The Hippo Pod: Hayden
In this podcast, Employer Brand and Employee Engagement Intern, Hayley, talks about Golden Hippo’s exciting and unique company culture with the people who know it best. This episode, we spoke with Hayden, who is our Ambassador Marketing Intern at Golden Hippo.
Here are some of the highlights of Hayley and Hayden’s conversation:
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
My name's Hayden, I am a current intern here at Golden Hippo. I'm a senior at Pepperdine University majoring in International Business with a minor in Art. I really love to be creative, research new things, and see data-backed results.I consider myself to be a passionate, detail-oriented team player and I honestly have a really deep love of learning. I'm a big beach girl; I'm very lucky to be in the area that I'm at for school. So I definitely take a lot of time to go to the beach and explore tide pools, and I also love to spend time with my friends and family.
How did you learn about Golden Hippo?
Funny enough, I actually learned about Golden Hippo through my part-time job working at Payson Library at Pepperdine University in the summertime. I was talking to my supervisor and she happened to mention how her niece was working as an intern at this awesome company called Golden Hippo, and how she was having a great experience, and it just so happens that that niece is you, Hayley! So as you know, I reached out to you asked about your experience and your experience as an intern with the culture. I looked more into the company and all of their awards, and even saw the cool intern reviews. All that really made me excited to apply to their Ambassador Influencer internship posting that they had. I'm really interested in digital marketing and social media, so that was something that really caught my eye and even listening to these podcasts, it provides a real voice and personality to all of the cool stuff that I saw online and that's such like an advantage; when I'm applying to something, I want to know the feel. And yeah, it just so happened that this internship with Golden Hippo and the company culture was the right fit for me. And now I'm able to work with and learn from an awesome team.
What is your role here? Can you give us an overview of your position and day-to-day responsibilities?
I work as an Ambassador Marketing Intern. My main responsibilities include supporting and developing the growth of the ambassador programs across multiple brands at Golden Hippo, and I communicate daily with different ambassadors. I learn best practices when it comes to supporting a health-centered community and communicating with others about that. I get to learn from different departments in Golden Hippo, from social media management to product development, to finance and accounting- like all across the board. And I'm also able to support the creation of some new ambassador programs and also create metric-tracking tools to improve productivity. I'm really able to see how hands-on and data-driven we are, and then also contribute to that.
What have you learned during your internship so far?
I've definitely learned a lot. I think Golden Hippo has done the best job that I've seen so far when it comes to well-rounded, holistic learning of not just my position and role, but the entire company, the company's purpose, the department's goals and projects and things that they work on. I've learned best practices when it comes to customer service. I've definitely learned more about real productivity tools. I've learned more about ambassador and influencer needs and goals and yeah, more broadly just what a great company Golden Hippo is and the great people behind it. I have really felt completely supported my entire time at Golden Hippo. And it's really not often that the different department heads encourage others in the company and interns, like myself, are encouraged to reach out and learn from department heads. Usually, I would think entering the workforce that these people are really busy, and they don't really have time to be answering questions from an intern in a different department. But I'm really fully supported and encouraged to learn as much as I can. I've also been reading the book that the Golden Hippo HR team recommended to me, Tribal Leadership, and it's taught me so much about the process of growing a truly sustainable and successful company culture.
How would you describe the Golden Hippo culture to a candidate?
When I think of Golden Hippo, I think of the culture as engaging, passionate, fast-paced, innovative, inspiring, results-driven, and supportive of everyone; like you said, they just really do a great job of supporting and educating and growing, not only their new employees but continuous opportunities to grow and learn. We had an amazing “Golden Hippo 101” session where I got to hear from almost everyone in different departments at Golden Hippo and was able to hear from and learn about what they did. Learning is not always comfortable and the ability for my managers and supervisors and supporters to not only gently correct me but also teach me how they are correcting me; they're not just giving me the right answer, they're teaching me how to get the right answer on my own. And that really makes a big difference when it comes to growing myself, growing with the company, growing in the position, and learning all about my particular field, digital marketing. But I imagine that it's very well applicable to any other field if you just follow the learning process.
What advice would you give to internship candidates?
I know it's gonna sound really cheesy but be yourself as much as possible. The company is seeing if you are a good fit for them, and you should be seeing if the company is a good fit for you. Also take time to research the industry. If you want to go into an industry like digital marketing, you better know how to use social media, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And if you want to go into something like data-tracking software, accounting, just know those different tools and take time to look up YouTube videos or TikTok posts from people in the positions that you want, which definitely leads me to another thing: reach out to those people. Do not be afraid to put yourself out there and make your wishes known. If you see someone at a really cool position, working for a Golden Hippoo and you're like, oh man, I would love to do product development, I would love to be in the marketing team, reach out to those people because I'm telling you here firsthand, the people I know are more than willing to help you on your journey. People want to help you, you have to just believe in yourself and make your wishes known and put yourself out there. You're not gonna know how to do everything right away, and learning can be and is supposed to be uncomfortable. But if you keep choosing growth over comfort, you will not only be a better version of yourself, but you will also be able to help others be better versions of themselves too. And that is what it's all about.
If you’d like to listen to the full conversation, click here!
If you’d like to apply for one of our Fall Internship positions, click here!