The top 3 skills I learned from my internship at G3 Partners

Jiacheng Ye
Sep 5, 2018 · 6 min read
My before-G3-got-real photo uploaded on Instagram

One of my tasks as an intern was to update G3 Partners’ social media, and that included writing introductory posts for the five other interns that joined G3 Partners before my internship ended. Part of that process was getting to know them, especially why they joined the team.

A common thread among all their answers (including mine) was their desire to learn. Whether it be learning about PR and marketing, startups or even English, our desire to learn played a huge part in our decision to be a part of the G3 team. Because we all had this goal it gave purpose to our internship and kept us motivated. If you’re applying for an internship somewhere, I recommend you adopt learning as a key goal and find a company that will give you an opportunity to learn new skills and broaden your horizon.

What did I learn in the 10 weeks I spent at G3 Partners?

I picked up a lot of things during my internship, like sarcasm, a better understanding of football and a gastronomic map of Hongdae. Beyond these wonderful things, these are the top three skills I learned:

1. How much time do you need?

Pre-Asana productivity tools: whiteboard, red and black markers and an eraser

Interns are instructed to come in an hour earlier than everyone else in the office to meet with Cholpon, our intern manager. As we each brief her on our work plans for the day, she always asks, “How much time do you need [to do this task]?”

At first it was a lot of guesswork. As I gained more experience, I became more aware of how much time it actually takes to complete a certain task. Write a 2 page feature blog post for a client? Four to five hours. Six to eight with research.

My improved awareness of how long activities take helped increase efficiency. I even managed to start spotting patterns in my work and devised “hacks” to speed things up.

For a marketing agency like G3 Partners, time is gold. Especially since we work with startups that often are operating to extremely tight time frames. Due to this and the increasing complexity of projects, including blockchain, we constantly have to re-prioritize and figure out how much time we’re spending on a certain task.

Since I was able to practice gauging these tasks throughout my internship, it’s become easier for me to handle multiple high-pressure tasks, and more importantly to free up my schedule for some me-time, like strolling in the park.

2. Clear writing means clear thinking.

These words were etched onto the orientation handout for the Business Writing class I took last semester in Seoul. Our professor spent an entire session explaining to us what that meant, and it became our creed in the classes that followed.

I saw this adage play out beyond the classroom at G3. For a marketing agency specializing in content, “clear writing means clear thinking” is more than a statement. It’s a challenging reality, one I did not expect to face so often coming into G3.

During my interview I didn’t speak much about my previous writing experience (I have written for TechInAsia as a contributor), but ended up spending a majority of my time on content creation throughout my 10 weeks at G3.

Because I initially lacked in writing discipline and confidence, my prose got beat on a lot. It had never gone through so much scrutiny before. My colleagues, who are either excellent writers or have a good eye for detail, spared no period, spacing or em-dash. Our founders Erik and Nathan, who built their careers with their prolific writing, also got their hands dirty in my work — yep, the companies C-suite spent time to revise and provide feedback on my work, as an intern.

I had also never been pressured to write so much in such a short amount of time. I was producing at least 5 pages of curated content a week for our clients or for G3, ranging from business proposals to blog posts.

Erik and Nathan, the draft slayers.

I had to keep a clear thought process to produce clear and concise content. My output would always end up lacking or be unnecessarily long if I didn’t understand what I was writing about. In those cases, I had to ask questions and set the story straight. Thankfully, communication at G3 is very open; asking straightforward questions is always the fastest way to clear things up.

Once the core message of a piece of content is clear, it becomes easier to add a little more personality and make it more powerful. Clear writing doesn’t take the life out of a piece; on the contrary, it frees up space for impact.

3. Staying in the loop

Having to think and write clearly means having enough information to begin with. This involves not only asking questions but also scouring for relevant and useful information online. That’s a challenge in itself.

It was definitely not my first time to sift through Google search results or skim multiple news pieces, but with the element of time pressure, I had to find new ways to do research and analyze information quickly. Google Alerts (news), LinkedIn (people), and Unsplash (images) became my new best friends.

The nature of the startups we work with also shaped where I got information from. With nearly all the projects I worked on dealing with blockchain and cryptocurrency, I always started the day combing through blockchain publications like CoinDesk and CoinTelegraph. Medium publications like Hackernoon became a reliable source for highly technical topics I needed a quick brief on. Pouring over countless articles about decentralization, protocols, and tokens have not made me an expert, but they’ve definitely helped with understanding clients and writing content for them.

Staying in the loop can also mean learning how to do marketing on platforms like Reddit (taken from the G3 team training for Reddit Marketing)

Online research does not only involve looking through public materials but also through private files on our internal network. It becomes important for everyone in the company to be able to easily search for past files and templates on-the-go. I performed a number of tasks that required procuring information from past clients or customizing templates, thus taking a bit of G3’s past to add to the company’s future.

Because G3 works with startups, it’s part of the work routine to always stay in the loop, regardless if it involves knowing how we worked with clients from the past year or why a cryptocurrency exchange was hacked a few hours ago. Policies a continent away could affect the marketing strategy of our client just as much as a competitor releasing a more popular product in the same market. Simply being able to engage in conversations about these can also spell the difference between securing a client and losing their interest.

Learning how to learn: the skill to rule them all

Coming into this internship I thought I would be making use of the “experience” I had pitched in my job interview — experience dealing with startups, organizing events, and networking with executives and entrepreneurs. Although I did end up doing that, it was the skills I didn’t expect to learn, and pushed me to learn, that made my internship experience a lot more valuable than I thought.

That’s what these three skills have in common. I had to learn how to learn them, and in the end, it’s this very process of learning these skills that proved to be the most important skill I’ve used in my internship at G3 Partners. It’s a skill that matters regardless of your background, interests, or career. It’s a skill that we will continue to hone long after internships and school. It’s the skill to rule them all.

If you’re not just looking to acquire skills in marketing but also to hone them in a fast-paced, flexible learning environment, then G3 Partners may be the perfect place for you!

My oh-damn-G3-what-have-you-done-to-me photo.

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