While some students choose to intern at multinational organizations, banks or consulting firms, others choose to work at startups that enable them to gain practical experience across a variety of business areas.
Dual Degree in Business Administration and International Relations student Beatriz Pérez is currently interning at Jóvenes Proyectos, a startup that allows students to collaborate with companies looking for young talent while working with them on real projects.
Beatriz was actually using the platform to collaborate with the company on another project when they contacted her about interning with them. Before this experience, Beatriz had interned at the NATO office in Belgium and at a financial services firm in Madrid.
While sharing her experience at Jóvenes Proyectos with us, she explains why she feels students should make the most of the opportunity to collaborate with companies, gain experience in various industries and put their knowledge into practice prior to joining the job market.
What’s your role at Jóvenes Proyectos?
My main focus is social media management and CRM, but Jóvenes Proyectos is a young startup, so there’s a lot of work to do in many areas of the business. We all help each other when needed. I don’t have a fixed position at the company at the moment. I think this is amazing because each day is different and I get to learn and experience a variety of areas. I truly believe that the startup experience is incomparable with that of a big company, and I’m really happy to work here because I think Jóvenes Proyectos has a lot of potential.
What does your day to day involve?
As I mentioned before, every day at Jóvenes Proyectos is different but each week follows a similar pattern. On Mondays and Thursdays, I focus on social media as I post content on all platforms. We usually have weekly meetings on Fridays to give a recap of our week and to discuss the tasks we have to complete over the following days. The other days of the week vary a bit more—some weeks are filled with a lot of client meetings, and other weeks are more focused on strategy implementation.
Besides these fairly regular tasks, I contact platform users, create projects for our website, search for new companies that may be willing to collaborate with us and find useful information such as articles or data that may help us guide the company in the right path.
How do you feel IE University helped you secure this internship or perform during the internship?
I’ve always felt supported by the Talent & Careers Department. They’re always willing
to help students if any problems or questions arise. I don’t think that I would’ve found this internship without their work, especially if it weren’t for the weekly emails they send. I encourage everyone to spend a few minutes reading these emails every week as they always include great opportunities.
Why were you interested in interning at this company? Where did you hear about this opportunity?
During the lockdown period in March, I realized that I was close to graduating but I didn’t have as much experience on my CV as I wanted before entering the professional world. I received one of the weekly emails from the Talent & Careers Department in which several projects from the Jóvenes Proyectos platform were posted, and I decided to look at the website. I found an interesting market research project about the education sector in Spain and decided to sign up for it. I spent a couple of days working on it—researching data from the education ministry, the OECD, newspapers and educational institutions around Spain. After I presented my findings, the CEO of the Jóvenes Proyectos offered me an internship which I accepted immediately.
Why do you think it’s beneficial for students to partake in projects like the ones available on the Jóvenes Proyectos platform? What kind of projects have you seen there?
The Spanish education system is based on learning theory and using it to answer questions during an exam. I believe that a practice-based approach is a much better way to learn than a theoretical approach. In high school, I had a really hard time with chemistry and I thought I wouldn’t pass the class, but the lab sessions helped me understand the theory and put it into practice, which helped me to fully grasp theoretical concepts and do well in the exam.
This is what we do at Jóvenes Proyectos. We encourage students to collaborate on as many practical cases as possible in order to enhance their learning experience at university. What you learn in class usually differs from how working at a company really is. By working on a project through our platform, you gain real-world experience, boost your CV and expand your professional network all at the same time.
During my internship, I’ve seen projects related to marketing, cybersecurity, communication, design and more. These projects have been applied to startups like GAS COMMUNITY which is a platform for motor enthusiasts, medium-sized companies like WifiAway, which offers portable Wi-Fi, or big companies like Nationale-Nederlanden. In addition, we usually try to adapt our services to demand. So if a student contacts us asking to work on a specific project that we don’t offer, we are more than happy to search for a similar project in the same field.