For the past few months, we were delighted to have Chloe de Hoffman join our team as an intern and we are grateful for all her hard work. In the article below, she shares her experience working at ZN. As she prepares to finish her studies and enter the working environment, we wish her all the best.

My ZN Journey

I have been a student for more than twenty years now, but I have to admit that I was getting tired of sitting in classrooms while listening to teachers. In order to complete my master’s degree I had to complete an internship program. I was looking forward to it since it would give me the opportunity to put some theory into practice.

Needless to say, all this was a bit scary for me as it would be a major shift in my life. I would now have a strict schedule and responsibilities. Parties till 5AM during the week would definitely be over.

When I first visited ZN’s website, I noticed that the team was incredibly international. ZN had people coming from all around the world, an English-speaking environment, and it was a communication agency focusing on digital. It felt like an almost perfect match for me and I remember checking my emails every minute to see if I had heard back from them.

I was in Château de la Hulpe and my 3G connection was very weak when I got an email asking if I was still interested to come in for an interview. I remember running around with my iPhone hoping to get a better signal in order to send my answer. That was in September.

I joined ZN in February. The first week was not really easy as everything was very new for me. But because ZN is not an agency with 1,000 people, I felt reassured after getting to know all the members of the team.

I learned a lot, met great people and worked on lots of different projects. I was always kept busy and had such great experiences that time just flew by.

The biggest and most challenging part of my internship was helping Philip Weiss and Oana-Maria Vieru organize EuroComm 2013. It took place in mid-April in Solvay Brussels School and hosted communicators from all around the world. There was a lot of coordination and organization that needed to get done. I had to touch base with our sponsors, make sure banners were published on partner websites, and newsletters were sent, among many other tasks. To be honest, I have never received so many emails in such a short span of time! But the event was a great success, and that made everything worthwhile.

However, there was one thing that I did not like about my internship – having to take the bus every morning! I would have preferred to bike to work each day, but unfortunately Brussels is way too hilly.

In the end, I’m glad that I will be graduating soon. What this training period made me realize is that growing up and having a job isn’t that bad (I’m more than happy to start working!), and that internships are not always about bringing coffees and making copies.

Thank you, ZN team. It has been a pleasure to work with every one of you!

.