20 October, 2020

Starting a new job is always daunting - but even more so when you’re a recent graduate, all your onboarding is online and, of course, when there is a global pandemic!

However, the team at CIT and the Hincks Centre have been amazing in terms of making it as easy as they could for me to integrate.

Whether it be the friendly face at the other end of a zoom call, the weekly Enterprise Intern meetings to make sure everything is going okay or helping me do a test run presenting on Zoom before giving my first Business Model Canvas lecture. It’s been far from a perfect situation, but we’ll get there!

One of the very first tasks I had to do as part of my role was to create an e-booklet for the virtual Shared Learning Events for My Town, My Plan Community Training Programme. Constituents from all of the participating towns, representatives from CIT and from industry were in attendance. It really helped me to improve my graphic design skills, while also learning about some of the key work that the Hincks Centre does.

A highlight of my first month was being nominated in the Cork Digital Marketing Awards for Best Digital Marketing Student. The finals took place on the 9th of October, and while I was unsuccessful in this category, Leahy’s Open Farm won ‘Best Use of Facebook 20-50 Employees’ which is a huge achievement as it is something I’ve been responsible for the last 5 years. It is also worth mentioning that 7 out of the 8 finalists were Cork Institute of Technology students, which just shows the standard of learning provided.

While it will be the second semester before I get to set foot on campus again, myself and the other student enterprise interns Dylan and Clionadh filmed a virtual tour of the Rubicon Centre before level 3 lockdown. This will be a key asset to us in helping to deliver education about the entrepreneurial ecosystem within CIT to students. I have done some of this already through delivery of the Business Model Canvas lectures and also speaking to students doing the Entrepreneurial Mindset module in first year.

Going forward, I will be focusing on the different competitions we run to help promote entrepreneurship within the college, such as the APPrentice Competition. Applications will open soon so if any CIT students have an idea for an app - this could be your chance to win €200! *

* Based on last year's prize.