It's goodbye from me...

Our intern Laura Davidson has left us early to start her year abroad in France. We want to wish her all the best. 
Here is her last blog, telling you all what she's done at TARGETjobs and what she's learnt. 

My internship here at TARGETjobs is coming to an end as I’m off to France next week for my year abroad. I thought I’d give you an overview of the work I’ve been doing here over the last three months and some of the things I’ve learned before I say au revoir.

So, what do we interns actually do at TARGETjobs? For a start, I can assure you that it’s not making cups of tea and photocopying all day. It’s definitely been a mixed bag of tasks. I’ve worked on careers sectors including law, engineering and property – so as well as improving my writing style both for print and online, I’ve picked up knowledge about the industries themselves. This winter, I’ll be applying for law vac schemes, so getting involved in the law publication in particular has been really valuable, as it’s given me real food for thought in terms of the areas of practice I’m interested in, the firms I might like to work for, and submitting applications.

Another good chunk of our time has been spent on the Guardian UK 300, conducting interviews with recent graduates in different careers, writing these interviews up into articles, and compiling the list of top graduate employers. The interview side of things was engaging and something totally new to me; I really enjoyed finding out about different graduates’ career experiences first-hand and transforming the interviews into articles with really useful info.

One of the key tasks for us over the summer has been working on the TARGETjobs content management system – OK, it doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s essential for getting all that online content across to you! It’s a long process but knowledge of how a company’s website is run, organised and accessed by users is a skill to show off to employers, and one that might set you apart from other candidates in certain industries.

At the halfway stage of my degree, the internship here has been invaluable for advice on CVs, interviews, applications and so on. Chatting to different people at work has given me some really handy tips – contrary to what I thought, I do have a worthwhile range of experience and skills, it’s just about how I use and present them to convince employers that they should consider me. Also, it’s helped me recognise my strengths and focus on what I want to do. I’ve had a great experience and learned a lot, so thanks to everyone here!