Summer Internship: Kara Ross

When I first came to Whitman, I was sure that I wanted to work in the jewelry industry. I applied to many jewelry companies around the New York area and after two rounds of interviews, I was accepted as a social media and marketing intern at Kara Ross. I was very excited about this internship because the office is located one of the fashion capitals of the world.

After having experienced the corporate life as an engineer, I welcomed the pleasant change in the environment. Everyone was very warm and welcoming. The owner of the company, Kara Ross, interacted with us on the first day. The environment has been very relaxed and the employees are very polite and helpful. The company has exceptional organization skills. They had to place a booth at the Couture Show in Vegas, which is one of the biggest shows in the industry, but the employees at the company were very relaxed and organized before the show. The show was without a doubt a huge success for the company.

During the first week, we were familiarized with the product range of the company and I was made to work on Photoshop. This was an enriching experience because I had not worked on Photoshop before this and hence, I learned a new tool in the first week itself. The pictures that I edited on Photoshop were posted in Instagram right away, giving me the confidence that I was doing a great job.

The next objective was to analyze their social media efforts.  I had to analyze their social media outreach and find out their top social media channels. Since the company is very active on most channels, they wanted to know which channel to focus on most. They also wanted to know which of these channels resulted in sales for them. I used Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, SumAll and Pinterest Analytics to discover the data. Because I was familiar with these tools but never had real data to work on, I was very comfortable working on this project.

Our next step was to figure out how to use Pinterest in order to generate more website views. The director of marketing, Sharon Gaffney has been working closely with me in order to help increase the number of conversions through their social media efforts. We also started working on a new tool which would help customers buy products directly off Instagram and since Instagram is their top social media channel, this effort might result in an increase in their sales.

By the end of this internship I am sure I will have improved my organization, communication, analytical and marketing skills. I am enjoying the opportunity and am grateful to Kara Ross for being so supportive. After the first couple of weeks of my summer internship, I can only say that I’m looking forward to the rest of this enriching experience.