When I first started at Pollenizer, a lot of my friends and family joked that I would be getting coffees and photocopying for people. This was not helped given my first duty after induction was to unpack groceries. Yet my first week with Pollenizer could not have been more different to what I had imagined, but then again having never heard of the startup community before coming to Pollenizer, I wasn’t sure what to expect. This was probably best summed up in my first day where I came dressed in a suit only to be greeted to a very casual and relaxed workplace. After the induction process in the aptly named dungeon a lot of things became clear, however I am definitely still working my way around the terminology and acronyms. Being relatively computer illiterate compared to most of the people here, a lot of the tech speak also goes over my head, which is something I can hopefully catch on to, at least at a basic level.

The theme of the first week, as an HR intern, was all about the first stage of the HRM process I have been learning about at Uni – Recruitment. Up until the last semester, much of my studies had focused on industrial relations, but have now started to focus more on the HRM side of the equation. However, a lot of this has been to do with theories of HRM and motivations behind the behaviour of individuals, groups, and team, and less about the practical application of HRM within the business. My running project for the week was to research companies that had implemented successful and unsuccessful social media strategies and whether this would inform the other part of my project – detailing the various HR tools used in Pollenizer.

At this point, I have really only worked here for 4 days and I have already learned an enormous amount of information, it’s almost overwhelming. The responsibility and accountability is refreshing and encouraging and the type of work I’m doing is a lot more involved than I expected, something I am grateful for. While this first week has been all about #learning, I am definitely keen to start #flearning.