Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

How to Infiltrate an Ad Agency — Part 1

Did I say infiltrate? Disregard that now that I’ve caught your attention with the headline.

Still, the idea is the same–how to find yourself in an ad agency.

Here I am a week before the start of my internship at an awesome advertising agency named Erwin Penland and I have to say that I am extremely excited. I’ve wanted to be at an advertising agency since hearing  a speaker from Hill Holliday (whom acquired Erwin Penland in 2004) at Babson in Glenn Kelley’s Marketing Communications class. I’m especially excited about it because Erwin Penland has been so great throughout the process. I remember sitting in Trim (the campus dining hall) when I received a call from Mandy Stinson of EP to set up an interview. We were only on the phone for 5 minutes tops, but Mandy was so funny and left me smiling by the end of the call. Needless to say I was looking forward to the phone interview the following week with Mandy and two others.

The interview with them left an even better impression on me, they immediately put me at ease and we developed a really great banter. It was undoubtedly my best interview experience yet. We talked for about 35 minutes and then parted ways. About ten minutes later, I received an e-mail thanking me for taking the time to speak with them and giving some detail on what the remaining process looked like. I had never had that happen before! A couple of days later I received an offer to come work for them in Greenville, SC for the summer and I immediately accepted.

That thank you e-mail proved to be a good indicator of how they would be. Erwin Penland started the onboarding process a couple of weeks ago and they’ve made me and the seven other interns really feel like we’re not second-class employees but integral to EP. This is a really respectful and caring approach by them and I know that this will be a great experience.

So you’re probably wondering how I ended up with this opportunity? Go on to part 2 to read about the 10 things I did that led to this internship.

Signed,

Ross Andrew Simons