I’m always looking for new opportunities within my industry even when I already have a job. During the Spring ’17 semester, I was working at Silent Partners part-time as a web designer. I usually look on Craigslist, Indeed, and WayUp. I saw a bunch of postings on WayUp from a company called Infor, ranging from design positions to sales. I looked up the company because I had never heard of it and found out it was a billion dollar company. I was a little hesitant to apply to a corporate setting (more on this on post #3) but I applied to the Brand Intern position through WayUp towards the end of April and hoped for the best.
During the first week of May I received a message on WayUp from a woman named Ivy at Infor. She said they were impressed with my resume and previous work experience and asked for a portfolio of my work. Less than a week later, I had an interview set up with the Art Director, Josh Davis, of the Brand Team. It was a phone interview and he had previously mentioned that other designers, Anne Marie and Dani, would also be on the phone call. The interview was pretty cool, very casual and we all joked around. I guess they were testing if my personality would also mesh with theirs. They asked me questions about my previous experience, what kind of classes I’m taking at school, problems I’ve encountered during group projects & how I approached a solution, and what kind of stuff I do on my free time. By the time the interview was done, I was confident I had done well but I wasn’t overly confident. I don’t really like to get my hopes up.
Two weeks had passed and I was pretty sure by then that I wasn’t going to get the position. But I got an email from Josh offering me the internship and my mood instantly shot up. It was mid-May by then and my first day would be June 5th, after the Spring semester officially ended.
On my first day I was introduced to my coworkers on the Hook&Loop Brand Team and told more about my role and responsibilities. My direct supervisor is Anne Marie Burkel, Senior Designer and works mostly on web design and UX/UI for the Brand Team. This is right up my alley. My main responsibilities are to design the homepage banners for Infor.com that change about twice a week. These are important because it’s the first thing a visitor sees. Our website gets about 1 million views of month. That’s a lot of people seeing my work. I also help Anne Marie with designing new responsive web templates for our websites.
Above was my desk on my first day, set up by Anne Marie and Dani. They left a package of Oreos because my username on all my social media accounts is LegoMyOreos and they thought it was pretty cool.
It was a very fun summer at Hook&Loop and I learned a lot about what actually happens in an actual design agency. My internship was supposed to end on August 15th, but I guess they were so happy with the work I’ve done and my positive attitude, that I was offered an extension until the end of December. I was more than happy to accept it. So now I’m going to school full time this semester and working at Infor/Hook&Loop.
