I started my new internship this week! You are looking at Influence & Co.’s newest Editorial Associate. It’s very cool. I wanted to be chill and aloof about it at first, but it’s a very cool job, and I’m super lucky to be a part of this company. And it all came about rather serendipitously.

Getting the job

I decided to stay in Columbia this summer pretty last minute, and I signed on to continue as the VoxTalk blog editor for Vox Magazine, but that wasn’t quite enough for me. Doing one thing rarely (never?) is. My friend Leah mentioned to me that Influence & Co. was looking for summer interns, and I pulled out my computer in the middle of The Heidelberg to look at their application. The deadline was the following day. Whew. There were only a few questions on the application; I don’t think it took me more than five minutes to complete. I went ahead and applied for two different positions: Publications Intern and Editorial Intern. And then I waited.

A couple days later, I got an email saying I’d been selected for an initial interview. The time slot was exactly 30 minutes before my French final, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of rescheduling, so I decided to power through and do the interview right before the last final of my college career. I was a little stressed, but it went well! Being a journalist has definitely forced me to be at ease on the phone (coming a long way from when I was too nervous to call for pizza delivery), and it was a fun, casual conversation about my experience and interests. We decided the editorial internship was the best fit for me, and I was told that based on my background, the senior editor would probably want to talk to me. I found out a few days later that he did!

My second interview was an equally inconvenient time slot. The time of the day he was available was the exact time that I was grading the finals for my magazine editing students with the other TAs. But hey, your girl wants a job. If someone wants to interview me for a paid internship with flexible hours and duties relevant to my field, I’m going to make my schedule work for them. So I snuck out during lunch for the interview, and again, it went well. I wrote a test article over graduation weekend, and the following week, I’d been hired as an Editorial Intern.

Having the job

Going into orientation on Monday, I really had no idea what to expect. We’d be sent a bunch of documents about the company’s history and culture and told to read all these articles about content marketing, and by Sunday night, my brain was overloaded with information. But it turns out, that was only the tip of the iceberg — in a good way. See, when I visited Influence & Co.’s building for my interview, I’d only seen the front end. I waited in the cafe for my interviewer, and we proceeded straight into a conference room across the hall. When I came in for orientation this week, I found out that the building is like, four or five times bigger than I’d imagined it to be.

Let’s break it down. There are two large conference rooms at the front, plus the cafe I mentioned. Then there’s a giant lounge space with two seating areas and a mini golf turf. Then there’s a large meeting room in the back titled the “Get Shit Done” room. Next to that are five adjoined office spaces, each holding about six desks. This is where the main hub of the office is. Full-time employees have permanent desks in this area, and there are open ones spread throughout the space where interns like myself can hop around. There are several small meeting rooms spread out in the building, there’s a rec room with a Christmas tree and a ping-pong table, there’s a quiet room with a hammock and clouds hanging from ceiling, there’s a kitchen, there’s a break room (as if we’d need one) with a giant coffee machine and loose-leaf tea, and I haven’t even gotten in to any of the cool stuff yet.

There’s a park inside the office. There’s green turf, park benches, chairs and tables. The walls are painted with murals of the outdoors. Across from that is a chalkboard wall with a mural of a bunch of birds flying down the wall. There are two buckets of chalk on the floor. Behind that is maybe my favorite part of I&Co.’s office. We have two beds. Why? Because sometimes people like to work on beds. (I am one of those people.) Next to the beds are two huge plastic sheds furnished with bean bags, massage chairs and lounge furniture. Why? People have meetings in there, they take phone calls, and they need massages from time to time. It’s private, comfortable and convenient. In the cafe, which has a wet bar, tables and a couple couches, there is a fridge called “The Free Game Fridge.” I love the free game fridge. It’s constantly stocked with soda, cheese sticks, yogurt, and I’m sitting across from it right now, and there’s a bunch of beer in it. There’s also fresh fruit on the counter — bananas, peaches, apples, you name it.

The company

Outside of all the ~amenities~, the actual “job” part is really sweet. What Influence & Co. does is this: They work with people who want to build their businesses by forming relationships with their clients outside of traditional advertising. So rather than selling ads or launching mail campaigns, Influence & Co. works with CEOs, managers, entrepreneurs, etc. and establishes them as thought leaders in their fields. So, if someone who invented a new app wants to be seen as a knowledgeable, thoughtful influencer in the field of startups, Influence & Co. helps that person get published in places such as Forbes or Entrepreneur with an article about a subject that both her potentials clients and investors would be interested in.

It’s been a smashing success. You know that giant building I took you through? Influence & Co. used to solely exist in the Get Shit Done room. The building was full of a mix of different startups, and I&Co. slowly crept into the other rooms and eventually took over the whole building. They went from a handful of employees just a few years ago to having more than 70 and hiring. And it’s really easy to see why they’re having so much good fortune — they’re working really hard, and they’re doing things differently.

Age-old bonding tactics have been used, your standard company dodgeball tournaments and outings, but we’re also doing things I’ve never heard of before. We use an office-wide messaging system called Slack where people can ping each other with ideas, questions or funny pictures at any time (it’s gif-compatible). We use another system called 15Five where all supervisors can check in with employees about what went on that week. It’s not about checking in on who’s doing their work, it’s about seeing what questions need to be addressed, what positive things happened that week and giving shout-outs for going above and beyond.

Basically, this summer I stumbled into a dream job. I have so much autonomy — I&Co. really wants everyone to set their own hours and even has Late Start Wednesdays where they encourage people to work from home for the beginning of their days. I’m doing work that I’m good at and that I enjoy. The atmosphere is one that’s really productive for me, and I see myself getting a lot done during the workday and then turning around to go to the gym and keeping that forward momentum going for the rest of my day. It’s a good deal, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer brings!