to remember that the escalators are down again. The long walk from the station to Shoreditch High Street serves as a reminder that this internship is a journey, and the long walk upstairs reminds me to appreciate elevators more! But that said, this being day 13, this all seems very normal. The Interns all know the procedure, and we all gently fall into place each day, totally aware of what we are supposed to be doing.

As Wednesday morning was free, this time was used to rehearse and edit the presentations we would deliver on Friday, while others focused on tweaking their CVs or stock trading on the Bullbearings website.

The afternoon, however, wasn’t free – we were heading West for our weekly session at Taylor Bennett. On arrival there, soaked from the drizzling rain, we were welcomed with cups of tea, coffee and biscuits before our session began.

CV, two letters every potential employee will surely have heard. This afternoon’s session was an introduction to the art of creating a good impression to an employer on two sheets of A4 paper.

With critiques on writing styles and word lengths based on sample CVs good and bad, we were given many tips on how to improve our own CVS.

And then the afternoon session was concluded with feedback on our own CVs, which we brought with us. We were given the chance to re-write and bring back our newly edited CVs, making use of the tips we learnt from the session.

In conclusion, it was a very eventful day, we all learned useful tips, and we can’t wait to show prospective employers of our new CVs.

Thursday 8th October (Tina)

Thomson Reuters is “the world’s leading source of intelligent information for business’ and individuals”, so how amazing was it for us to have the opportunity to go and visit their main London HQ in Canary Wharf on Thursday morning?

We were all extremely apprehensive and nervous as we waited for someone to come and meet us in foyer after getting our visitor passes. The fact that the badges we’d been given had our names printed on them already made us feel pretty important!

We were met by Angela Dobson – who works closely with the Head of External Affairs in Reuters – and taken upstairs in exquisite lifts. There we were met by Shakeel Butt who introduced a documentary on a Reuters Chief Photographer’s time cover the Israeli Palestinian war in 2004. The film was heart wrenching, emotional, gory and realistic; it affected all of us.

Next we ate lunch, and then we met a Reuters sales specialist named Kunle Babarinde. He is also the leader of their Black Employee Network and filled us in on all the wonderful and inspirational work they try to do for charities and communities, all commissioned by Reuters.

Before we left, we insisted on having a tour of the news room which Shakeel happily carried out. We got to see how the news works, what people do behind the scenes, and how news is sent across the world. We also got to sit in the actual indoor studio Reuters use for some of their filmed newscasts, and I was lucky to get a go on the teleprompter. It truly was an amazing experience and I hope our next trip can match up to this one.

In the afternoon we came back to the office and finished our session with Chris on the tabloids, this time concentrating on the Daily Mail. Then we finished the day off with a short session on blog writing in which Chris went through the blogs we had submitted for week two of the internship, and explained the sub-editing changes that had been made, in a bid to try and help us tidy up our style and improve our writing. It was a very useful workshop.

Friday 9th October (Charlotte)

Today is presentation day.

Each week, Heather gives us a company to research and present on. This week’s topic – FTSE Oil and Gas companies.

Faith from Taylor Bennett joined us at Unicorn House to watch our performances for the second week running. But today she came with a surprise: “Heather’s on her way” she says on entrance. We looked at each other feeling shocked, nervous and excited. We’d not expected to present to Heather just yet!

We drew straws for the order that we would present in. I got the shortest, and went last. Four day’s ago we knew nothing about the oil and gas sector, but, judging by today’s presentations and Heather’s feedback, the Interns had become much more familiar with the industry and had researched their companies well. Occasionally I’d glance over at Heather, who was listening intently and jotting down notes, and also Sarah from Unicorn who would be nodding along encouragingly.

Having Heather there watching wasn’t as scary as we expected. I noticed that when each of us finished our presentations and were standing in front of the group, feeling our most vulnerable, Heather would always say something positive as well as explaining how we could improve.