First of all, I am beyond excited to be writing this blog post about being the first person from the Launchpad program to become a full-time employee at HLK! The past few months have been a whirlwind.

After my internship at HLK ended in July, I had to make a quick decision about what I was going to do next. Since I’m originally from Chicago, my options were to either move to Chicago and live with my parents (love you Mom, but no thanks) or move to St. Louis and dive into the unknown (headfirst, obviously). Choosing the latter was a risky decision, but as it turns out, totally worth it!

One of the coolest things about my new job here is that I have taken on a brand new position for the agency. As HLK grows, taking on and producing more work than ever before, it’s so important that everything we do is reviewed extensively. As a Proofreader/QA Specialist, I get to be a part of the process that ensures our work is the best it can be. My experience as a copywriting intern made it possible for me to easily step into this role; I had a lot of opportunities to help proofread for grammar and consistency during my time with Launchpad.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned in my first two weeks on the job is that you won’t know everything the minute you step into your new position. Part of my role here is to help test websites and make sure everything works as it should, so that the product we deliver is the product that we promised to the client. I had never done anything like this before, but everyone at HLK has been more than happy to help me learn the ins and outs of the process and share tips with me. Working full-time is going to be a learning experience no matter what; college simply doesn’t provide you with every single thing you need to know in order to do your job. The learning experience doesn’t end when the internship is over, and that’s one of the coolest parts about working at HLK.

I definitely feel the opportunity to grow not only as an employee, but also as a person. Even though I’m no longer an intern, HLK has not abandoned encouraging me to learn new skills and try new things. I’ve witnessed so much growth not just in myself, but in the people I work with every day. It’s an incredible opportunity to get to work with an agency that really cares for the people who work here and wants to see them happy in their jobs and their lives.

As it stands right now, I’m incredibly lucky, grateful and excited to come to work every day as I anticipate all the projects I will work on and the things I will learn. Looking back on my path to getting where I am, my best advice to those of you who are still out there pounding the pavement is to make sure you never stop asking questions. It’s always been my goal to avoid pigeon-holing myself into being a person with only one skill set; I want to be an employee of many talents (not just copywriting or editing), and I’ve found that this has served me incredibly well.

The Launchpad internship was one of the best professional experiences I’ve ever had, and I hope this blog post came across as genuinely as I really feel. I strongly encourage anyone looking for a career in advertising to check out what HLK has to offer, because it is SO much. I’m just one example of the many opportunities for growth here and I hope that there will be many more to come. Apologies in advance for the cheesy lingo, but…intern, over and out; full-time employee, ready to launch.