Interns at Flow don’t make coffee. Well not for anyone else, that is. They aren’t allowed to hang out by the photocopy machine. They don’t fetch lunch or collect post. They’re expected to log hours just the same as everyone else.
In a nutshell, interns at Flow are Flowstars in the making (and are treated as such).
Meet Nqobile Sibiya, Flow’s new intern in the writing studio, who last year completed her BA Corporate Communications at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Her friends call her Q.
“In my third year at UJ, us Corp Comm students were asked to research South Africa’s leading communication and marketing companies. Our aim was to track agencies down and find out what made them leaders in their field,” she says. “We were also tasked with securing an intern position – if we could get one – at any of the places we researched.
“I spent some time on the Net and after a while I came across Flow,” she says. I saw that Flow CEO Tara Turkington was on Twitter, and so I immediately followed her and started tentatively asking about any available intern positions.”
As it turns out, Flow’s CEO is addicted to Twitter (in a good way). And she immediately took a liking to the BA student with the gutsy attitude (@IamNQ). She invited Nqobile for an interview and the rest, as they say, is history.
“Flow was the only company that replied to my tweets,” says Nqobile. “I didn’t get a response from most of the emails I sent either, so I feel pretty good about deciding to DM Tara and try my luck. It was risky, but it got me noticed, and my attitude helped get me the internship.”
She’s right of course. Working at Flow – as a fully-fledged Flowstar or as a Flowstar in the making – is often defined by your attitude.
“There’s never a dull moment here at Flow,” says Colin Ford, head of the writing team. “Any intern who joins us thinking that all they’ll be doing is making coffee is quickly set to rights. There are always articles to be written, social networks to be updated, images to be sourced, static content to be checked ... the list is endless.”
For interns at Flow, the learning starts from minute one of hour one. It’s expected that once you’ve been shown how to do something, you do it. Or at least try your very best to. Interns are shown how things work, and then jump in and start contributing.
“The right attitude is vital for any intern,” says Colin. “We have a great team of experienced people at Flow, and we all pitch in to guide and mentor our interns. It’s up to them, though, to let us know if they need help or if they’ve run out of work. Their attitude determines how much they learn, and Nqobile has definitely got the right approach. She’s proven highly capable and is always willing to put up her hand at the right time. It’s amazing to have someone with positive energy in our studio, particularly when they’re able to lighten the load for the team while learning about journalism and the workplace. Nqobile definitely has what it takes to get places!”
So what has she learnt?
Q spent the first two weeks of her internship learning how to improve her writing for the web. She tackled blogs, news pieces, photo essays and press releases with gusto.
She also got involved in social media marketing across multiple platforms, and learnt how to engage socially online as a business, not just a person.
She learnt how a communication agency such as Flow works, and has spent time on a few of the systems Flow uses daily, such as the content management systems and the company-wide basecamp application.
“Most of all, I discovered that the real learning happens after varsity,” she laughs. “I thought my work as an intern was going to be awful – I imagined piles of paper, a filing cabinet and lots of spilled coffee. In reality, the people are very friendly here and I have learnt a lot about how marketing really happens and how the web works. My experience at Flow has been great.”