Spring 2023 was the second term of my 8-month coop. In this term I was able to apply all the knowledge and skills gained in the first 4 months. Actually, I would say that for the first 3 months you are just learning different skills and tasks. You are not really able to be fully independent. Only during the second term you have that autonomy where you can take certain decisions and the supervisor gives you a reasonable amount of discretion.  

During this time, I started to manage all social media accounts: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. I was responsible to create the weekly content (which was reviewed by my supervisor). I really enjoyed this part as I was able to be creative, do research on the latest trends in the online world and then see the result of my work. When you create online content and it performs well, you get this sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that makes all the effort worthwhile.  

Other than making online content, I started to work on online advertising as well. I would keep track of all the ads, their analytics and create reports on their performance. With the help of my supervisor, I was also able to experiment and test with different ads. This was particularly helpful as I applied the concepts learnt in one of my SFU courses (BUS 441).   

During this term, our company participated in different trade shows. So, I got the opportunity to learn about the whole process, the marketing and the logistics side of it. How we set up the different campaigns, how we decide what material to present at the show, the booth layout etc etc. From my previous job, I had some experience on trade shows but that was more of the client facing side, while here I got to learn about literally everything: from the set up to the tear down of our booth. 

I would like to reinstate the fact that in marketing, an 8-month term with one company is way more valuable than two 4-month terms with different companies as it’s only after working for 5-6 months that you are able to truly understand how the decision making process works and be independent.