Good morning. As winter break winds down, getting back into an academic headspace can be difficult. Fortunately, here at New Intern, we pack your brain with modern marketing content and unparalleled wit. A couple more weeks of reading our newsletter and you’ll be ready to crush your sleepy peers in the next socratic seminar.

Find out how Sydney McKhann scored an internship with PacSun & Power Digital Marketing, what she's done in those roles, and what she thinks you should do to get one too.

—Sean Sebers

In today's edition:

🏆 What earned her the role?

📊 What she does

📝 Quick Takeaways

📈 Give us more!

Sydney McKhann

Social Media Marketing Intern

Sydney McKhann was a social media marketing intern for PacSun this past summer. Shortly after, Sydney started working as a social media marketing intern for Power Digital Marketing in San Diego, CA. PacSun, as most of you probably know, is an American retail brand that sells some pretty cool clothes at a reasonable price (at least compared to its price gouging competitor, Urban Outfitters). Power Digital Marketing, on the other hand, is a full-service digital marketing agency that rakes in about ~$15 million in revenue per year.

Sydney is also a sophomore at the University of San Diego pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business economics with a minor in marketing. She is expected to graduate in 2025.

What earned her the role @PacSun?

Sydney’s little sister is actually a model for PacSun kids wear, so some of the internal PacSun employees were already familiar with her family. At the time, Sydney was only a freshman in college, so she actually wasn’t actively searching for job opportunities. But, in a fortuitous turn of events, Sydney caught wind of this role just as she decided to live at home for a couple months. After some phone calls with internal contacts, Sydney was offered the social media marketing internship which, after two extensions, ended up being six months long!

Even though this was a unique circumstance, and not everyone has a little sister who models, Sydney did prepare for this internship by collecting a few certifications. In general, there are three types of certifications you can earn:

• Internal cert. — Training offered by a company that is only credible at that company

• Product-specific cert. — Usually credible training for specific software or hardware

• Profession-wide cert. — Usually credible at all places of work (This category includes everything from CPA certifications to LinkedIn certifications)

Currently, Sydney has Microsoft Excel (product-specific), and Social Media Marketing (profession-wide) certifications. By learning some core concepts and industry jargon, Sydney was able to start her position with less friction and expedite her PacSun training.

What she did:

Pacsun is divided into three major accounts: 1) PacSun bikinis 2) PacSun kids 3) PacSun main. As a social media marketing intern, Sydney was placed at the intersection of PacSun kids and main.

Once a week, Sydney would drive to a new PacSun location with her sister (can’t forget her!) and spend the day shooting content. They would both try on merchandise while photographing/recording snippets of content that would be used for PacSun social posts later. Sourcing imagery was also a large component in Sydney's content creation process.

• In a marketing context, sourcing imagery is used to describe finding high quality images for advertising purposes. A company can either take their own photos, find free ones with sites like Unsplash, recycle old photos, or create a graphic.

During a product launch or collaboration, Sydney got to work on the backend operations. One of her favorite collab events was when PacSun hosted Storm Reid in their downtown LA store. If I’m being honest, I haven’t seen Euphoria yet, but that’s still pretty cool.

In addition to launches, PacSun hosted six kid's events to promote the brand. The only difference was, Sydney spearheaded all of the planning and execution for these events. Before each event, Sydney would start by finding and sourcing kid influencers/models who had that star quality in them. She would then plan all of the photo and video content to be captured for that day. But, Sydney wasn’t limited to logistics only, she had the opportunity to film the video content, edit the recordings, and then create the social media posts from that content!

Sydney’s biggest personal takeaway from this experience was learning the importance of flexibility. She was surprised by how fast social media trends (especially on TikTok) can change in one day. Keep reading to find out how Sydney is doing in her new role, or, skip straight to her LinkedIn here.

What earned her the role @Power Digital Marketing?

The intern life was too good for Sydney not to try again. After interning for PacSun, she sent out a round of 10 applications to marketing and social media related hybrid roles. Power Digital Marketing, a marketing agency based in San Diego, CA, reached out with interest in her organic social media intern application. There were two rounds of interviews plus a final round with the entire 9-person organic social team. In the middle of her interview, the team gave Sydney a list of hypothetical clients with some possible social media ideas that she had to generate a hypothetical plan for and share with the panel … intimidating, huh?

Well, not for Sydney. She believed that standing out was her ticket to getting hired. According to her, the project she came up with was not the most dazzling, but she focused her efforts on being unique in her approach instead. Even though the details of her final project were never disclosed in our interview, Sydney believes that she was hired because of the creativity she expressed in her interview.

What she does:

Instead of focusing on a marketing approach for a single industry (like doing retail with PacSun), Sydney is working with 5 client accounts and counting. Every client account represents a company that Power Digital Marketing is servicing in some way. Each client account, no matter the size, receives creative and strategy aid. Sydney is working on the strategy side which has a different emphasis.

Of course, at the time of this interview, Sydney had just been hired by Power Digital Marketing, so the details of her current projects are under wraps. If you’re interested in connecting with Sydney, feel free to reach out to her through LinkedIn below!

📝Quick Takeaways:

• Don’t be afraid to utilize a family connection to secure an internship.

• After your first internship, subsequent roles are exponentially easier to land.

• Social media marketing (SMM) is typically a content centered role that requires the stamina to keep up with daily changing trends and styles. Even more so if you’re working on different company accounts.

📈Give us more!

💼Want to hear more from Sydney?

• Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel linked here.

🔍Connect with Sydney!

• Connect with her on LinkedIn here.

• Follow her on Instagram @sydneymckhann

📢Advice from Sydney:

One, find a LinkedIn training course, an online book, or something that you can read before your interview. People will expect you to know what you’re talking about even if you don't have experience. You’ll get asked questions where, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you won’t stand out in your interviews.

Two, in my own experience, if there’s a company I want to work for, I become an uber stalker on LinkedIn. I will literally follow people from that company and say “Hello, my name is Sydney and I totally wanna work at your company”—more or less. Even though that hasn’t landed me a job yet, it's gotten me some great connections. Additionally, if you can, I would find someone who had a similar internship to the one you’re interested in, and ask them a ton of questions like “What did you say in your interview?” I really think nailing the interview on the head is the biggest part to focus on, but, getting to the interview is obviously hard, so I think doing as much outreach as you can is important too. Be aware that you are one in thousands of applicants and that you need to do anything you can to stand out and get that interview! —Claire Kennedy

*Edited for clarity*